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'Clean House' and Clutter

Clips from the "Messiest Home 2" episode of "Clean House."

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The stars of the show remain vibrant, punchy, with plastered-on smiles and tan makeup. Brunetz, Iseman, Suhr and a team of production people transform the kitchen into a '50s-style, mint-green Donna Reed paradise; the bedroom gets the sage-green mission-style treatment; the guest room is done in pale yellows, with a bed that can transform into a crib, should there ever be a baby. The living room is done in earth tones. All the dog-pee carpet has been replaced by wood-laminate flooring. All the cat poop has been removed from the hole in the closet. The house now smells of retail, with aesthetics that were out of the Wheelers' economic reach. The attic has been finished with sky blue walls and remade into home office space. A flat-screen TV is mounted in a creamy tan living room. All Mindy can do is cry.

As quick as it came, television packs up its trucks and leaves the Wheelers in a cleaned-up world, a bit bewildered and alone now in their lifestyle reboot.

Facing Reality TV

A month goes by. Phil and Mindy are sitting in their still-clean living room on a June evening. The kitchen still looks neat, and more human -- with groceries on the shelves, and a casserole dish soaking in the sink. Mindy gets on Phil's case if he leaves the change from his pockets on the dresser overnight. She fears the encroachment of clutter. The bed is made, the closets are still organized.

Upstairs in the attic, however, it seems the mess is beginning anew.

Because Phil and Mindy couldn't part with everything, they were left with a few dozen Rubbermaid tubs filled with their junk, which Mindy has been slowly going through, which in turn has started a mess, which Mindy swears is not a mess but a plan, as soon as she gets it sorted. She and Phil have been going to yard sales, and Goodwill, looking to replace some of the things they lost. "Stuff we need," Mindy emphasizes. "My wooden spoons. I don't know what happened to them, but they're gone. My good pieces of Tupperware . . ."

Phil says they're going to make new vision boards and dream bigger.

Now comes the part about being on television. The episode airs in a few days. Mindy knows that people will get online and talk about how she and Phil look, how they talk, what they say. Phil is embarrassed about how they were living "before." The message forums on the show's Web site can be a vicious arena. "I'm really nervous," Mindy says. "I understand they want good television. I just don't know if we're going to come out looking good or looking like idiots."

"Regardless, it was a free remodel," Phil says. "That's the price we pay."

The price they pay is that their house will always be "The Messiest Home in the Country," and they will be the people who lived like that, and the episode will always seem to be on, rerun after rerun, until a worse house comes along. Television comes into your life, fixes it, makes you Queen for a Day.

Phil and Mindy go on and on about how it's changed them. It still smells faintly like fresh paint, too, little wafts of what rolled through here.