I have friends coming over for dinner tomorrow night, so that means between today and tomorrow, I have massive amounts of cleaning to do.

Not only do I have to scrub the kitchen floors and clean the kitchen counters, but I have to tidy up the downstairs bathroom (floors, counter and toilet), but I also have to vacuum the entire main floor of our home. (Sadly, we have wall-to wall carpeting.)

On top of that, I have lots of decluttering to do. My kids love to read, play and draw in the living, kitchen and family rooms, so there are books, pencils, crayons and toys scattered everywhere. (We've been lax on where they keep their toys, but I have been working on creating a basement playroom, so I can send the toys to the basement!)

Also, my husband likes to deposit newspapers, mail, etc., between the rungs of our stairs (I guess it's his makeshift filing cabinet) and on the pool table that we have in our family room. So there's lots to do.

And of course, I am not to blame. My sewing machine is still sitting on our kitchen table since my last project, and I tend to let papers accumulate around my laptop computer, which I keep in our main living space most of the time.

So, it's with appreciation that I read Jennifer Colgan's "Making Time -- Creating a Cleaning Schedule" post on Entrepremoms.net. In her schedule, she broke up her cleaning by small tasks and by each room, so that she only has a little to do each day. I plan to modify her schedule so that it will work for my home, so the next time I have company coming over, there will be less preparation to do!

For more posts by Lauren Kim, check out MomHomeGuide.com.