Why do we do this? A friend of mine with a very new baby has told me her house is a mess and she wouldn’t dare let anyone over. I told her that it probably in reality was like every other busy family’s home. It always works like this; a friend calls up and says she’d like to drop in for a visit. You say sure, come on over. After you hang up the phone, you run around the house like a maniac trying to get the house cleaned up before they arrive. After her arrival, you tell her “don’t worry about the mess, I haven’t had time to clean” but SHE knows and YOU know that you just cleaned it to get it to the state it is now. The reason she knows is because she does the same thing at her house. I have friends that say that having someone drop in is the only reason their house gets cleaned on a regular basis, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. We all do it, so why don’t we just admit our houses are messy at times when they are over run with kids, work and life. Yet somehow we all play the same game, we all know the same rules of what to say.