It might never be seen in a magazine, but your home should be home of the year, every year, to you. Let’s see what kind of home we get when we mix in a dose of toddler and a dash of humor.

This was a few years ago, when we were gathered ’round the television, where Little Lady was watching an episode of Stuart Little. The kids on the show had entered their house for a Home Of The Year contest sponsored by some fancy magazine.

I turned to my wife with yet another one of my way-too-brilliant ideas. “Why don’t we enter the Home Of The Year contest?” I asked.

My wife looked around in horror. “What? With this place?”

Little Lady, just over two years old at the time, was looking for the green crayon. “Sure,” I replied, obviously missing something. “Why not? It’s a great home.”

“This place is a certified mess,” my wife said in frustration, as she started slipping the videos back into their sleeves. “What magazine would call this home of the year? Dump Monthly? Trash Can News? Oh, I know – Bad Housekeeping?”

Read also: The ultimate home makeover.  Wow!

Little Lady emptied the crayon box on the floor. “Oh come on,” I answered. “This is a wonderful home full of love and joy. See all the drawings taped to the wall?”

“In the Home Of The Year, there are no crayon drawings taped to the wall,” my wife explained with just a hint of patience. “There might be an original Rembrandt or Van Gogh, or perhaps an exceptional imitation. It would be placed in an elegant frame.”

Little Lady found the green crayon. Now she needed a sheet of paper on which to draw.

Home of the year or house of the year – which would you prefer? http://t.co/cJ8VFS4HA1 | pic.twitter.com/TwSusyF0Mi

— David Leonhardt (@amabaie) November 25, 2013

What makes a house a home?

“I don’t know,” I hesitated. “Rembrandt and Van Gogh don’t sound very homey. I suspect you might find them in the Museum Of The Year contest.”

“Just look at this dust!” my wife cried. She blew on the top of the television set, which temporarily vanished into the haze. I think it’s time to buy a vacuum cleaner from [insert highest bidding vacuum cleaner brand name here]. (That’s called “product placement” in Hollywood. Except that Hollywood tends to place tire-squealing Porches and Mercedes, but that would probably make this “home of the year” even messier!)

Read also: How we fix things around our house with duct tape.

Little Lady emptied her bookshelf with one fell swoop, but still could not find paper on which to draw.

“OK, so it’s dusty,” I admitted. “If we dusted more frequently, we would spend less time together and it would be less of a home.”

“The Home Of The Year contest Committee really does not care whether we spend time together,” my wife said. She headed toward the kitchen in search of iced tea, nearly tripping over a bag of clothes along the way. “They just want to see a spotless house with all the classiest decorations.”

Who needs paper, anyway? Little Lady found a blank spot on the wall, and started applying her green crayon.

“Well, that might make a good House Of The Year, but a home is a place to live in. It needs to exude love and comfort, not cleanliness,” I said.

Apparently, I was still clueless. “Homes of the year never exude love, and certainly not comfort,” she explained, ironically picking a copy of Good Housekeeping up from the floor. “They are showcases of a woman’s ability to keep a house in immaculate condition with absolute precision … despite the presence of a male creature around.”

Ouch. Little Lady gleefully switched to the red crayon. “Well I don’t know anything about keeping a house tidy, but if that’s what the magazines want, why don’t they call it The Janitorial Olympics?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s too hard for them to spell,” my wife replied, smiling. “But they don’t, so just get used to reality. We simply do not have even the slightest, tiniest, most minuscule hope of ever winning the Home Of The Year contest.”

By then, Little Lady had drawn three stick figures on the wall. “My home,” she shouted, running to give Mommy a big hug.

I didn’t need a magazine to tell me we already lived in the home of the year. And if the dust doesn’t kill us off first, we will live there every year.

Home Decorating Made Easy

Now, just for the sake of argument, suppose you wanted to decorate your home in some other motif than crayon scribbling. Get the Home Decorating Made Easy manual. It’s not as easy as scribbling with crayons, but even I will admit it looks much classier.