So *That's* What's Just Outside the Frame

After scouring the MLS listing site looking at houses for the past two years, you'd think it would have occurred to me that it is unlikely most people actually live in the house in the pictures.

Sure, it's their house, but what you see on real estate listings is their house, not their home.

When you read house-selling advice, they always say to "stage" your home and to remove clutter and personal effects. Essentially, you're supposed to erase yourself from the picture and portray the house as a blank slate, welcoming yet impersonal, an open invitation to potential owners to put their own stamp on it and not to admire your collection of around-the-world teaspoons.

We're not selling our home (thank goodness), but we are trying to get out of our lease a bit early, so yesterday was picture-taking day. Mindful of the advice, we tried to make our house look as inviting yet clutter-free as possible.

It took us four hours.

And what we ended up with was a series of pictures of a really lovely house that is nevertheless a Through-the-Looking-Glass PM house. It was totally bizarre - ours yet not ours.

Funniest was knowing what was just outside the frame of each picture - laundry baskets full of crap, piles of books that had been temporarily moved, and mountains of homework. In some, there's a whole pile of stuffed animals just barely beyond the camera's reach.

Case in point - this looks like a nice (if sterile) kitchen, yes?

Here is what it really looks like (less than twelve hours later, too):

The detritus of yesterday's Netflix/popcorn date night, the remnants of hurried salad-making as I was getting ready for church, open cupboards, asthma inhaler - there's even one of those infamous laundry baskets filled with office crap hiding under the open dishwasher door.

It's real life, to be sure, but it's not a life anyone looking at renting this place wants, I'll bet. So we shuttled piles of stuff from room to room and put together a pretend life.

(I will admit - it's actually quite a pretty looking pretend life. Oh that my house were really that clutter-free!)

Easy enough for pictures, I suppose - but now I'm going to have to make it reality and actually clean it all up, sigh. Onwards to the linen closet!