this weekend, we got one of those phone calls that we used to dread getting. the caller began, ”hey, we’re in the neighborhood. mind if we stop by to see you guys?”
just to be clear, we love our friends and love having people over. we didn’t dread receiving that phone call because we didn’t want to catch up with friends. we hated the phone call because it usually meant 10 minutes of frantically running around the house throwing dishes into the oven, shoes/coats into the closet, and toys into corners… anything to hide the mess before they pull into the driveway. you know the drill.
but these days, those phone calls feel very different. we don’t dread them at all, we only look forward to them. oh, on this particular day, we had just finished lunch so there were some dishes to put away, there were some toys that needed to be returned to their homes (it was the weekend after all), and now that we’ve written a book about decluttering, we felt a little extra pressure… but we were ready for our drop-by guests.
one benefit of minimalism is that it’s easier to keep your home clean. and when your home is clean, you are ready to experience another benefit of minimalism: drop-by guests are no sweat (literally).
related posts:
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
So true… Today I was the one who was making one of those calls, except in reverse; I was changing a meeting place and asking people to come to our apartment instead. I wouldn’t have been able to if we had more clutter to clean up!
great spin on this benefit, you want to be able to prepare yourself for as little preparation as possible. it’s working smarter and not harder, that’s a great thing.
That made me laugh! This happens to us all the time. That ten minute stress of trying to hide the clutter and clean up before the friends arrive.
You’d think by now that we would simply keep the house tidy all the time as a matter of course…
This is so true. I used to cringe whenever I came home and always preferred going out to scrambling around the house to hide my mess so people could come over. Since cutting down the amount of stuff I own I still get caught off guard when I come home and everything looks fine. It’s clean. Not at all embarrassing. What a relief.
Excellent point. This is one of the motivations behind minimalism, for me at least! Life is so much more rewarding when we’re able to put people first and we don’t have to say “now’s not a good time, the house is a mess!” or stress out running around to clean up.
very true. i’m on holiday at the moment with very little stuff and although my room still gets messy, it only takes a minute or two to tidy and i easily find the motivation to do this, whereas at home it so quickly get so depressing to look at i leave it until it takes a morning to really sort out.
{ 1 trackback }