A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about my new favorite TV show, Clean House, and included this sentence: “God, it’d be fabulous if a TV crew came over and cleaned up my big fat mess.”

At the time, I didn’t realize I was addressing Him directly, but apparently that’s the way He read it.

No, God is not sending over a crew of cute TV hunks to whip my house into shape. He’s sending someone better: the most organized person I know.

A friend of mine recently decided to start her own business helping people get organized: rooms, files, garages, you name it. In the e-mail announcing her new business, she said she would help the first three people who responded for FREE. I happened to see this e-mail and respond back within the first nano-second. So she’s coming over next month to assess my mess and help me deal with it once and for all.

And here’s the thing. She really needs someone to help her with her new website for her business. At some point as she was thinking about at all that webby/marketingy stuff she needed to do, my friend probably threw up her hands and said, “God, I could use a writer.”

So God, being the organized person He is, sensed the possibility of a prayer two-for-one and hooked us up.

Dear God, thanks for reading my blog!

Clean House, where have you been all my life? I’m talking about the TV show, not the place I live. I just happened to catch the show for the first time today as I was folding massive piles of clothes. I thought watching a show called Clean House might inspire me because I hate hate hate housework.

OMG, I love this show. It’s got everything I want in TV, which is basically the opportunity to revel in the problems of others to make myself feel better. In case you haven’t seen it, a family writes in to the show and asks this group of “house cleaners,” which are actually professional comedians in real life, to come over and clean up their horribly messy house. The family gets to spend the night at a plush hotel while the TV crew cleans up the mess.

I had about one-and-a-half episodes worth of clothes to fold, but even having only watched that much, I can tell the show really needs a different name. It should be called, “What the Hell’s Wrong with the Mama?”

These families let things go waaaaaay too far. It looked as if loads of laundry had exploded all over their houses year ago, and now stuff was growing out of it. And who’s fault was that?

I should be ashamed of myself for pointing a finger at the women in the families. There were other people who lived in their houses and were perfectly capable of cleaning them. But no, I blame the moms. For the same reason I blame myself when my house looks like crap. Because working or not, healthy or not, energetic or not, we’re ultimately responsible for what goes on within our walls.

God, it’d be fabulous if a TV crew came over and cleaned up my big fat mess. But then, I’d have to endure the psychoanalysis of all the other Clean House viewers, shaking their heads while they’re sitting on their couches, folding yet another load of laundry and feeling smug because at least their clothes were in a NEAT pile.

I love America’s Funniest Home Videos, but not for the same reasons my kids do. They like to watch big people fall down go boom. I like to see the inside of real people’s houses all across the country. I’m watching the edges of the screen, noticing the huge pile of magazines in the corner, the dirty glasses on the coffee table, the rips in the carpet. We are a nation of slobs, and that makes me feel a whole lot better about myself.

In an earlier blog post about casting the evil eye, I mentioned the line of strong Sicilian women from whom I descend. Above all else, these women judged each other by the cleanliness of their houses. And I’m afraid they would judge me quite poorly. Maybe on the level of trailer trash. I don’t know how to say that in Italian.

My great grandmother, whom everyone called Nonnie, would sweep the dirt in front of her house. She raised my mother, who never did any dirt sweeping as far as I know, but always goes into a cleaning frenzy before having anyone over for a visit. Now so do I, except I have dug myself into a much deeper hole, so my cleaning fits are even more frenetic. Also, lots of stuff gets stuffed into places where it doesn’t belong, so I get accused for everything that goes missing.

Why do I worry so much about how my house looks? It’s like my dirty little secret. I have the outward appearance of a professional career woman, but deep down I’m just a really crappy housewife.

I want to write more about this, but the family will be over in a few hours. I need to go sweep the dirt.