How I Keep the House Semi-Company Ready - Living Room

Keeping a clean house is difficult whether you work outside the home or not, each option offers its own unique challenges.  I try my best to keep my house at least clean enough that I'm not horribly embarrassed if someone stops in.  Not that it would pass the white glove test, but it's reasonably clean.  Of course, this is what I strive for and is not always reality even though I would say I'm successful about 80% of the time.

Even though the living room gets the most use, I actually find it the easiest to keep clean.  My plan of attack is to try and pick up before I go to bed every night.  A pick-up takes me about 10 minutes and consists of the following:

• Dog toys picked up and put in their 'toy box'
• Books/magazines that are left out are put in the appropriate reader's room.  This includes some instructions to the kids to come get their stuff if they are home.
• Take any glasses that may have been left on the end tables into the kitchen and in the dishwasher.  This might also include a little bit of yelling if it's not my glass.  I'm not a huge fan of eating in the living room and I don't like the kids bringing food or drink in there.
• Fluff the pillows
• Vacuum
• If I find the TV looking fairly dusty I'll put a big X on the screen so that whoever is watching TV the next day dusts it for me.  They just LOVE when I do that to them but it works so I keep it up.

Here is a picture of how I like the living room to look when I go to bed.  No critiquing the photo quality or the decor, as I've told you in previous posts it seriously needs an update but I'm living with it as it is for now :)  I also noticed that the puppies sneaked in the picture when I was taking it.  Sophie is the white one and Anna is the black one you can barely see in the lower right corner.

Several times a month I try to do a deep dive cleaning which consists of the following:

• Lemon oil the furniture
• Moving the furniture and vacuuming behind everything
• Thoroughly dust all non-wood surfaces including pictures, knickknacks, window dressings, etc

That's how I attempt to keep my living room company ready.  What about you?  Do you have any suggestions you would like to share?

I'll be linking this up over at I'm an Organizing Junkie