If you're following along in this series, we have just gone over how to make the best impression on a girl with your outward appearance. This time we're moving on to your home and how to make a favorable impression should you choose to invite a special someone over to your threshold. There are so many factors that are out of your control when looking for the right girl, but you can, and should, focus on those factors that are in your control. Your home is one of them!

Having a clean home may seem inconsequential to some of you bachelors. I know, I get it. You've got more important things to take care of, like your job, mastering video games, playing sports, watching TV - cleaning is totally the last thing on your list of things you want to do. I can imagine, though, that one of those items higher up on your list of things you want includes spending time with a girl. It stands to reason that your home is the most private place you have available to you where you could entertain a member of the opposite sex, so doesn't it also stand to reason that you need to make this space a place in which she is comfortable spending a significant amount of time? Right, so let's get to work, shall we?

Pretend for a moment that you are a stranger coming to your front door. Open it. What do you see? Are there dirty dishes, empty pizza boxes and abandoned shoes or clothes all over the place? Is the floor or carpet dirty? Are there marks on the walls, dust on the furniture, and stacks of unopened mail on the counter? This is not good. Look at everything with new eyes. Even if you're a fairly neat and tidy person, there could be room for improvement when you intend to have a guest over. That stack of magazines in the corner could probably be thrown away or put away somewhere. Those running shoes that seem to live in the foyer could probably be put in the closet. There are usually a few areas in every person's home where clutter accumulates. If you're at this level of cleanliness, then you probably don't need to read the rest of this article, but if your bachelor pad looks more like what I first described, it might be a good idea to read on!

For those of you who open the door and see dust, old food, and trash in your home, read on! Take note of the dirt and clutter that a visitor would see. Yuck! Ask yourself, would a girl feel comfortable sitting on my couch if it has crumbs from an unknown origin on it? Would she want to eat food or have a drink when I can't find a clean glass in the house? Would she be unable to wash her hands in the bathroom sink because I don't have soap or a clean guest towel available in there for her? If that's the case, let's not even discuss what the toilet might look like and whether or not she could use it without cringing! This home needs some serious help if you think you'll get a girl to spend any amount of time with you there.

Let's start with the floor and work our way up. Get everything off the floor: clothes, shoes, trash, dirty dishes, mail or magazines, etc. Either find a place for these things or throw them away. Do you have a vacuum? If not, get yourself over to a Wal-Mart or a Target and buy yourself one. Even a cheap vacuum is better than nothing. I think mine cost only $80 and it works just fine. It even has all the attachments one needs in order to suck up the crumbs at the edges of the floor and animal hair off the couch!

Once everything is off the floor, plug in that shiny new vacuum and get to work. It would be great if you were to move all the furniture and get out the hose attachments and do all the edges of the floors and all the nooks and crannies here and there, but it would be an improvement if you even just ran the vacuum in the open areas. At least when a girl walks in she wouldn't immediately see crumbs and dirt on the floor. If you have a vacuum with hose attachments, get out the one that looks like a brush and use that on the couch and other upholstered furniture. Don't forget to lift up the cushions and get all the crumbs that fell down there, too!

Now, do you have linoleum or tile floors anywhere? Get yourself a bucket and a mop, fill the bucket halfway up with water and pour in a floor cleaner like Lysol and mop those floors. See how dirty the water is when you're done? Aren't you glad you mopped now? If this is the first time you have ever mopped the floors, you might want to dump out that dirty water, fill up the bucket again with water and floor cleaner and do one more round of mopping. The water will most likely be pretty dirty the second time around, too. Yuck, right?! You could also get yourself a Swiffer mop but I don't think they clean as well. I consider those more useful for touch up mopping in between real mopping jobs. Whatever you do, if you have real wood floors, do not use water on them! This can cause really bad damage and make your floors crack and buckle. For wood floors, vacuuming or sweeping first is fine and then the Swiffer brand makes mops for hardwood floors that have wood polish in them instead of water. Use that instead!

Let's move up from the floor now and take a look at the furniture. Is it covered in dust? Not only is dusty furniture unsightly, it's also really bad for your health to breathe that in all the time. This is why I suggest not getting something like a feather duster to do the dusting because that just moves dust up into the air where you're just going to keep breathing it in. No, use some dust cleaner like Pledge and spray that on a cloth. They even make disposable wipes that already have dusting spray in them. Wipe all the wood or laminate surfaces in your home with something like this to get all the dust up without releasing it back into the air. For glass surfaces, use Windex and a cloth or paper towel. Newspaper with Windex on it is also great for cleaning glass. You'd think the print would rub off on the glass, but it doesn't, and it's lint free!