The Blitz

The two year old granddaughter has been visiting for the day and the house has exploded with toys.  Play dishes are stacked on the coffee table (sort of like the real dishes in the sink) and cows and tractors are scattered over the floor.  It is amazing how much clutter a little one can make. 

When my two were little we lived in a little house in town.  We didn't have much room but we made use of every inch.  The basement wasn't a fancy living area but a utilitarian space for the washer and dryer, deep freeze, jars of canning, tools, and storage of various boxes of forgotten belongings.  Lacking a room to use as a den we lived in the large living room upstairs.  That meant that it served as playroom, family room, and entertainment area for company.  Sometimes this worked and sometimes it didn't.

Even though the kids had a bedroom for their toys it seemed that they would soon be scattered in heaps and piles around the living room.  Coloring books and crayons would spill off the little table in the corner while sleeping bags or blankets would be thrown in front of the television.  Dolls and stuffed bears shared the chair by the window while the couch would hold swords and baseball gloves.  Tractors, balers, trucks and cars would peek out from under the furniture while toy pots and pans adorned the surfaces of end tables.   Adding to the kids things would be an afghan that I was working on or a stack of papers that Hubby was dealing with.  In short, it usually looked like a family was living there.  Most of the time it didn't bother me. 

However, when we had company, I felt, as the Extension Agent for Home Economics, my house should look like no one lived there.  This worked fine when I planned to entertain, since like most women, I would spent a week cleaning the house like it was going to be inspected by an irritated drill sergeant.  The moments that turned my heart into a beating drum were the ones that started with a phone call.  "Hello?  We were out for a drive and since we were in the neighborhood we thought we would see if you were home. "  Gasp! "Wonderful!  You'll be here in 10 minutes?  Great."  Even better was when you looked out the window to see a car turning in the drive and know you had only a minute or two to get ready. 

That's when I would turn to the family and yell "BLITZ!!"  With a leap everyone would jump up and grab the closest pile of stuff.  I would run to the basement and grab a couple of laundry baskets.  Running back upstairs I would toss them into the middle of the living room floor.  By then Hubby and the kids were ready with armloads of toys, papers, blankets and crayons.  In they would go into the basket while everyone rushed for another load.  Within minutes we had the room empty of all the offending clutter.  Hubby would then grab the baskets and run to the basement while I plumped pillows and wiped faces.  Then we would open the door, poised like Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver, (perfect parents from an old TV show, for you youngsters) welcoming our guests into the immaculate living room.

Of course, it took us days to find the bills Hubby was working on or the pieces to the puzzle the kids were putting together.