Inside My 2014 Cluttered Home: A Real-Life Messy House Tour

Since so many of you enjoyed our previous messy house tours (like the one from our last house in 2011), we thought it was a good time to show that our home isn’t perfectly staged all the time. With most of our attention on the showhouse and some last-minute nursery details, several projects have been paused midstream and a few rooms have slipped into chaos. When the house looks like this, why not share it with the internet?

Quick notes about the video:

  • There’s no rapping in this video—both a relief and a minor disappointment.
  • I usually avoid narrating and just hold the camera while Sherry talks because I have steadier hands. This time she was busy with showhouse tasks, so I gave it a shot.
  • Burger is all over the footage like a helicopter in a music video.
  • Don’t worry about the droopy figs in the office — they perk up after a good watering, though they do seem perpetually thirsty.
  • If a sabre-toothed tiger married a pony, I would have loved to attend as a kid. I was obsessed with tigers and checked out tiger books from the library every week in elementary school.
  • Those hardwood floors make me proud every time we climb the stairs — they really shine.
  • For anyone asking about the fourth wall in the nursery: you can see a quick glimpse in the video. It’s currently just a floor lamp and the doorway to the hall, but we might add a playful “wall of fun” like the one in Clara’s room someday.
  • You’ll also see some rarely shown footage of the unfinished storage room at the end of the upstairs hallway — unsurprisingly, it’s messy too.
  • I briefly shouted “keeping it real” at the end of the video in a moment of 1995-era pop enthusiasm. I edited most of it out, but you’ll catch a hint of that impulse.

If you can’t watch the video at work, the visuals will still tell the story. Below are a few screengrabs highlighting some of the scenes.

If everything goes according to plan, we should have a short window between the Homearama deadline and the baby’s arrival to finish a few projects and restore some order—at least until Barnacle arrives and mixes things up again.

Anyone else living with half-finished projects? Is one stalled task causing clutter to spread through other rooms? We’d love to hear your confessions — surely we’re not the only ones.

Psst – Showhouse deadlines have made this week extra hectic, so there won’t be a post tomorrow. We plan to be back on Monday.