We recently did a kitchen and dining room remodel. We knocked a small wall down, readjusted the floor plan a bit and now we have a nice open floor plan. One of the finishing touches on this remodel was getting a big dinning room table that seats eight people. Now our house has a great setup to entertain and hold all the major family events like birthday parties, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.

One of the benefits from entertaining so many times, is we always do a thorough job cleaning the house the night before. We pride ourselves on keeping a clean house year round, but cleaning before a gathering forces us to take those extra little cleaning steps. Extra dusting, moving shoes and coats out of the entryway, organizing the coupon bin and important mail bin on the counter, extra thorough bathroom cleaning and just a better job of tidying things up.

My wife is a clean freak and first level germaphobe by nature so when she sets her mind to thorough cleaning she can sometimes get a little too thorough. I’m all about the thorough cleaning but I need to steer her away from cleaning the hidden corners of the guest bedrooms. It’s good to clean the shower floor but when cleaning for a gathering, just make sure the shower curtain is closed. Vacuum the hallway that leads to the washer and drier? Not needed at the moment. No guests will go there. Do that another day.

House cleaning is kind of like agile testing. The hardest part about being an agile tester is knowing what to test and when not to test. Testing the AC on a story seems like an easy concept. Evidently it’s not an easy concept per the conversations I have had about over testing stories. Take the time to find and educate your tester on what to test and what not to test. We don’t need to vacuum that abandoned hallway every day.