There comes a time in every person’s life when they have to emergency clean. Emergency cleaning is the kind of cleaning you do when someone is coming over in less than an hour. You can’t do much, but you need to do something if you want ever them to want to touch your dick again in the future. You’ve spent way too much energy thinking of a creative follow-up text to “hahaha” for sexy times to fall apart simply because your apartment belongs in the first 30 minutes of a Queer Eye episode. If someone is coming all the way over to your apartment, a 20 minute manic clean is the least you can do. While women will forgive a lot in the way of décor (minus Scarface posters), they will not forgive a Mountain Dew bottle full of piss. An emergency clean is nothing if not a study in prioritization—there may be clutter on your coffee table, but hairs in the bathroom sink are far grosser—so start with your more dire areas and work your way down.

DEFCON 1: The toilet

Begin with your toilet: Flush it. We’d all like to believe that people who forget to flush their toilets aren’t getting laid, and therefore have no use for this step on the Emergency Clean Checklist, but it does happen. And when you live alone, you might forget to flush every once in a while. Who knows! Just go check right now.

DEFCON 2: The dishes

If you have a dishwasher, throw all your dirty dishes in there, even if later you’ll have to take them back out to more thoroughly pre-wash them. Just putting them in the sink is fine, too. Fill the sink with water. Put in soap. Let it soak while you do other chores. If you have time to actually wash the dishes, great. If not, at least nothing smells like the five-day-old baked ziti that your mom dropped off at your house because you still suck at cooking.

DEFCON 3: The rest of the bathroom

Go back to the bathroom. For most men, the bathroom is the apogee of nastiness in the home, so concentrate your efforts here. Put toilet paper on the tube and put out an extra roll because, remember: you’re about to have a lady guest over. Empty the bathroom trash can. If you don’t have a bathroom trash can, call up your pending sex appointment and let her know that you can’t hang out tonight. You are absolutely not ready to have a woman over to your house unless you have a wastebasket next to your toilet (preferably with a lid, but if you’re under 25 years old, we’ll allow it). Next, put out a hand towel (we will allow a clean bath towel, but either towel must be clean) and make sure you have soap. Women actually wash their hands after they use the bathroom, and we don’t want to dry them on the ratty towel that you use to dry off your balls. As long as you don’t see hair clippings or piss everywhere in your bathroom, close the shower curtain and you’re good to go in this room. On to the next!

DEFCON 4: The bedroom

Ahhh the bedroom. Where the magic might happen one day! You must clean your bedroom when a romantic interest is coming over, especially if you have roommates. (You two might end up sequestered there, pretending for to watch season two of Dexter on your laptop for 12 whole minutes before giving up the pretense and dry-humping.) Clean your room! First, remove all trash from the bedroom. If I fall into your bed for sexy times and the wrapper from a Hot Pocket pokes out from under your pillow, I’m leaving and so is any other reasonable woman. Also, take all of the 14 water cups you've accumulated over the past fiscal quarter and put them in the dishes heap that you made when we started. Dishes and trash are disgusting and no woman is having kind thoughts about your penis while she’s lying next to a week-old takeout box.

It’s 2018 and no one uses top sheets anymore, so making beds is a breeze. Just pull the covers up and put the pillows where pillows go. We’re not looking for military corners, here, just don’t let someone see your duvet balled up at the foot of your bed. For some reason, that makes your bed seem unclean, and the entire point of an emergency clean is to make your house seem better than it is. So pull the covers up, and then spray the whole shebang with Febreze if you have it. Then, simply put all your clothes in the laundry basket—the laundry basket I’m sure you have, because you’re an adult trying to fuck. If you don’t have one, at the very least make a singular pile in the corner.

DEFCON 5: Trash

Do a sweep of your home. There’s no need to vacuum or dust or anything, but if you see any trash, throw it away. Yes, that means all of your half empty bottles of coconut water. Throw them out. (Why are men’s houses so full of empty plastic bottles? Do you all have a science fair project you’re working on?)

Back to the kitchen! Take out the trash and put. A. New. Bag. Back. In. Open the fridge and see if it smells. If it does, then please, for the love of God, throw out that two-week-old bag of spring mix that you bought with the best of intentions. (You are never going to make salads at home; stop buying spring mix.) If there’s still a smell, and you really can’t figure out the source, light a candle or spray some more Febreze. It’s too late for anything else at this point—she’s almost here. Just do as many dishes as you can before she gets over. Trust me, it’s better than the five pre-coital pushups you were planning on doing.

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