When someone walks into your bedroom or into your house, what do you think their first thought is? Is it, “Wow, look at all these nice decorations”? Is it “This house is a total wreck”? Or maybe “What’s that terrible smell”?
Here’s my guess at some more realistic thoughts going through people’s head:
“I wonder if I should walk into the living room or stay in the entryway.” “I’m really thirsty but I feel weird asking for a drink of water.” Where’s the bathroom, where’s the bathroom, where’s the bathroom?”
Everyone is focused on themselves. Of course, there will always be other thoughts floating around in people’s heads. Contrary to most movies that have mind-reading in them, I don’t think the human mind is a slow, thought out, sentence structured, ordeal. There are many thoughts happening at once or (to my neuroscience friends reading this saying that your brain can only have one thought at a time) there are at least so many thoughts happening in a short amount of time it seems as if thee are many thoughts happening at once.
In other words, people may in the back of their mind be judging your house, but most are much more focused on the way they are presenting themselves than they are with your actual house. People care much less about your house than you think. In fact, they may not think about it at all.
You ever go over to someone’s house who you’ve known for a long time but when you go into their house you’re super surprised picturing them living there? Yeah. You didn’t think about their house much, did you?
I’m not sure what the purpose of this post is, but maybe just to relax more when you have people coming over to your house and realize they probably feel just as much like they need to impress you as you do them. Don’t try and impress them and just let your house be what it is. If someone hates you because of your house, they have other issues….or your house is actually the worst…;)