To ask if it’s petit bourgeois to clean the house before guests arrive?

[HomeostaticSetPoint]

Just that. We always clean the house thoroughly before guests, even play dates. Bathrooms, bins, everything. I’m wondering if this is because we’re lower middle class as my posher friends don’t really bother. What’s the norm?

Didn't you have to tidy up after yourself at boarding school?

DH is like that. If I'm fed up of him doing half hearted bits of cleaning here and there I can guarantee the one way he'll help to get the house pristine is to invite one of our parents for tea. 😂

What century are you living in? Petit bourgeois and lower middle class. Get over yourself - if your house needs cleaned do it. Good god! 😂

This, plus if you are posh & monied, your children have a playroom and your hobbies are outdoors / have their own dedicated rooms. Go up a level of posh and you have that many more "sitting" type rooms that are barely used compared to a house with one room which is used for everything. So there is less clutter (because so much more space and storage) and each room gets less use, so stays cleaner.

Although if you buy in to the posh people stereotype, supposedly mud from all the horses and dog hair from all the labradors start increasing the mess level, but I've never actually found that stereotype to be true.

I’m working class, best friend middle class and quite posh.. has a cleaner. We both clean and tidy before visiting with just adults or kids.

I assumed OP meant proper posh. Landed gentry types. Slightly scruffy and eccentric looking, very outdoorsy, dirty landrover with a dog and some rifles in for shooting, and certainly not the "weekly hair salon/massage/manicure" type of people. You know, big old house in the country passed down for generations that they are now struggling to afford the upkeep of, make-do-and-mend, type of person? They are usually "take me as you find me" type of self-assured people.

I only clean when my family-in-law visit. The judgement. I still remember comments from over ten years ago about the apparent filth of my house by them.
This probably says more about my insecurity around them than anything else.
So for me the amount of cleaning I do increases with how much I dislike the visitor...

I've been in that house and I'm surprised she even knew where the hoover was - just saying...

My wife (British, MC) cleans thoroughly before guests arrive. This effort takes a few days, her list of jobs is surprisingly long.

I (also female, not British, probably MC adjacent however) don't get into quite the same level of flap as she does, but do prefer a tidy house for guests. And I usually buy nicer biscuits.

However I'm certainly not judgemental of someone's home, I've had young DC and lived in chaos for long years myself.

To be fair, this is me.

@Maireas no I didn’t. We had staff come and clean our rooms at my boarding school.

This thread is so weird.

I have a regular cleaner but even years ago my houses were never a tip. I’m not house proud, and have always worked long hours, but I am surprised people leave dirty mugs sitting around and have dirty bathrooms.

Do some people here seriously never clean or tidy where they live? That’s nothing to do with class. Living in muck and squalor is minging. 😳

‘Posh’ depends on who is doing the estimating, though. In a village I used to live in, ‘posh’ was wearing Mango, having a Quooker tap, impractical gel nails and a stockbroker husband. The horsy landed gentry types with crumbling piles and a premature lamb in the Aga were assumed to be doing it wrong. I was a puzzle because I had a husband with a ‘big job’ yet also worked FT and cycled everywhere.

i was the only WOHM in my child’s class. The others appeared to operate a tight, watchful circuit of coffee mornings in one another’s’ houses and were probably checking door tops for dust and under toilet rims.

No wonder so many Mners are lonely if having a casual visitor requires panic cleaning.

Definitely a working class thing.

DAYS to do cleaning? Seriously? How dirty/messy Is your house usually that this takes days?

Unless your house is objectively unhygenic to the extent that someone might genuinely struggle to relax when they are visiting you (and I think the bar is not that high, perhaps clean toilet and towels for visitors and a kitchen where you do not worry you might catch something/get food poisoning etc), I think it is the absolute height of bad manners and low class to actually go round to someone's house and judge them based on how clean you reckon their house is.
They are showing you kindness, friendship and hospitality by inviting you and you should accept that with good grace.

And I say that as someone with my own foibles which I am keenly aware of but deliberately try to discount - for example obvious pet hair everywhere which you cannot avoid taking home with you etc. They have invited you into their private space. Just be gracious.

If someone is coming I clean the floors and toilets. Change hand towel, just because. Close doors to bedrooms if they're a mess!

My standard for visitors is higher than the standard we find acceptable for ourselves so I definitely go on a mad cleaning spree when I know we’re having guests. Not that our house is dirty as I do clean, but with kids and a busy schedule it’s not always as tidy as I’d like it to be.

We even had cleaners who came weekly when I lived in halls at uni (Cambridge) @Maireas so I have never had to do it 😳

I have never really thought about it like this before.

Wait, other people have messy houses?

I’m only riff raff but I have a cleaner so my house is a quick 10 minute tidy and loo scrub away from welcoming guests!

if my inlaws are coming to stay I’d spend the day before cleaning and be scrubbing around the taps with a toothbrush! Our house is small though so looks bad quickly. If I lived in a big country pile I’d have a few rooms for my clutter and a bathroom just for guests.

So you never left Halls, went into shared accommodation?...

Not at Cambridge, no, I stayed in halls, then moved back home, then moved in with DH and had cleaners.

Have you never hoovered then? Do your cleaners do a deep clean - Like all the bits of the shower door or clean your fridge?

Scruffy, lazy bastards who can’t be arsed cleaning

Right. So just home - sheltered at uni- husband.
You missed out on shared uni accommodation, it was a riot. Almost literally.