Apparently I Live in a Museum

During the holidays, a neighbor stopped by to exchange some food. You know the ritual: she brings something in a disposable container, we give her something in a disposable container, and thus the ancient suburban treaty is renewed for another year.

She had never been in my house before.

We opened the door. She stepped into the entryway. She looked around.

And then she said, in a tone usually reserved for people entering the Louvre:

“Wow. Your house looks like a museum.”

A museum.

Not “nice.”

Not “cozy.”

Not “you have a lot of stuff.”

A museum.

I just stood there blinking like an animatronic figure that hadn’t been programmed for this branch of the conversation.

A museum suggests many things.

• That ropes may be involved.
• That nothing should be touched.
• That there is possibly a small placard nearby explaining the historical significance of my coffee table.

I had never thought of my house this way.

Now, let me be clear: I am not a minimalist. I have tried. Minimalism and I have had several conversations, and we have agreed to remain polite acquaintances who do not vacation together.

But I am also not a maximalist. I do not have seventeen patterned rugs fighting for dominance in the same room. There is no peacock chair. There are no walls that look like a very organized flea market.

I live in what I would describe as Curated Normal.

I like some of my pretty things.

I have collected them over a lifetime.

And I am never going to apologize for owning objects that bring me joy and do not actively block doorways.

But a museum?

Once the idea lodged itself in my brain, I could not unsee it.

Suddenly I started imagining visitors:

“On your left, you’ll see a rare artifact known as The Chair No One Is Allowed to Sit In Because It’s Decorative. On your right, an early 21st-century ceramic bowl that has never, ever contained food.”

I started mentally writing the exhibit plaques:

“This object was purchased during a phase. The phase has passed. The object remains.”

“This was bought because it was on sale, not because it had a purpose.”

“This is here because moving it would require emotional processing.”

And of course, every museum has that one piece no one understands but everyone pretends is very important.

I have several.

There is also, apparently, a certain tidiness to my house that suggests no actual human joy occurs here. Which is offensive, because I assure you: this house has seen chaos. It has seen cooking projects. It has seen holidays. It has seen at least one emotional breakdown in the kitchen.

It has simply… recovered.

But I do understand what she meant.

There are no piles.

There is no visible junk.

Nothing is mid-project.

Nothing is “temporarily” living somewhere for three years.

Everything is… placed.

Which is how you accidentally end up running a private museum without knowing it.

I am now considering charging admission.

“Welcome to the Bolejack Collection. Please do not touch the throw pillows. They are purely conceptual.”

I could offer guided tours:

“This room represents my ‘neutral but not boring’ period. Over here is my ‘I was definitely going to entertain more’ era.”

Gift shop at the exit. Obviously.

What’s funny is that I don’t think of my house as formal. I think of it as calm. As a visual nervous system. As a place where my eyes don’t have to work very hard.

But apparently to the outside world, calm reads as curated. Curated reads as intentional. And intentional reads as museum.

Which raises the question: when did we start thinking that living in a space that isn’t visually screaming is somehow unnatural?

We have been so thoroughly trained to accept clutter as default that a room without a pile looks like an exhibit.

I am not a minimalist.

I am not a maximalist.

I am, it turns out, a docent.

And honestly? I’m fine with that.

I like my objects. I like my quiet. I like that my house looks like nothing is about to fall on you.

And if that makes it a museum?

Fine.

Just please admire the collection quietly and do not lean on the furniture.

Julie Bolejack, MBA

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