The Teenage Me Would Be Sadly Disappointed
See…now I can post pictures like this and you all know that – while it’s a pretty picture of pretty things on my window – you can pan out a bit and see that the filth is just barely cropped out of the shot.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my “Truth in Advertising” post and your reaction to it. It seems well all tend to believe that other bloggers of the world live these tidy, perfect lives. I wonder if this incorrect perception is partly to blame for a lot of our domestic insecurities. We all talk about how we’re self-conscious of our homes because it seems everyone else has more updated kitchens, nicer furniture, better “art” on the walls. Other families don’t have toys in the hall or cat puke behind the couch. But as I reference my own filth more and more and hear you reference YOURS, I wonder…where are all of these super-clean homes that are making us all so insecure?
I guess we need to either do two things A) Quit hanging out with clean people or B) Accept that there’s a wide range of domestic standards and we probably fall somewhere in the middle.
Here’s my question to you – does your insecurities regarding your home affect your life in any way? Do you have to prep before your kids have friends over? Do you avoid having social gatherings? Because in the old house I felt like I had to do total prep before E’s friends came over and we NEVER had gatherings. Here I’m less concerned because the house is big enough I can make at least part of it presentable pretty quickly, but I’m still just having my first gathering next week and am TOTALLY PARANOID about it. What if people think my home is ugly?
Then it occurred to me…who cares? I like to think I don’t hang out with people who would honestly think my home is ugly. I have a better friend-radar than that. And if someone I don’t know shows up, and they’re all judgmental about my home, then again: WHO CARES? I don’t know this person, and obviously if they’re making mean judgments about my home I wouldn’t want to know them.
Insecurities…didn’t we think they’d fade after high school? No. They just morphed. Before we were worried our boobs weren’t big enough and that our acne was too gross. (Just me?) Now we’re worried people will mock our 80s style beat-up kitchen cabinets and will be grossed out by the raggedness of our carpet. If I had to change one thing about myself – I’d quit stressing out so much about what other people think and just care about my own opinion. Because y’all? When it’s picked up and there’s not 35 beer bottles on the counter? I kinda love my house.
I’m a member of the crazy clean house brigade. My husband will tell you that I’m just crazy. He might be right. Whatever. I was raised to believe that homes were always “company” ready, I have the OCD and I’ve learned to embrace it. But…
At one time I worked for an uber-wealthy matriarch of a very prominent family. I remember being stunned as I walked through the lobby of a building that had been featured in both magazines and movies. I walked the hallway of her home and admired artwork that I could only imagine seeing in museums. Legendary name after legendary name jumped out at me and then an unfamiliar singular name appeared…behind glass and under light was the childish crayon scrawl of her daughter. Sometime later, she told me about her decorating style. She called it “Things That Make Me Happy”. I’ve lived that way ever since…
I used to stress about people seeing my house messy (some mornings when I’d leave I’d worry that if we got robbed the police would think the place had been tossed when in reality it already looked like that…).
If someone pops in, they see how we really live (clean, but cluttered). My living room is always presentable (my kids never go in there), so I can steer people in there if I have to.
My SIL has the cleanest house I’ve ever seen. She also picks out artwork based on whether it matches her furniture (not necessarily because she likes it). I don’t think she has half the fun I do!
NEVER worry about what teenagers think. As long as you have food, they won’t notice anything else.
When the kids were smaller, I was horrified over our house’s condition. It was just awful and I would die of embarrassment if someone came over. I could never keep up, so I gave up. Which was a catastrophe. A few months ago, I finally got into a groove and keep a bit better of a handle on things.
The worst was when I was having a garage sale and the house was a mess, a wreck, a complete and utter disgrace. A friend popped over unexpectedly. At one point, she needed to use the bathroom, but the downstairs one was occupied so she went upstairs – the domain of the house that I expect least for folks to see. I am still SO embarrassed at what she found up there.
The thing is, Kim, you have referenced one particular blogger who is very wealthy and clearly has a cleaning service. I had a cleaning service at one point and let me tell you, it makes a WORLD OF DIFFERENCE. At the barest of minimums, having one put ME on a schedule for keeping tidy. I don’t think it is fair to hold yourself to such standards as those folks with a cleaning service.
I think you’re right – most people fall in the middle. I don’t worry about what bloggers’ homes look like, because I assume that they are definitely cleaning up before they take a picture, so it’s probably not representative of everyday life anyway. My insecurity is my SIL’s house – it is SPOTLESS. Always. Her husband is completely the definition of a (lovable) neat freak. Every time my husband and I go over there we have a “cleaning freakout” when we get home. It’s insane.
I try to pick up at the end of each day, just to stay ahead of the game a bit. It makes me feel calmer when everything is put away where it should be, but that’s not always the truth of how it really looks in my home. (This morning I got enough done that I even opened the blinds before I left! Progress!)
Yeah, for me it’s my MIL, so . . . I don’t really get a choice about whether I should hang out with her or not. I’m working on choosing not to freak out over it/her though, because my house is not clean and not tidy, and just never will be.
It’s my MIL, too! She’s freaking perfect, but she’s also super sweet, so I can’t hate her : )
I think if I didn’t ever have guests over, my entire house would never be clean at once. Company coming brings out the cleaner in me, and that’s a good thing … every once in a while.
