My apologies

I'm wondering, do we apologize too much or do we not care enough in the first place that we have to apologize?

Let me explain.

I have a friend that every time I go over to her house, she apologizes for how messy it is. It never bothers me. She has two kids and works full-time, so there's not much more time for housework.

Well, today she stopped by unexpectantly and saw how messy my place is at the moment. I get so embarrassed when people stop by without notice, because I admit that most of the time my apartment is not as neat as I want it to be.

I wasn't going to apologize, because now we're even that both our places are messy. However, I wanted her to know that I wasn't proud of my messy place so I said I was embarrassed that she saw it!

Then I start thinking, should we really apologize too each other for messy places? Is it really that big of a deal? Who cares if our houses or apartments are messy? Cleanliness is great, but is messiness that big of a deal sometimes?

Or instead of apologizing, should we really just take care of our stuff better so that we have no reason to apologize. Our house growing up wasn't messy, like ever, so I don't think my mom ever had a reason to apologize for it. Should we all just start caring more about stuff ahead of time so that we don't have to apologize for it later?