Why I hate the Pottery Barn catalogue

It's the end of my day and while the dishes have been done, the toys picked up and the children are in bed there is still a nagging sense of dissatisfaction. Something is not right, I still feel as though my work is not done. Do you know why? Because my house does not, at the end or any other time of the day, look like the pages of the Pottery Barn catalogue. I have decided that this catalogue was invented solely to make yuppie homeowners feel bad enough about their homes to make them spend ludicrous amounts of money in the pursuit of unattainable, domestic perfection. It isn't really the hideously expensive furniture, but rather the ridiculously ordered life reflected in it pages that makes me want to scream.

Let's start in the foyer shall we? In the PB catalogue there are neat storage bins clearly labeled with each family member's name to hold shoes and boots. Coats are carefully hung on similarly labeled hooks and there's even a bed for the dog built into a set of shelves which hold umbrellas and school bags. The family that uses this storage system would scream in horror at the haphazardly scattered collection of shoes that almost make it onto the rattan mat I bought at Target. They would try not to kill themselves tripping over the tangle of schoolbags at the foot of my coat track which trembles under the weight of three seasons worth of outer wear for five people. The dog, not content to lie by the drafty front door sprawls across the living room rug, leaving a full-body print of hair behind. When it rains we each of us take turns lamenting, "Where the hell are all the umbrellas?"

We will continue further into the living room. In the PB catalogue there are no ratty, old newspapers or magazines stuffed onto the shelf under the coffee table because there's a really good recipe for babaganoush in there that you swear you are going to make - one day. No, in this world, there are hand-crafted baskets for such material, although the people who live in the PB catalogue would have already made the recipe because they are so damn perfect. The television is artfully hidden in an expensive armoire instead of balancing shakily on the entertainment center we bought at IKEA when we first got married and is being held together currently by chicken wire and some good faith. In said armoire is a neat stack of CDs and DVDs, usually arty titles like The English Patient. In this world there are no towering piles of CDs that have permanently escaped from the prison of their cases to live a scratched and dust-covered existence on top of the TV. There are no violently pink Disney Princess DVDs to mar the calm cerebrality of their film collection. In fact, there is not evidence that children enter this room at all.

The children have obviously been banished to their hyper-organized rooms. Complete with more labeled racks, shelves and bins, these rooms only contain wooden, educational toys. There are no Polly Pockets with their eight million minute pieces or stacks of naked Barbies with their wild, unkempt hair. A place for everything and everything in it's place. Where exactly would these people put my rapidly growing collection of crap-tastic Burger King toys and how would they be labeled? Don't get me started on the size of these kids' rooms either. My whole house would fit inside one.

The bathrooms - please. These bathrooms attain a level of cleanliness reserved for operating rooms. There are never smears of shaving cream on the vanity or bits of stuff that comes out of your teeth when you floss stuck to the bathroom mirror. No loofahs hang soggily over the bathtub faucet to grow mold. There are no stray pubic hairs behind the toilet seat - for God's sake there aren't even brand named bath products allowed in their original packaging. Everything has been decanted into fragile jars and pumps made of environmentally friendly materials in soothing earth or water tones. Why do they even have toilet paper? Is anyone allowed to defecate in here?

This whole pristine, organized world is the bar against which I subconsciously measure myself and I'm sure I am not the only one. This world has no spilled milk or dog hair. There are no wet towels hung over the shower curtain rod (where do they go?) or unmade beds. There is no half-dumped basket of clean laundry that has been pilfered for the day's clean underwear sitting on the bedroom floor. This is not reality, or at least the reality I live in and I have to remember that. I live my life, not photograph it and all the mess that goes with it can not be put into tidy little bins at the end of the day since this life is constantly happening. Of course I will continue to look through the Pottery Barn catalogue despite my best efforts. I'm like a diabetic reading the Mrs. Field's catalogue - wanting what I can't have. They could make my life a whole lot easier though and show me a pile of junk mail on the kitchen counter once in a while.