A few weeks ago, a friend of ours stopped by to deliver a letter from his son to our daughter — they’re pen pals — and rang the doorbell. To say I froze is an understatement. What is he doing? I thought he was just going to pop it into the mailbox. When I opened the door, he stood there with his two kids (two kids I adore), and I tried to talk to him through the sliver of the door so that he didn’t see past me into our entryway. Because, literally, our house was trashed. Do you remember the old Febreze commercials where they blindfolded someone and set them in a pile of garbage? My house would’ve been the perfect set. At that exact moment, it looked like every viral TikTok video of someone sharing their “depression bedroom” as they start sweeping items out from behind furniture.
But instead, as his kids waved excitedly to me, asking where my kids were and trying to peer around me, I simply stepped aside. “Do you guys want to come in?”
And I swear, it rewired my brain.
I’ve always loved hosting. I’ve always loved putting out bowls of chips and homemade dip, chopping fruit, and making sure I have plenty of cans of sunscreen for all the kids splashing around in the sprinklers in our yard. I love making sure I have the exact kind of soda my best friend’s husband prefers, and I’ve always been delighted by a friend asking me, “Hey, do you mind if I give my baby a bath here at your house in case he falls asleep on the way home?”
But just letting people stop by unannounced and letting them into my home? That’s scary. I can prep my home for hosting parties and planned get-togethers. At any other given time, though, you can trust that my house is a mess. There are always piles — so many piles — of things that need to be put away. There are always dishes in the sink and laundry mounded up. The entryway closet doors never get shut, and my kids can’t reach the hangers for their coats, so every day after school, it looks like there was an explosion of sweaters and shoes and bookbags.
We have three kids. My husband and I both work from home. We have soccer practices, dance lessons, and PTA events. We are always going and going, and when we’re home, we will always prioritize sitting on the couch to watch Jumanji as a family or playing six games of Uno in a row.
And honestly, neither of us is a “neat freak.”
But when I let my friend and his kids in, I could feel part of me starting to unravel. “Oh God, sorry,” I said as his kids ran past, “nobody knows how to put anything away in this house.” My friend laughed. His kids walked into the kitchen, where piles of groceries I’d just had delivered were still on the kitchen table, and clothes from a sleepover bag that had been hastily unpacked still sat on the floor. “It’s a mess in here,” this 7-year-old said, and all I could do was agree with him.
“Sometimes it gets like that in here,” I said, sweat stains forming in the pits of my sweatshirt.
Then the kids spotted a pack of Oreos and asked if they could have one. My friend handed me a jar of lemon paste his wife made, and I popped it into our fridge. We all stood in my disaster of a kitchen talking, and my friend told me something hilarious that happened earlier that day that he knew I’d laugh at, and his kids picked up my kids’ toys off the floor to ask me how they worked, and his son made sure I knew that the letter he wrote for my daughter — his friend — was in our mailbox.
Because they didn’t stop by to take notice of my messy house. They stopped by to see me. To share a moment of friendship. To be the village.
And the minute I let my own guilt and shame and worry leave my body, I knew I could relax. It’s OK that my house is a mess — my friends get it. If they don’t, are those really the kinds of friends I want in my life? I always like to think about how I would react to a friend’s messy home, and I know, hand-to-heart, I wouldn’t give one damn about it. If she said something about how overwhelmed she was, I’d offer to help. If she said something like “please don’t judge me,” I would say, “Girl, you know mine looks just like this.” If she said something about how embarrassed she was, I’d tell her to not worry about.
Then I’d ask her if I could have an Oreo.
It sounds so silly, but letting people into our homes used to be the norm… and it can be again. I’ve read a million memes and seen a thousand reels about how people need to give you three to five business days before visiting, but we really should let it go. We’ve become so used to social media highlight reels of perfectly curated parties and gatherings that we’ve forgotten what people’s actual homes look like when we’re just stopping by.
Should I be better about maintaining my home? Sure, obviously. But will I let it stop me from having a friend who’s driven all the way over to deliver a letter coming in to say hi and have a cup of coffee?
Literally never again.
