One benefit of a two-story home--only the downstairs need look its best! Plus, with 17 odd kids running around, who will notice dust?

I think this cleaning before people come is overrated, not to speak of foolish.

After you have 17 kids in the house is the time to clean. :)

I've finally stopped obsessing about having a perfectly organized linen closet when people come over - they shouldn't be looking in there anyway!

Any surface between knees and the top of my head in the "public" rooms is decluttered and dusted. If you can *see* the top of the frig, you're welcome to dust it! Any unsightly stacks of things that can't be dealt with in less than ten minutes are moved to an out-of-sight spot - in my case, the office/sewing room, which people are told they may enter only on pain of death. Coasters are put everywhere. By necessity coats need to be put on my bed: the bedroom is straightened, but I only put on the (dim - ish) bedside lamp for light, making the dust difficult to see. The kitchen and bathroom get a more thorough going over - counters cleared as much as possible, personal items put away. The bath gets a second, quick brush up ten minutes before people are due to arrive.

If the people from school generally run a little late, feel free to go to the other party. My only fear would be an early arrival being left out in the cold.

You are a very brave soul! Maybe it's because I haven't guests over in so long due to things being torn up here, but just the thought of people coming over is enough to put me into a fetal position. Hubs does have his Friday night gang over, but it's just a bunch of guys. One of our friends asked me last week if he could bring his wife and baby and I told him, sure, but I worried that the place wasn't clean enough for a little one. Lol, he told me, "That's ok, we don't protect her from dirt."

Anyway, just do the best you can and enjoy the evening. Maybe you and your hubby can have a one hour cleaning frenzy tonight and clean the bathroom and deal with any possible clutter. Then hopefully tomorrow, you'll just have some basic cleaning and sweeping to do.

Practically speaking, the more people you have in the house, the better chance you have that they will think that someone other than you and yours made whatever mess they stumble over. It even happens that sometimes they think they might have made the mess.

Heh.

Like they say, age and experience beats youth and a bad haircut (though I think you already have plenty of experience and your hair is fine *grin*)

The answers to my question are most helpful and humorous. Of course, what some of you fail to realize is that I invite guests over so that I will force myself to really clean the house. While I love a clean house, I'm not a good housekeeper, in general, and house guests are the thing most likely to motivate me.

Probably it's incipient middle age, but I wonder if motivation might be over-rated ;-)

So... how'd it go?