How ready is tour house for unexpected visitors?

[CormoranStrike]

I’ve got 24 hours - with work and sleep, more like four hours, to prep.

I’ve been going at 100mph. How organised and ready are you at any given time?

Not at all. sahm and I literally pick stuff up alllll bloody day and still it looks like a bomb site at any given time.
I've recently given up putting things away where they belong and just been running or donating them. Not one person had noticed yet that's how much crap we have.
Think the key is to be minimalist and then it looks cleaner as there's barely anything in your house.
sorry for the rant. Good luck with your cleaning.

For non-sleeping over visitors, half an hour max
For sleeping over visitors I’d prefer an hour
But in all honesty I’d rather there were no visitors at all

Depends on what you mean by ‘ready’.

My house is always ready if I’m not bothered about keeping it show home tidy!

Not at all. It is a state!

My house is completely unready at the minute.

I’d be seriously tempted to pretend that I was clearing up after burglars who’d ransacked the house if I had an unexpected visitor right this minute.

My house is always visitor ready on a Thursday PM - only because the cleaner has been that morning!
I have to have a tidy up before she comes so she can clean everywhere.

It's ready, it would take me 30 mins to do a quick hoover and wipe down, but I don't do unexpected visitors or overnight guests. I like a couple of days notice if someone is coming to visit.

I had three sets of unexpected visitors today. House was fine... not show home standard but generally my friends come to see me, not my sparkling taps 🤷🏻‍♀️. Bathrooms and kitchen are always clean and I ran the hoover over yesterday evening so what more do people want?

I reckon I could be ready in about 1/1.5 hours. We're in the middle of the most hideous house move and I keep thinking, I'll clean the bathroom just before we leave, no need to do it now, but wit everything, it's a total tip, but I have high standards!

I have different grades of visitors:-

• close friends/family who don't really care so I don't bother tidying at all.

• people who rate a quick tidy up for maybe half an hour so that they don't think we're complete slobs we are

• people who I know are going to judge so get the full 4 hour treatment including wiping, mopping, hoovering every corner etc.

The full 4 hour thing only gets done about once a fortnight as I don't invite those ones over much!

Works for me! We both work full time and have 2 none too tidy sons, so my time is precious...

Not too bad actually. I think it would take under an hour to get it properly visitor ready. Beds already have clean sheets, the bathroom and kitchen are clean. Lounge and dds room could do with a quick tidy, but are clean already. Wack the Hoover round and I'm good to go.

I will state that it is not always like this. I have had a spurt of pregnancy induced cleaning lately so more housework than usual has occurred.

Years ago I registered a house with an estate agent on saturday Lunchtime
rolled in at tea time from a sponsored barrel pull to find a couple wanting to look round
I started at the top as DH tidied below
the drunk bloke on the sofa we covered with a blanket
they bought the house

At the moment it's a tip. But I usually manage to keep one room reasonably tidy so if people do call round we can move into whichever room happens to be OK.

Mine is always fine. I always have a clean and tidy house and am never phased if someone turns up

Pretty much always.
I don’t spend hours a day doing housework but I do housework every day, quick hoover round downstairs (takes literally 5 minutes with the cordless), tidy up as I see mess, stick a load of washing on a couple of times a day (or the dc do), obviously clean kitchen sides etc daily as we use them.
We have a cleaner so things like the bathrooms and toilets get done on a regular basis, she also steams the kitchen floor and mops the wood floors in the hall, living room and downstairs loo.
Having a cleaner means we have less clutter and it’s generally relatively tidy because people come round often (sometimes daily drop ins).
I hate having a messy house, little and often works for me, plus training dc to pick up after themselves and no one being in the house all day every day to mess everything up.
There’s usually some stuff on the dining table that shouldn’t be there, a pair of shoes on the kitchen floor, a school bag slung on a sofa, that kind of thing, but those are easily rectified should someone turn up unannounced.

There's a hotel at the end of the street if they're not happy

If they walked through the hall into the living room and didn’t go into any other room, I’m ready now.

Kitchen - couple of hours.

If they want to go upstairs, I’ll need about 8 weeks.

They will have to take us as they find us, like it or lump it

I'm a SAHM. So my house very rarely is "guest ready", although before my DS arrived it was never a show home so can't really blame him.

I would need a good 5hrs for a stay over guest and probably 2 hrs for a visitor, so I can shove everything in cupboards and hope it doesn't all explode back out mid coffee lol. I am too busy enjoying my days to be bothered picking up after us all day long ( that's my story and I'm sticking to it )

Although before we had DS we simply didn't answer the door to uninvited guests, we still feel very similar ....I hate people "popping in " how rude of them !!!!

I have shoved LOADS into cupboards

Better than it used to be but still chaos at times.

Mine is "fine" all the time if you close the door to the playroom. Downstairs much better than upstairs.

To get it the way I'd ideally like it, I'd need probably about an hour / hour and a half.

30 mins for a quick tidy, clear toys, clean toilet and make kitchen look decent. 1.5 hours solid if adding in proper clean of whole bathroom and sorting beds for people sleeping over. If it's my family, 0 minutes :)

Depends who's coming round.
Most people I expect to take us as they find us, it's not particularly dirty or untidy just General day to day stuff.
Posh visitors I might need half an hour to hide stuff and have a quick Hoover up.

I always cringe at the thought of unexpected visitors. But realistically it's always clean, but maybe untidy occasionally. Today I have hoovered and mopped downstairs, bleached the kitchen sides and done a couple of loads of washing so apart from the basket of clean washing to go upstairs downstairs (including the downstairs loo that gets a quock clean daily due to grotty ds (4) washing his post food hands in the sink) is usually pretty OK.

Upstairs wants a hoover, and the bathroom is 5 days post big clean and the ironing basket is looking a bit ominous. And ds bedroom is probably scattered with toys. But other than that it gets a clean up there once a week and a general tidy each morning.

I used to be really hard on myself. But my house is clean, fridge, bathrooms and kitchen never a health hazzard and I always have milk/biscuits/gin/wine in so count myself as a good host. As long as loos aren't stained (pet hate) and it's not a health hazzard I never judge anyone elses house.