Turbo clean

Even all you meticulously clean folks know about this one. The operation-cleanup that takes place when you have very little time and are expecting guests to arrive. In it's rudimentary form, it involves making just the front room of your house presentable to one n all so that you can stash all the junk away into one of the inner rooms. And if you have some time, it means that you needn't dump everything into the inner rooms, but rather in a haphazard manner into the shelves/drawers/ cupboards that they belong to. And if you have even more time than that, it's not even a turbo clean. It's proper cleaning.

My turbo clean has a few basic steps.
Step 1. Leave all horizontal surfaces in the house clean and devoid of excess material. That involves clearing the dining table, the center table and the dresser from excess stuff and stashing them away in the kitchen/dresser drawers or wardrobes, whichever maybe appropriate. I don't mess the inner room to clean the outer one. So that's one good thing.
Step 2. Rudimentary dusting - of all surfaces in which the dust is very obvious.
Step 3. A quick swipe of wet clean on these surfaces and an even quicker sweeping of the floor.
Step 4. The appearance smoothing - of table cloths, sofa-covers, seat cushions, chair backs, center-table top piece and general knick-knacks. The key is that a wee bit messy is way more acceptable than a little dirty.
Step 5. Survey. Once the overall semblance of cleanliness has been achieved, you're good to go. Put away anything that seems obscurely out of place.

Once I re-read this post, I know I sound like someone who seldom thoroughly cleans the house. But believe me, I do. Even then, over the week when we lazily pile our bags/coats-scarves/bottles of water/newspapers-magazines/ snacks and all over the week all over the place, it tends to get messier than ever. Add to that, the construction work opposite our house keeps a steady stream of dust coming in no matter how tight the windows are shut. So, while thorough-clean with floor mopping demands the weekend, the turbo clean is at worse a 20 minute process. And totally worthwhile.