What would Peter say?

As we readied our home for guests recently, we turned once again to Peter, author and clutter guru, whose wise advice for keeping our home clutter-free we follow diligently. Part of the reason we like Peter so much is that he is such a great joker, as seen here:


"Your home should take 30 minutes to be presentable, tops," he says firmly. "Five is better."


Yep, he sure does know how to joke around!


His insistence on a 30-minute timeline would, of course, require us to keep our home in a nearly clutter-free condition pretty much all the time, even when, as far as WE know, no one else is going to see it for the next year or so.


So although we have great respect for Peter's sense of humor, we do take a few liberties with his suggestions. We translate minutes into days, for example, so that 30 minutes for tidying up becomes 30 days.


Somehow even 30 days weren't enough this time, and we found ourselves down to the wire. "Twenty-three minutes," the Hero said ominously on the day guests were coming over for dinner, and we raced into action.


He frantically looked around for places to stash last-minute items that we had forgotten about -- something not recommended by Peter -- and running out of suitable places, he asked permission to stow something in the oven. DEFINITELY not recommended by Peter, and the request was promptly denied. We really don't want to tell the fire department that our kitchen caught on fire because we forgot about the wrapping paper in the oven.


But the Hero remained optimistic about our chances of having the house, and dinner, ready in time for our guests. "The good thing is," he said, "they've never been here before, so they're likely to get lost. So we probably have some extra time."


They did NOT get lost, however, something that is beginning to be a disturbing trend as more and more people use GPS. Things were much easier when guests relied on Mapquest or Google Maps, because they had little chance of arriving at our home within even a month of when they were planning to. We had plenty of extra time to get ready. But unfortunately for us, GPS brings people right to our house in exactly the amount of time they expected, although it does not tell them where to park, something we MAY, on occasion, have forgotten to mention.


So when the Hero peered out the window and announced our guests' arrival, right on time, we were both unpresentable. While fleeing up the stairs to remedy this situation, we debated about who was less unpresentable and therefore more fit to answer the door. The Hero won, as he always does.


"Tell them I'll be right down," I said, as I always do.


We're pretty sure Peter would not approve of all this last-minute scurrying. But, hey, we know he has a good sense of humor about these things, right?