When Mothers-in Law Arrive!
My in-laws are coming for Thanksgiving. I am delighted that they are coming—all the way from England, in fact!—but I am kind of beginning to panic about the state of the cleanliness of my house. To be fair, I should say the lack of cleanliness of my house. It's not filthy, but I'm no Donna Reed either! My husband wants it stated that he believes the only messiness in our house is dog hair from Lilly, our Golden Retriever—he's delusional, but it's a nice sentiment.
I have 16 days before they arrive, so I can dust and vacuum and de-gunk the house in that amount of time—oh, the bathroom alone!!! But here's the real issue at hand. My mother-in-law is only 5 feet tall; I am 5'9”. That means I have to go through the entire house from a completely different height range to see the filth that has collected underneath objects that I never even see because I am looking from the top down.
The first time they came to America to see us, I did the same thing and was so horrified at what had collected under my oven hood that I stayed up nearly an entire night removing the hair and grease from it while trying to keep the bile in its rightful place.
I have a diminutive friend who commiserates from the other angle. She lamented recently that her tall husband was totally unbothered by the gathering of dust and grease that accumulated on top of the refrigerator—where she can’t see and he can. Why, she wondered, did that not bother him the way it bothered her when she finally pulled a chair up to inspect?
Let me be clear: my mother-in-law has an absolutely spotless and lovely, lived-in home, and I would quite happily eat any food off any floor in it, and she has never shown a clear disdain for my less-than-stellar house-keeping skills. She is always incredibly gracious and has never done the Mary Poppins white-glove dust test—at least not in my presence, but I still am feeling incredible pressure to get the house in tip top shape before she arrives.
I hope I can get everything done in the next 16 days that I want to get done. The list is long, but I am pretty sure that I can enlist my husband, her son who seems to feel none of this pressure by the way!, and my son to help. By the time we sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, I should be full of gratitude for the spotless state of my home! And if not, I'll have to be grateful for extended family, and that's a lovely thing, too.
Comments