A Cluttered Home

I stepped inside a beautiful house the other day, half dark blue siding and half brick, yard well-taken care of (as well as it can be in Denver in winter), with a basketball hoop in the driveway, in front of a three-car garage. There was a covered patio in front of the house, with a grill and patio furniture, and through the windows you could see long drapes. It could have been a picture out of a magazine, or a finished project on HGTV.

The inside of the house, however, was thrashed.

I’m talking thrashed like, it wouldn’t surprise me if I saw this house on Hoarders at some point in the future. The near future. It looked like the carpet hadn’t been vacuumed in months, boxes were piled high in every room, and some in the hallways, toys were strewn all over, pictures and posters were cluttered together on every wall in no particular fashion or order. Dis-as-ter.

It made me sincerely grateful for a wife that loves a clean, orderly, and well-decorated house.

And it’s funny to me how often people, and especially I myself, do the same thing with our lives. On the outside, we can look picture-perfect. But on the inside, we’re cluttered, messy, and have some serious spring-cleaning to attend to. Like hoarders, we’re afraid or ashamed to let people see what’s on the inside of our home, what we’re like really. Because they’ll probably be taken back, maybe a little offended, and most likely grossed out by the smell.

But when we can be real with others, that’s when the healing begins to happen, the spring-cleaning starts, renovations get underway, old furniture gets replaced, new carpet gets installed, and you find that being real is much easier, more relaxing, and smells a whole lot better than a cluttered, locked-up home.