I pick up before people come over, but not to the point that the house is perfect, just so that it’s presentable. Having a playroom has made a HUGE difference in how I feel about the cleanliness of our house. Before I was embarrassed of how our living room looked because it was always covered in toys, crayons, etc. I like having people over, and I’ve never worried about whether people think the house is ugly or not. But I do have plenty of other things I worry about.
I think for me as long as the kitchen is CLEAN (cluttered is fine, but actual grime? no thanks!) as well as the bathroom…I just can’t quite handle the unsanitary sort of stuff. Mess is a-okay by me though of course tidy is nicer. Oh- and smell. I must admit I’m very sensitive to smell in other people’s houses. (Except, my own? I’m not as good at, because I’m so used to it! Of course, now I live with my mother and Grandfather for a while, and Mum definitely tells me when she thinks the litter box needs changing haha!) Oh, and I’ve also had amazing friends who have come to help me out when my house IS gross – because it’s then that I’m in too deep with my depression and everything is over my head, and I *can* do the work, and will, if someone is there cheering me on, but if not, I can always find something to distract me, or just sleep.
(and I like your pretty bottles!)
I used to worry about this a lot more and am occasionally still embarrassed at what a pit our house can be but I’ve found that the more I entertain the less concerned about it I am…..and the more I love to entertain. My theory is give people some wine and light some candles….and I just refuse to worry about what kids think…. It also goes along with getting older I guess….figuring this is me, warts and all. Blogging has given me courage to say that as well….
I always clean before having people over. If they’re close friends, I won’t usually bother with the vaccuuming or mopping, but my rule is that if they haven’t seen me without makeup, the floor gets mopped. And when my college girlfriends come to visit, I ALWAYS mop, but they only come into town a couple times a year so I feel like the least I can do is clean thoroughly (that, and one of them is one of Those Women who has one of Those Houses that makes us all so insecure … apparently, a lot of Them are in Richmond, VA).
I don’t avoid having gatherings — I actually love having gatherings — but I always plan ahead to have time to clean.
The rec room is the bane of my existence. We’re in a townhouse with the rec room on the ground floor, and it’s such a hodgepodge of mismatched furniture and baby stuff that will go into the nursery when the nursery is finally done that I feel the need to apologize for it because it’s the first thing anyone sees, even though no one sees it for more than 2 seconds before going upstairs to the main level. Even when it’s clean and the crap is shoved out of sight, the furniture is so ugly and mismatched (it’s all his college hand-me-down stuff) that I can’t stand for people to see it. But my husband won’t let me get rid of it until we can afford to replace it, and he won’t let me put up a curtain to block the view into that room (there’s no door, just an opening) because somehow he thinks THAT would look worse than the teal futon and rust armchair and ugly-as-sin antique desk set his parents dumped off on us.
I really hate that room.
I have a theory that those houses that are always clean no matter when you see them have at least one person who is a “clean freak” and the others in the house have learned to accommodate. I am always happy when I drop in at someone’s house and it is not the perfect place I see on formal occasions.
I used to make my kids clean before having friends over and they always said “No one cares” but I couldn’t get over people I didn’t know that well seeing the mess and judging me, even if it was teens.
Someone was here measuring the kitchen for new flooring and I was mortified he was seeing how really dirty it was at the baseboards. I guess I worry more about what the people who don’t really know me think than my friends and family. Why is that?
It does affect how we live. I feel like I can’t have people just stop by. I’ve come up with excuses to keep people from coming over if they call and ask first because I felt like my house was just too messy for them to see it – even if it really wasn’t all that messy. BUT, I’ve gotten a lot better about accepting that most people have semi-messy homes and it’s okay if mine is too. Before we moved into our new house, we were having to keep our old one in “showing condition” all the time and that was very difficult for me. I realized that I don’t want to live in a house that is that spotless if it means that I have to put that much work into it. I agree with the previous poster that having a cleaning service would make a big difference, but I can’t really afford that.
Ohmigosh, how timely is this? “Does your insecurities regarding your home affect your life in any way?” Well…..YEAH. Long story short: Four cats + broken vacuum cleaner = Me – That Boy I Like. Sigh.
My home insecurities come both from my mom keeping a perfect house and visiting friends whose houses clean up too nicely.
However, I have one friend who has an open door policy and just isn’t neat and tidy. Being with her family makes me feel so comfortable and welcomed that I’ve had to let go of some of that need to be clean. I feel better about my habits by seeing hers (and yours), and thus feel the need to pass that on to others as well.
I’m only insecure when it comes to strangers seeing my home. First impressions mean a lot – or I assume they do – and so I have this minor paranoia about first time visitors seeing the house in a less than tidy state. That being said, once they’ve been over a few times, I relax my standards. Dirty dishes? Maybe. Unswept floor? Probably. Clutter on the counter? Well, I do have a husband and children…
Formal gatherings, though, always get the full-house-cleaning-treatment. This, of course, is ridiculous. The house will no doubt be trashed within the first 15 minutes with toys and beer bottles. Half empty food trays, wrappers, discarded coats or socks (don’t ask) always litter the place after my extended family has been over.