You know that feeling where you feel like your house is a disaster zone and everyone coming into it is going to judge you as a result? That’s what I’m feeling right now. 

Tonight I am hosting a bachelorette party at my new (ish) house. All of my aunts and of age girl cousins will be there, as well as many of the bride’s (my cousin) friends. While I’ve hosted events at my house before, many of my family members who are coming over have never been to my house before, and I’m actually nervous. 
These are people who’s opinions I hold in pretty high regard, and I don’t want them to hate my house, I’m in debt because of it (house poor is a good poor, the other ways I’m poor are not, but that’s for another day) and I know we made the right decision in buying it. 

But here’s the thing, my house isn’t a disaster zone. Yes the floors may often have pawprints on them and there is dog hair everywhere, but it’s a generally clean house based on the ones of people I know. I have a ten month old wrecking ball for a dog and my house isn’t a disaster zone. And yet I am currently freaking out that my guests are going tojudge the house that we can’t afford to redo the walls in the basement or personalize yet, because we’ve only owned it since October. The house that despite the bright blue walls in the basement, we knew was our house immediately.The house that we suddenly became extreme homebodies in after we bought it. 

We have this expectation in society that one’s house must be immaculate if they are going to have people over, and they should feel guilty if it is any less than perfect. Why should we spend entire days cleaning for our guests to mess it all up again and have to spend the whole day after cleaning? Have you ever been to a friend’s house and noticed that there wasn’t any dust? Or that everything looked perfect? I certainly haven’t. If your house smells like wet dog or garbage and there’s a mess everywhere, sure I’ll notice it and wonder why you hadn’t put more effort in – but if you tidy up and make it seem like you wanted people over, that’s good enough for me. 

Anyways. I hope I have planned an entertaining enough evening for the bachelorette so no one notices that I didn’t have time to dust but I did put effort into the dog hair situation! I’ll stop stressing out about the opinions of my guests once the party is over and they’ve all left!

Do you stress before guests arecoming  over? Let me know in the comments! 

Amanda xo