This morning at 8:15, my across-the-street-neighbor knocked on my door. Her garage door was stuck, and she had only grabbed one house key on her way to drop her kids off at school, and the doorknob on her front door had gotten locked. Her two year old daughter was in the van in her fleece jammies, and it’s about 35 degrees today and raining.

Her English is not great and my Spanish is worse, but she conveyed to me that she needed to please use my phone to call her husband, who was working nearby. I handed her my cell phone and asked her to come in, but she didn’t want to take her eyes off the van, which I completely understand.

After ending the phone call and telling me that her husband would be home in about five minutes, I insisted that she go get her daughter and come inside to wait. And then, while she was dashing back across the street to move her van into my driveway, I took a look around my house. And realized in an instant why it’s important to KEEP UP ON THE HOUSEWORK.

My living room/dining room carpet is dark red, but this morning it was covered in bits of…I don’t even know what. Grass the boys tracked in on their shoes, little feathers from the pillows they pile up to make forts for Kaitlyn, bits of food, who the heck knows. There are boxes of product review and Goodwill stuff piled up against the sideboard. My desk has a towering pile of papers I need to go through, the coffee table is covered in more piles.

Now, I know that it probably looks worse to me than it did to her, at least I sure HOPE SO. I have this bad habit of thinking of housework as something I need to do only after the house starts to look bad. But aren’t there people who just keep their house picked up ALL THE TIME? Whether they expect neighbors to drop by unexpectedly or not? Who do it because it’s pleasant to look around the house and NOT see towering piles of crap everywhere?

I so need to become one of those people.