No, I don't live with my parents. I live about 9 miles from them. But I'm a single guy with a house to himself (and three cats; and several computers, if they count as family) and no close female friend (well, not human - one of my cats is a girl), and I can use all the advise on cleaning and organizing I can get.
I've spent the majority of the past week, and parts of the past month, getting ready. That long? Yes - remember, I'm a single guy with three cats. I rarely use the living room, so the cats had taken it over. Scratching posts (one small professional rope-wound one, one homemade larger rope-wound one, and two 2x10 boards 5' long, one on the floor and one clamped vertically to a table), balls (small ones with bells inside, plastic baseballs, tennis balls, 6" rope-wound balls), felt mice, rope spools (and the packing material they came with, since they weren't intended initially as cat toys but as post winding material), and sofa stuffing (from underneath, fortunately). I spent three hours or so Tuesday night/Wednesday morning just vacuuming the sofa. Cat hair, and lots of it... I had to dump the vacuum cleaner bin twice, and it was over-full each time. Oh, and the litter box was in the dining room. Not as bad as it sounds - it's an automated Litter Robot that doesn't smell bad, but it's still an eyesore in a public area, but I've moved it to the basement now (an unfinished half-house basement that I hope to make a den over the next few weeks), and I plan to make an full enclosure (with a door, of course, and opening sides/top for maintenance). For the party, I moved the cat food and water downstairs too, and when moving them back, I moved them to the dining room rather than the kitchen, along with the majority of the toys. The only cat things I put back in the living room are the upright board and the small rope post at the board's base; they're easy to relocate quickly if needed, and don't create clutter.
I had way more food than I needed. I invited 17 people and one RSVP'd. I talked with two yesterday, and they said they would come, and a third who probably would. But out of seventeen, I had five - including my parents, who had already munched on the food (especially the stuff with cream cheese) before the party. So I have lots of leftovers. Fortunately, most of it's fruit-filled pastries (turnovers, bites, pies), and I like eating those for supper - light and sweet, and relatively nutritious due to the fruit. I had steakhouse bread, the dark, small loaves places like Outback use, and they will work well for sandwiches, treating them like mid-size sub rolls.
Oh, and several of them very much want to get Windows 7. My parents will probably get a Family Pack since they have two computers, one with Vista and one with XP. My mother wants the new window management features, like Snap, Shake and Reveal.
