How do we tell if it's clean?

In the course of my government slavery, I went into a house the other day that was home to a few kids and a set of parents and a small pack of assorted dogs. The house was dirty: piles of things on the floor, dishes unwashed, trash overflowing, and most unappealing - a pile of dog poo on the stairs. The stairs inside the house. The stairs that people would traverse from the first floor to the second floor - eww! So I am telling my friend, Mary Poppins (who really is practically perfect in every way) about this and saying, "How would you not know your dog had pooped in the house?" And there was this pause and she was like, "Well..." and then came the story about the time her dog had pooped in the house and how she was totally unaware but only figured it out later when he was cavorting with a piece of rock hard dried poo. So then she had to search every nook and cranny until she found the poop stash. And just in case you are wondering, Mary Poppins' house is immaculate - except for that one pile of dog poo.

So then of course I started thinking about my own pet poop story. Our cat lives in Bookworm's room. Sometimes the cat roams about the house just to nap in a new spot the way cats like to do and then gets shut out when Bookworm shuts the door and takes off for school or wherever. Shut out from her usual napping spots and from her litter box. Well the way our house is laid out all my places - my bedroom, my den, the kitchen, the laundry room are all at one end of the house. Bookworm is on the other end past the formal living room that gets absolutely no use. So one day there is a knock on the front door - no one uses our front door! I go to "the other side" to let in a dad that is dropping off Youngest. As we're standing there hanging out in the formal unused living room, I'm thinking, "Something (or someone) doesn't smell right." But we make our small talk, thanks for the car pool, see you soon, goodbye. I turn around and there right smack dab in the middle of the center cushion of my lovely leather couch is a pile of cat poop. That's what didn't smell right. And in case you are wondering, although my house isn't immaculate, I do have a housekeeper that comes once a week so it's pretty clean - except for that one pile pf cat poo.

So all of this just begs the question - if the presence or absence of a pile of pet poop in a home can no longer be a benchmark for cleanliness, what are we left with? How do we tell if it's clean?

I contemplated Googling "pictures of poo" to add a graphic but thought better of it...aren't you glad?