Sliding the last oxygen tank into the back of the van, I realize I’ve missed my own deadline by exactly 12 minutes. The driveway is already filling with cars that look far too clean for a Sunday afternoon. I am Avery F., and my job is to install medical equipment in homes where life is getting complicated, but today, I am part of the complication.

I’m the guy who has to dismantle a heavy-duty hospital bed and hide a nebulizer because a real estate agent decided that “visibility” was more important than the comfort of the person actually paying the mortgage. It’s a strange kind of theater, really. We spend years making a house a home, filling it with the smells of burnt toast and the scuffs of moving furniture, only to be told that for 4 hours on a Sunday, we must pretend we don’t exist.

The Mechanics of Polite Indignity

The open house is a quiet, polite indignity we have collectively agreed to call normal. Think about the mechanics of it for a second. You are asked to leave your own property. You have to take your dog-who is currently vibrating with anxiety in the passenger seat of my van-and drive around aimlessly.

You have to hide your medications, as if having high blood pressure is a character flaw that might lower the property value. You remove every photograph of your face, because heaven forbid a potential buyer remembers that humans live here. And then, the piece de resistance: you bake cookies you will not eat. You create the olfactory illusion of a domestic bliss that you are currently being evicted from for the sake of a showing.

Sunday at the Publix Parking Lot

I once saw a divorcing couple in Hollywood, standing in a Publix parking lot at 2:02 PM on a Sunday. They were sitting in separate cars, parked two spots away from each other. They were waiting for their open house to end so they can go back to a house neither of them lives in anymore but both of them still own.

It was 92 degrees out. They were both staring at their phones, probably refreshing the same Zillow link, watching the “views” counter go up while their actual lives were stuck in neutral in a grocery store parking lot. They had spent 32 hours cleaning a house they both hated just so 42 strangers could walk through their bedroom and judge their taste in curtains.

The data on whether open houses actually sell houses is, charitably, mixed. Most agents will tell you it’s essential, but if you look at the actual closing numbers, only about 2 percent of homes are sold to someone who walked in off the street during an open house.

So why do we do it? We do it because the open house exists primarily to make the listing agent visible to future clients in the neighborhood. It’s a marketing pipeline for the professional, fueled by the unpaid labor and temporary homelessness of the seller. You are the stagehand, the lead actor, and the cleaning crew, all for a production that isn’t even for your benefit.

The Scars Stagers Try to Kill

I’ve been in 132 houses this year alone. As a medical equipment installer, I see the parts of the house that the “stagers” try to kill. I see the grab bars in the shower, the ramps in the garage, the heavy-duty lifts. These things represent the reality of a body that is changing, but in the world of the open house, bodies don’t age.

They just “entertain.” People ask me to come in and pull out $2,002 worth of equipment for a weekend so the house looks “youthful.” We are scrubbing away the evidence of our own humanity to satisfy the whims of a stranger who is mostly just there to see if your closets are bigger than theirs.

The Performance Economy

It’s a performance economy. We’ve been convinced that privacy is a secondary concern to the “market.” But at what point does the cost of the performance outweigh the benefit of the sale? I’ve seen people spend $522 on professional cleaning for a house they are selling for $422,002, only to have a rainy Sunday ruin the carpets because the agent didn’t make people take their shoes off.

The anxiety of the “text sent to the wrong person” is a lot like the anxiety of the open house. You’re constantly worried that someone is seeing something they aren’t supposed to see. You’re worried the “real you” has leaked out through a crack in the staging. Maybe they saw the stack of bills on the fridge. Maybe they smelled the cat litter.

Maybe they realized that the people living here are actually stressed and tired and not at all like the lifestyle magazine spread the agent promised.

Theater-Free Selling

When you finally decide that the theater isn’t worth the ticket price, you look for a way out that doesn’t involve hiding your life in a storage unit.

Companies like 123SoldCash exist because they understand that a house is a container for a life, not a movie set where you’re the unpaid extra.

There is a profound sense of relief in realizing you don’t have to bake those cookies. You don’t have to sit in a Publix parking lot for 2 hours while a stranger critiques your choice of backsplash. You can just… sell the house.

I remember a woman in a small suburb who had 22 visitors in a single afternoon. She was 82 years old, and I was there to set up a lift for her husband. She was crying because someone had commented that the house “smelled like old people.”

She had spent 52 years in that house. She had raised three kids there. And in one afternoon, a stranger with a clipboard and a Starbucks latte had reduced her entire existence to a negative sensory experience. That’s the violence of the open house. It strips away the dignity of the dweller to prioritize the comfort of the consumer.

Shared Hallucinations

The irony is that we all know it’s a lie. When we walk through an open house, we know the bowl of lemons on the counter was placed there an hour ago. We know the neutral-colored towels have never touched a wet body. We are all participating in a shared hallucination.

We want to believe that if we buy the house, we buy the curated, lemon-scented life that comes with it. But as soon as the papers are signed and the moving trucks arrive, the lemons rot and the towels get dirty.

I’m currently looking at a “Showing Instructions” sheet for a house I have to visit tomorrow. It says “Ensure all medical supplies are out of sight.” I have to go there at 10:02 AM and try to make a life-saving device look like a piece of decorative luggage.

It’s absurd. It’s the kind of thing that makes you want to send another snarky text to the wrong person just to see if anyone is actually paying attention to the reality of our lives.

The real estate industry has built a cathedral out of the “showing,” but for the person living inside, it’s just a series of chores. It’s 12 minutes of frantic vacuuming before the doorbell rings. It’s the 22nd time you’ve explained that the fireplace works “mostly.” It’s the constant feeling of being an intruder in your own sanctuary.

We’ve reached a point where privacy is a luxury item. To be able to sell a home without inviting the entire zip code to walk through your laundry room is a form of wealth that doesn’t show up on a closing statement.

It’s the wealth of not having to perform. It’s the wealth of being able to stay in your pajamas on a Sunday afternoon while the transaction happens in the background, invisible and efficient.

I think back to that Hollywood couple. I wonder if they ever made it back to their house. I wonder if the 42 people who walked through their home even noticed the tension in the air, or if they were too busy looking at the crown molding. Probably the latter. We are all so busy looking at the “features” that we forget the “bugs” are what make us human.

I’m done for the day. My van is loaded, the dog in the back has finally stopped shaking, and I’m driving away from the clean cars and the open house signs. I’m going home to my own house, where the dishes are in the sink and there are no lemons on the counter.

It’s not “staged,” and it’s definitely not “ready for a showing,” but it’s mine. And that, in a world of Sunday afternoon theater, feels like the only thing that’s actually real.

I might even send another text to my supervisor. This time, on purpose. I’ll tell him I’m taking the next 2 days off. I need a break from the performance. I need to be in a place where I don’t have to hide the oxygen tanks or the truth. I need a place where the only person judging the curtains is me.

We forget that a house is supposed to be a shield against the world, not an invitation for the world to come in and wipe its feet on your soul. The next time someone tells you that you need to “prep” for an open house, remember that you’re being asked to erase yourself.

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll decide that your privacy is worth more than a plate of cold cookies and a few “views” on a website. There are better ways to move on. There are ways that don’t involve sitting in a parking lot at 2 PM, waiting for permission to go home.