Invitations are given by telephone or in person in order to guide the guests in what to bring. A little later, a few days before the party, the hostess might send a small card to each guest, with a drawing of dish mop or scrub brush in one corner, as a reminder date, time, and other essentials.
If grocery and home furnishing stores will lend, give, or sell posters – the bigger the better – of various cleaning products, put these up as background decoration in the dining room or living room or wherever the party will be centered. Run a streamer of bright-colored crepe paper or ribbon from each poster to a mop figure of a woman sprawled in tired sleep on a coffee table. A sign on the figure says: Here Lies Poor (name of guest of honor) Who Had No Cleaning Closet.
This figure is made with a twist-cotton mop, the type used for wet mopping. Use water colors or crayons and paint a tired sleeping face on paper and fit it under the mop “hair,” or use a tired-looking Halloween mask. Dress the mop in a new-style cotton house dress, stuff it with tissue paper to fill out the figure, and tie a large cleaning apron around the figure. For hands, stuff tissue paper into a large pair of men’s cotton work gloves, and fill badly worn, old house slippers with tissue paper for feet. Make the figure as realistic and comic as you can. Pile wrapped gifts on the floor around the coffee table. The gifts include the mop, house dress, apron, and gloves.