House on Display

What Staging My Home Taught Me About Staging Myself

There was a time when I tried to make everything look perfect. I thought that was the goal. But staging yourself, like staging a house, comes with a cost. This is the story of how I learned to stop polishing away my truth and start letting the mess show.

This morning, as I do most summer mornings, I drove my little guy to camp. We’re in a rural area, so it’s a 30-minute drive each way. That’s a lot of time in the car. For whatever reason, my very talkative little guy gets quiet on these rides. I always put on music, and he mostly stares out the window, looking contemplative.

So for me, the drive to and from camp has become thinking time. A space where I live in my head. Most of my reflections begin there, long before I put pen to paper, or more accurately, fingers to keyboard.

Today, I found myself thinking about Surface Me. I just finished editing the early chapters of my memoir, so it makes sense she showed up. Surface Me is the highly polished version of myself I used to send out into the world. She’s likable. Put-together. Maybe even enviable.

As I thought about her, a memory flashed up. Unexpected, because it’s now more than fifteen years old. It was 2008, and my husband and I were selling our first home and preparing to leave everything familiar so I could begin my clinical internship in a town where we knew no one.

That house holds a special place in my heart. When we moved in, Husband was still my fiancé. We bought it just as I was starting graduate school. It was a tiny row house. It was very old, very charming, and perfect for two. I think it was around 1,100 square feet, and I loved every inch.

I was twenty-five when we bought it. I knew nothing about home ownership. Or marriage. Or adulthood, really. Over the five years we lived there, my life grew. My family did too. We went from a couple to a couple with a dog, then a baby, then a baby and an au pair, and eventually a toddler, a baby, a dog, and an au pair.

Our adorable house slowly became a small container for a very big mess. Toys were piled high everywhere. One of the kids slept in a closet. We called it a bedroom, but it was a closet. The other slept in the guest room, which also functioned as the office. We couldn’t fit a bed, a desk, and a crib, so he slept in a pack ’n play for the first ten months of his life.

I still loved the house. But we had outgrown it.

When I found out I'd matched for internship out of state, we got ready to sell. At our realtor’s urging, we moved in with my in-laws so she could stage the house. “There’s no way we can make this place sellable if you’re still living in it,” she told us. So we packed our clutter into storage, moved into someone else’s home, and let her work her magic.

She painted. She hung beautiful art. She replaced our worn furniture with sleek, new pieces. When my husband and I went back to see the staged version, it took our breath away.

“This place is gorgeous,” he said. “I want to buy it.”

Looking back, I realize that a staged house is the perfect metaphor for Surface Me.

No one ever coached me the way our realtor did, but I figured out what was expected. I learned that projecting perfection mattered most. So at a tender age, I packed away the clutter. I painted the walls. I starved myself into the body I thought others would admire. I polished the résumé, smiled brightly, and waited for people to fall in love with what they saw.

But in packing away my clutter, I never let anyone see who I really was. What my house actually looked like when I lived in it.

The problem with that strategy is this: I never got the chance to learn that the mess didn’t make me unworthy or unlovable. It’s what made me human. By only showing the sparkle, I hid everything underneath. Some of that was mess, yes, but not all of it. Along with the clutter, I buried my tenderness. My vulnerability. So many of the things that made me relatable. I staged myself so well that I missed out on real moments of connection.

And here’s another truth that holds up, metaphor or not: whether you’re selling a house or sharing your inner world, you can’t hide your mess forever. Not unless you move out. Not unless you lose yourself.

I know that if we had moved back into that staged home, the mess would’ve returned within a day. That’s how life works. There’s no such thing as a perfect house. Or a perfect body. Or a perfect life.

I’ve always known that, somewhere deep down. But it’s taken me years to stop staging myself. To stop living like a house on display. I’ve started unlocking the storage unit where I tucked my truth away. Letting the mess show.

And maybe for the first time, it feels like home.