Don’t Fall into the Home Improvement Trap

Remember when the only home improvement show on prime time TV starred Tim Allen and had almost nothing to do with actual home repairs?

Now home improvement shows are everywhere—Extreme Home Makeover, Love It or List It and Curb Appeal are a few of the dozens of reality shows that let us watch people turn their “ordinary” houses into dream homes.

Reality TV to Real Life

This isn’t just entertaining television; it’s a way of life.

We spend hours surfing Pinterest for design ideas. We spend entire Saturday afternoons wandering the aisles of IKEA and Lowe’s. And we spend thousands of dollars turning our homes into miniature palaces.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Americans spent $130 billion on home improvement projects in 2013. Yes, that’s billion, with a “b.”

Necessary or Excessive?

I understand that many home improvement projects are absolutely necessary. A hole in the roof, for example, is not something you want to overlook. But we all know a good chunk of that $130 billion isn’t going toward roof repairs. It’s going toward one creature comfort after another until we no longer have a reason to leave the walls of our home.

When did home improvement in the United States become an obsession—and an idol?

I’m not here to determine what is a reasonable home repair for you and what’s excessive; I’m just asking you to think about it.

I’m not trying to tell you how much money to spend; just make sure it’s carefully budgeted like anything else.

I’m not looking to give you a guilt trip about how your living space ranks on a global scale. I am reminding you to be thankful.

Finding a Balance

It’s good to make our homes safe, clean, peaceful places where families can live and play and grow together.

It’s not good to make our homes into idols, where precious time, energy and money are taken away from the most important parts of life—our relationships with God and one another.

I’ll leave you with the words of 1 John 2:15-17 from The Message. These are words that continually challenge me. I hope they’ll do the same for you.

Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father.

Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him.

The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out—but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.