My own mother told me a story about when I was a little girl and Grandma called to say that she'd be there in about five minutes. Grandma is the Queen of Clean; the carpets in her sitting room have fresh "vacuum lines" daily!

At our house, there was clutter everywhere, not to mention the leaning tower of Babel dishes growing in the sink. Mom says that it came down to the wire and in the end she got desperate, threw all of the dirty dishes into a yard-waste trash bag and hid it under her bed!