A reader e-mailed me and asked if I would share more about my personal story with our home study. I am working through a series about each of the interviews we had as part of the home study process.

Our final interview was scheduled at our house. I was a nervous wreck about this.

Today, I am a pretty good housekeeper, although keeping house is never going to be something that I enjoy. However, at the time we were going through the home study process, I did not have the first clue about how to keep a nice house. (I learned later by reading a book about how to clean a house.) My mother grew up with a maid, and my father's mother always picked up after him, so my childhood house was always embarrassingly filthy. When I married, I definitely kept a tidier house than my mother did (believe me, it was a low bar!), but it would not pass any sort of white glove test. So, I fear that my inability to keep a nice house would prevent me from adopting.

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• California
• Looking to adopt?
• Pregnant?

I made arrangement to board our dogs at the vet for the meeting. We had two indoor dogs – a beagle and a Dalmatian – that I feared would jump on the social worker. I did not want her to decline us as hopeful adoptive parents just because our dogs were hyper. I also wanted to minimize the fur that the got on the social worker's clothing.

I talked to an adoptive father at work, who assured me that I was overreacting to this visit. He said that his house did pass the white glove test, which was a concern to the social worker because she had trouble seeing a baby in that environment. When the social worker came back for a post-placement visit and saw toys scattered around, she said that the house looked much more like a home now.

You would think that would have calmed me down, but it did not. I could barely sleep because I was so anxious about the home visit.

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Home Study category

Photo credit: Lynda Bernhardt