Perfect isn't good enough anymore.

Growing up, we had a house cleaner for a short time. She was actually a neighbor - my best friend Julia's mom, in fact. She was a stay-at-home mom whose husband was an architect, so the cleaning job wasn't necessary for their family, but it helped them pay for the little extras.

Karol was the best. I loved going to her house to play with Julia, but I REALLY loved it when she cleaned ours. She did it once a week and it took her about four hours. She did the dishes, did some laundry, vacuumed, "Pledge-ed" (does anyone else remember the lemony-fresh scent of Pledge wood furniture polish? That glorious smell is one of the reasons we use lemon oil in our cleaning products.) Every week, for a short time, our house was perfect.

[My mom totally deserved to hire a housecleaner. She was my father's full-time office manager, a full-time mother, my Girl Scout troop leader and the coordinator for the entire area's cookie sales. (That was back when those cookies were still expensive but actually tasty.) For a few weeks each year, our entire carport was taken over by boxes and boxes of cookies to be distributed and she charmingly bossed everyone around until they were properly dispersed.]

So yes, she really did need some help with the house. I did my bit, but before Karol we'd spend entire Saturdays cleaning house. I remember my dad making me redo the living room vacuuming because he could see the vacuum lines(!?), and my mom making me scrub the backsplash around the cat's food area. It usually took most of the day and was, tbh, not a thing you'd look forward to all week. Or, mom would get tired of the whole deal and we'd live in a proper bit of chaos until we couldn't stand it anymore. Neither extreme was awesome.

So when Karol offered her services, mom was thrilled. It was wonderful. But...expensive. Even paying her the "friend rate," when dad's business started to lull it was the first luxury to be chopped from the budget.

["Luxury." It's funny to use that word in regard to a clean home. I would suggest that housecleaning is closer to a need. It is a need that can be filled by the house owner, in most situations, but a need nonetheless.]

Looking back, it's funny to think that my mom (a crazy-smart and creative woman) never thought to dial back the service that Karol was delivering. Our family was actually fairly tidy - we did the dishes every night (with the occasional miss) and didn't leave garbage hanging around. And Karol, being right down the street from us, didn't need a four-hour minimum from us every week. However, women of that time really had specific ideas of what hiring a housecleaner should entail, and how clean a home must be in order to be a "good wife." The standards were ridiculously high - which would be fine if it made people happier and healthier. But it really just made them stressed out and irritable, especially when they ended up spending one of their two days off just cleaning.

I inherited this crazy, perfection-driven approach to house cleaning. Then I had children. And I've got to tell you - they are just the worst house cleaners ever. They have many other beautiful features but dear heaven! trying to keep a home clean when you have children is a special challenge, indeed.

A friend of mine during those early years changed my entire perspective on my definition of a clean house. She told me that when people entered her home, she wanted them to know what mattered to her. She had decided that her children mattered more than showing off how clean her home was, so she decided to loosen her standards and relax a bit. Let in a little chaos.

This blew my mind. I actually wasn't sure it was allowed. But by that time, I was a single mom to two little girls who looked at me like I'd grown another head when I was ranting about cleaning up after them. So, I stopped. And no, it wasn't easy - it was actually a bit like withdrawal from an addictive substance. I hadn't realized how very much I was addicted to performing the good wife act, even after I wasn't a wife any longer.

Slowly, though, I began to relax. When I cleaned, I concentrated on what really needed it. Every once in a while I'd get a bug and really dig in to a deep cleaning session - but mostly, I just kept things moderately clean. I became much more fun to hang out with, and I started facing my cleaning demons.

Today, we're surrounded by social media images that give the impression that everyone has a spotless house (along with a Swedish-style minimalistic vibe). Instagram and Pinterest have completely changed how we see home life. Scroll through your feed, and it’s easy to believe that perfectly styled, clutter-free homes are the norm—like everyone but you has somehow cracked the code to spotless, magazine-worthy living.

But let’s be real: behind those carefully curated photos are real homes, filled with laundry piles, kid messes, and that one chair in the corner that’s become a permanent clothes rack.

The gap between what we see online and what we live in every day can be jarring. It’s easy to feel like you’re falling short, like you should be doing more—cleaning more, organizing more, making everything look effortlessly perfect. But that pressure? It’s exhausting. And honestly, life is too full, too messy, and too beautiful to spend it chasing an illusion.

It might be time to embrace a less-than-perfect paradigm. Where the important things are cared for and we let the unimportant go by. I guarantee that your children won't remember if the cat food area backsplash was perfectly clean when they were young. But they will remember if their home felt like a restorative place to be.

One of my favorite things about owning this company is that we have the privilege of seeing real people in their real lives. They are all beautiful, even the messy ones. But. Not one of them is perfect.