The Perfect Home Myth
Have you ever stood in the middle of your lived-in living room and asked what you’re doing wrong? Papers are piled on the coffee table, toys are hiding behind the chair, the remote is buried under the couch cushion, and a layer of dust is covering the ceiling fan. But you just cleaned it last weekend! You close your eyes, sigh, and imagine what it would be like to live in a perfect home.
You see so many glimpses of perfect homes on Pinterest, HGTV, and Joanna Gaines’ Instagram feed. Everything is in its place and color coordinated. Nothing is stained or threadbare. There is absolutely no clutter.
It’s inspiring and frustrating at the same time. You spend your Saturday decluttering, and you buy new couch pillows. The next day you stand back and look at it and wonder why it still doesn’t look like the pictures.
Is a perfect home really too much to ask?
The short answer is yes.
The long answer is this:
Your house is so much more than a snapshot. It might look as amazing in one moment as the HGTV houses, but in the next instant, your family walks in the door with coats and shoes and backpacks and sports equipment and mail, and all of a sudden your house looks like a tornado swept through it. Guess what? The perfect home in the pictures you were just looking at probably gets messy too! Any house where people actually live their lives is going to change constantly.
Instead of wishing for a picture-perfect home, start thinking about what would make your home perfect for you and your family.
Define Family Priorities
As a family, talk about why you like your home and what could make it better. You might be surprised to hear how differently each family member views your home!
For example, I get really stressed by visual clutter and messes. It doesn’t really bother my husband unless we have company. My kids love messes because it usually means they’re playing and having so much fun. As parents, we’ve tried to be flexible and let the kids have room and time to play, but they know that after dinner everything has to be cleaned up and put back where it belongs.
In my family, we also work at home part of the week and homeschool our kids, so our house gets a lot of use! In order to accomplish what we need to but still have a comfortable place to relax and enjoy time together, we have different rooms and areas of the house dedicated to different tasks. We try to keep our laptops in the home office and toys out of the homeschool room. We try to keep our living room clean enough that we can snuggle up together in the evenings.
Start by asking your family these questions to get an idea how to make your house the perfect home for you:
- What do you find comfortable in our home?
- What do you find uncomfortable in our home?
- What space feels too crowded/small?
- What space feels too empty/large?
- What is something about the house you love?
- What is something about the house you wish you could change?
- What repairs/maintenance need to be done?
- What do we like to do together at home?
Divide and Conquer
One single person in your family should not end up with all the responsibility for running your household. It’s a never-ending job that will leave you frustrated and burned out.
As a family, make a list of everything that needs to be done around the house on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Then figure out how to divide up that list between everyone in your family in a way that makes sense for you.
Include your kids in this and let them know how they can help out. Depending on their ages, it might include picking up their toys, putting away their laundry, unloading the dishwasher, or taking out the trash.
This is also a good time to decide if it would make sense to hire someone to help you with your list. Last year, my husband and I decided that we could budget to hire someone to clean our house once a month. That has been a huge help to me and has been more than worth the cost.
You could also consider hiring someone to mow your grass, plow snow, do your grocery shopping, or watch your young kids while you do some of the jobs on the list.
Consider Others
How do you feel about having company? If you find yourself getting stressed about your house whenever you host, ask yourself what you’re so concerned about. If the heart of the issue is that you feel pressure to present your house to people like it’s a perfect home straight from Pinterest, consider this: those homes are not comfortable.
Think about the people whose houses you really enjoy spending time with. Are they perfect? Or are they inviting, cozy, and fun? For me, it’s definitely the latter. The people whose homes I most enjoy visiting are those who welcome me into their real home, their real world. Their house is filled with things they enjoy–games they like to play, pictures of family vacations, cozy blankets, and snacks on the counter.
If you want to be able to invite people into your home without the stress, focus on spending time with those people instead of “perfecting” your home.
Build Better Habits
The best way to keep your home running smoothly is to build small, sustainable habits. The right habits will help you get things done on autopilot so you don’t have to stress about it.
Tired of dirty dishes piled in the sink all the time? Build the habit of running the dishwasher every night and unloading it first thing every morning.
Wish you weren’t tripping over Hot Wheels and Barbies every evening on your way to bed? Build the habit of a 10-minute family pick-up after dinner or before bed.
Stressed about piles of mail scattered throughout the house? Build the habit of the one-touch rule so that you sort the mail and put it where it goes as soon as it comes in the house.
Click below for a free guide to 24 Habits That Will Change Your Life. These are the habits I use day in and day out to manage my time, money, health, and home.
