A stressless approach to summer's company

One of the best aspects of living in a destination like the Flathead Valley is that family and friends make the kind of extra effort to visit you that they wouldn't make if you lived somewhere like Topeka, Kan.

I've also heard people say that one of the worst aspects of living in a summer destination like the Flathead Valley is that family and friends make the kind of extra effort to visit you that they wouldn't make if you lived somewhere like Topeka, Kan.

As of about 5 o'clock tomorrow evening, there will be eight extra people inhabiting our home, a structure that was never intended as living quarters for 12.

We've come up with a plan for sleeping arrangements that includes the requisite displacement of kids from their beds, as well as the use of the floor, a 1969 Aloha trailer and the home of a friend.

But other than that, we're pretty much winging it.

There was a time when I would have spent weeks fixing up the house for the onslaught of company and wasted countless hours of mental energy fretting about the fact that I have failed to provide proper guest rooms, color-coordinated guest towels and useless little decorative soaps.

The impending arrival of company was often the only force that acted against home-project inertia, defined as the tendency of a homeowner to remain at rest until the realization hits that the in-laws will soon be eating meals in your kitchen.

Knowing there will be outsiders in your house usually forces you to look at your surroundings in a whole new way. You can waltz through the place every day and not notice that the paint is looking drab, or the shower curtain is a bit filmy or that the arrangement of clutter on the coffee table would not be approved for a home interiors magazine photo shoot, where a precisely angled stack of books, preferably on home interior or gardening themes, a bowl of fruit or a flower arrangement are the only things that rest on the coffee table.

(Problems with this approach: Do you want people to look through a glossy decorating book and compare those professionally outfitted rooms to the very room they're sitting in? And why make it inevitable that someone will drip juice from artfully placed pear onto the couch, unless the fruit is entirely decorative, in which case the whole arrangement is shamefully wasteful.)

Thankfully, the imminent arrival of company has become less of an occasion for stress over the years.

Either it's a function of being so busy that there's no time to fear that a few cobwebs will make people feel that they're staying in a haunted house, or you grow up and realize that most visitors care more about seeing you than critiquing your cleaning

So for this round of company, a few walls in dire need of a little painting received some attention a few days prior to their arrival. And one evening was devoted to cleaning. That was the extent of it.

Experience also teaches you that, with eight visitors, including three children under age 6, no matter how much extra work you've undergone in the pursuit of a spotless home, all your efforts will be laid to waste within the first five minutes of their arrival.

Reporter Heidi Gaiser can be reached at 758-4431 or by e-mail at hgaiser@dailyinterlake.com