Adult reading lesson, journals: Beauty Myth

When I have a place of my own, it might not be clean. I’ve already decided that. I don’t want to waste my life polishing everything just so it looks like a magazine picture.

My mom has a sign hanging in the back entryway that says: My house was clean last week. Sorry you missed it. She once told me she asked her own mom how she kept her house clean when she had four little kids. The answer was simple: it wasn’t clean.

That’s the part no one wants to admit. The “perfect home” standard comes from people who can afford housekeepers and gardeners. Everyone else is supposed to somehow keep up, either by buying special products or by scrubbing away every spare minute. And if those products turn out to be bad for the environment, the blame gets pushed back onto us for buying them.

I’m not interested in that game. I don’t need the products, and I don’t need the false standard. I want my time for things that matter—friends, music, writing, living. A spotless floor won’t change the world, but choosing how to spend my life just might.

So when I have a place of my own, it might not be clean. But it will be mine. And it will be free.