It’s late morning as I sit on a small used couch my friend recently gave me. It converts into a floor mattress. It’s already been useful since a friend slept over last week and a friend is coming over this weekend.

There’s some clutter on the table; a few empty kombucha bottles, some of my books, and a stack of my roommate’s unopened mail.

We didn’t buy furniture for the place, it’s a mix of things that were included and items we picked up from friends getting rid of things and even items off the street.

There’s a chair my roommate and I found on the sidewalk as we stepped out of a coffee shop. A piece of paper was taped to it, “free chair for good home.” And I thought, we’re a good home. So we rolled that chair up hill to bring back to our place.

It isn’t a perfect space. I wish the walls were white and the floor was hardwood. I wish the furniture was pale wood and cotton fabric, instead of the odd mix of donated items. But somehow it all still works to feel like a home.

And I’m still happy to have people over. I’ll do a few things to prepare the place; vacuum, clean some of the clutter, buy snacks. But I can’t do much about the old carpet stains or the chipped paint. The space isn’t perfect, but it’s mine and I want to invite people into it.

There’s this pressure for everything to be neat and tidy and perfect in our homes, in our lives. To keep the illusion, we sweep dirt under the rug, fill up the closet and make sure it’s tightly closed or all the skeletons will fall out. Sometimes even keeping up the illusion is too much effort and we just never invite people in at all.

But then you’re left alone sitting in your mess of a life.

For a couple months we didn’t even have a couch to offer people to sit on. Instead, we’d sit on the floor with some pillows we leaned against an old heavy ottoman. We made due. But we’d have good talks and good laughs eating dried mangos, and in that time I’d forget about the carpet stains and the chipped paint.

So even when things aren’t perfectly put together, invite people in anyways.

There will be people who come in and may start to judge your creaking floorboards or the lack of view from your window or find your humor too crass or your laugh too loud. Who just don’t accept the space you take up. You can see it in their eyes, and sometimes they’ll say it aloud with their lips. Don’t invite them again.

There will also be people who come in and make your four walls feel more like home. Who like the art you put up and what it says about you, who look through the books on your shelf and note the ones they’ve also read. Who like the space you take up. Those are the people to keep inviting over, “Please come in.”