We own things but have hidden them
There's a Strange Planet comic where two characters have friends over. "Your home is beautiful," the friends say.
"Thank you," the characters say. Then confess, "We own things but have hidden them."
My friends came to stay and despite having joked with them about this exact phenomenon many times, I still did the thing. I shoved excess shoes into the spare room and papers into the nearest drawer. And so on. Soon I'll wonder where that stuff is and when I find it in random places I'll be confused.
Everyone knows we all have things. They aren't bad things. Just stuff. And we hide it.
In an effort to look nonchalant sometimes I even leave some stuff - stray pens, leaning towers of books, one of my many ice packs - to suggest I didn't tidy up.
There's a spectrum - people who visit weekly or more get a different, more laidback, natural experience. Then there's my mother-in-law on the most extreme end of the spectrum.
For the panic at the extreme end my wife is no help whatsoever. And it's her own mother! She always thinks the place looks fine. Her passive perception is very low. I can ask her to do specific tasks but she can't look at a situation and figure out those jobs herself. Which I think is the ADHD.
Long term, the main place we hide our things is the attic. My wife, who has never been in there, I think imagines an endless Tardis situation. I am very aware it is filling up. The fact we have basically a third storey of the house full of stuff we never use is bizarre to me. We do use some of it. But most of it hasn't been touched since it got put in there four years ago.
I've mentioned entropy on the dining table before. The dining table currently hosts my wife's new letter-writing workshop of fountain pens, inks, fancy paper, and wax seals. I said to my wife, I love this, but we need somewhere to hide it when people come over.