Life in a Museum

If any of you have ever had to live for months feeling like you were in a "museum", you will be able to relate to the unnecessary amount of stress that is placed on so many families each year. The ridiculous expectations and the unbelievably high standard that so many are forced to strive for causes a stress level that, if people would have a realistic view of life, is completely unnecessary.

Millions of Americans go through a process each year that causes an undue amount of stress. This process is one that unfortunately, most people will have to go through at least once in their lifetime. Some will have to go through it many more times than that. The process of selling your house is one that causes a huge amount of stress that is entirely unnecessary.

While your home is on the market, you are asked to pack up so much of your stuff that living becomes uncomfortable. Your home feels as if it has become a museum, because everything has to be in exactly the right place all the time, "just in case there is a showing." Furniture is rearranged from how you had it to live, placed in unnatural positions and you have to keep everything just so. Every time a kid takes a toy out to play, you stress, because you'll have to pick it up in 5 minutes. Your house appears to be a staged room from a museum. It looks like someone used to live there, but only the people passing by care to look now.

Why is it that when we look at a house to buy, we expect that it will look like this? Why do we think that when we leave our lived-in house to go look at another house, the house we are looking at should appear to be something from a museum, staged to look like no one lives there, with absolutely nothing out of place? Are we really so narrow-minded that we can't see past someone's mess, and see the house instead of the mess?

Because people are so specific about how they want things to be when they look at a house, people are now paid to "stage" houses. In this time when most people are worrying about how much they will get out of this house to put towards their next house, and to have for being able to move, they have to consider whether or not to hire a professional to help them stage their house, as well as make upgrades like changing the carpet, repairing things around the house, etc. So now, you have an issue where you are spending money just to sell your house, and the years of mortgage payments you've made don't recoup you anything in equity towards your next house.

Why can't we overlook small imperfections to envision a house that we want to live in, without having to have everything in perfect order? Why does it always have to be in immaculate condition, looking like a museum for us to be able to have any sort of insight into what it will look like? Are we really so narrow-minded?