Learn to keep secrets. There is no need to blab to the guests that you Swiffer instead of wet mop. After all, on the first season of "Desperate Housewives," every woman had a secret. There was Bree's rocky situation with her husband, Susan's accidental pyromania, Gabi's fling with the teenage lawn boy and Lynette's addiction to her son's anti-hyperactivity meds. Really, in comparison, the fact that you do not iron or make the beds is hardly earth-shattering.
Judge a book by its cover. The desperate housewives teach us that a perfect lawn is far more important than whether or not you are hiding bodies in your basement. Take a page from the book of Bree Van de Kamp who, as the dead Mary Alice tells us, is a master in " ... the art of sabotage. It's practiced every day in the suburbs. Sometimes it takes the form of a bundt cake offered to a friend who's on a diet. Other times, it's a cable cut just as a husband's friends arrive to watch the big game. And there's always that anonymous phone call to the city zoning department. Yes, in suburbia, everyone you meet is a potential saboteur ... But few do it as well as Bree ... or as politely."
Shove it all in the closet. It's impossible to maintain that flawless sparkle 24/7. So, do as the desperate housewives do and cover up. This technique works literally and figuratively, as Mary Alice tells us: "When the truth is ugly, people try to keep it hidden, because they know if revealed, the damage it will do. So they conceal it within sturdy walls or they place it behind closed doors or they obscure it with clever disguises but truth, no matter how ugly, always emerges."
Air your dirty laundry. Consider the confession marathon between Bree and her son, Andrew:Andrew: Well, could you live with a woman who hits you?Eleanor: Bree!Bree: I slapped him once and he deserved it.Andrew: "I just asked her to stop drinking."Henry: You were drinking?Eleanor: She’s in A.A. Her sponsor has long hair.Bree: Andrew, I find your concern ironic given how tanked you were when you ran over our neighbor’s mother with your car!Eleanor: Is she okay?Bree: She’s dead!Andrew: Well, mom watched as her boyfriend committed suicide. And he was the same guy who killed dad!Bree: Andrew falsely accused me of molestation. In a mall!
Surrender to the inevitable. When your house reaches a crisis state, it's time to either pick up the cleaning rag or pick up the telephone to hire someone. Even desperate housewife Gabrielle Solis succumbs when her husband, Carlos, asks, "You wanna wash my shorts?" She tells him, "I don't want to, but if you wear them one more time, they're gonna ask me themselves."