For most of my life, I’ve longed to live in an immaculate home. I watched aspirational house content with wistful envy, wondering if it’s really possible to keep your house perfectly tidy at all times.
I’ve known people who live in a state of near-perpetual neatness. I am not one of them. Though it’s taken me decades, I’ve now accepted the fact that my home is at least somewhat messy more often than not.
Accepting imperfection
In fact, I not only accept it, but I fully embrace it. And just to be clear, I’m not talking about disgusting uncleanliness or hoarder-level mess here. I’m talking about this:
The above photo is my current view of the state of our living room. We have boxes (which we’re saving for my daughter, who is moving) and a yoga mat that needs to be taken downstairs. The coffee table is strewn with some books and notebooks, sunglasses, reading glasses, and some random paper thingies that haven’t been dealt with yet. Our dining table is holding stuff for my husband’s home improvement project-in-progress, and the chair holds the sweatshirt he took off when it got too hot outside. Etc.
None of this is unremediable. But no one in my family is inclined to stay so on top of things that the house always looks perfect.
Much more often than not, I see stuff where it doesn’t belong when I look around my home. There are dishes in the sink and on the counter waiting for the dishwasher to get finished and unloaded. There’s a basket of laundry in some stage of needing to be washed, folded, or put away. There are notebooks and papers and earbud cases strewn about. There are errant Nerf darts and random cords on the floor, which probably needs to be swept. And if someone stops by unannounced, they’re going to see all of our messy glory.
Letting go of embarrassment
I used to be embarrassed by it. I always alpologize and say, “Excuse the mess.” But then I started paying closer attention to how people actually respond to it. Some say, “Oh don’t worry about it,” or “It’s fine.” But most people actually visibly relax and say something like, “I like it. It makes me feel at home.” Our kids’ friends have said, “It feels like my house,” many times, which always makes me smile. Kids are truthtellers.
The reality is that yes, some people are naturally super tidy and live in show-ready houses (and more power to them). But a lot of us don’t. And many people find a certain comfort in the realness of a usually-somewhat-messy home.
The best way I can describe it is that my family lives in our house, and we live in it fully. Not that people with always-immaculate homes don’t live in them, but there are different ways of living, and our living is a little messy and always in flux. We do a lot of things in our home. We also spontaneously switch gears often. We build and create. We get distracted.
Of course, we clean and tidy, too. If you came to my house for a planned event, the house would look great. Pretty close to immaculate, even. You would never guess the level of disarray it can devolve into, but devolve it does.
Embracing ‘scruffy hospitality’
Years ago, an article singing the praises of “scruffy hospitality” went viral, and I’ve rarely resonated with a phrase so much. Scruffy hospitality is all about connection over perfection. We have friends over, even when we have to move piles of stuff off the dining table to eat. We don’t fret too much about the state of the house if someone stops by. We want people to feel comfortable, which means maintaining a certain level of cleanliness and organization, but nothing near perfection.
The message is, “You are welcome not just in our home, but in our life, in all its messy imperfection.” And in my experience, most people embrace and appreciate that message. The best compliment someone can give me about my house is, “I feel at home here.” And if seeing the mess of our daily life does that for people, I’m perfectly happy to share it with them.
