Lately I've been getting multiple emails and comments to the effect that, “Help! My house is a mess and I don't know where to start!”
Well, Auntie Leila says, Start in Your Bedroom. Remember the Reasonably Clean House series? You'll find the posts on the sidebar. I got you through the whole house, but I started you off in your very own bedroom for a very good reason. Read and find out what it is!
At the end of this post, I'll give you a challenge for Thursday, so stick with me! Even if you are totally caught up in the election (I know I am, and check here for an update of our EC maps), the world will keep turning, and the house will keep getting messier. Hang in there!
First, I am going to show you what I did with the hydrangeas I dried in my kitchen.
Some of you asked what I do with these, and last week when I was realizing I needed to take my Easter garland down (we don't go into the dining room much, once we can use the deck, and I think that's obvious!), it became clear that I'd have to deal with the hydrangeas as well.
They are super pretty up there, but they start to annoy me a little.
Bridget, of course, was sorry to see them come down. That girl does not like change.
But what I do with them is this, pretty much —
See how dried out last years' bunch in this big basket are?
They look just like the ones outside! There is a charm in their papery brownness, but… on to this year's!
I shove the old ones down. Yes, just squish them. (At the very bottom of the basket is crumpled up newspaper. Under about three years' worth of hydrangeas!)
And then I stick in the new ones. The old ones help hold them up in place. Oh, it takes a certain kind of lazy genius to come up with tricks like this.
The basket goes in my room. It's a big room with this big blue dresser (it's from IKEA — the only thing in this room that I bought new — not for myself — and, for that matter, one of the few “bought new” things in the whole house, from when we moved in), and needs something a little high on top.
{If you want to know how I chose the “decor” in my room, read this post on how stuff settled here. Since there is no possible way I could ever commit to one particular kind of style, even given unlimited funds — not that I've ever tried that — I am perfectly happy to have things decided for me this way (i.e., mostly being given or finding free things). Then I can add hydrangeas and spray paint. I am not too bad at sprucing up random stuff.}
That little red box is empty because it holds my engagement ring at night. Every morning, I'm like, “Why, yes!” |
Maybe I am an extreme example of someone who takes literally decades to collect the optimal (to use that word very loosely) number and kinds of things to arrive at how my house looks and works.
But if you are struggling with what we will call, for lack of a better word, decorating your home, remember that for most people, it doesn't happen all at once. I also think that the most attractive environments don't come about because people intentionally set out to make things conform to some external measure.
The physical objects around us represent the layering of time and experience and serendipity in our lives, and arranging them brings the satisfaction of spaces that are pretty and useful — that please us, that enable family life on a higher plane than the merely utilitarian.
How liberating to see the fact that you may not be able to order everything new, or that things aren't matching, or that you aren't a character in a staged magazine, as a gift rather than an obstacle. If you are able to order things new, still — consider William Morris, rather than mere fashion, as your guide. He said that art is “man's expression of his joy in labour,” and of course, admonished us to “have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”
Suddenly decorating, which could easily become worldly and frivolous and wasteful, serves everyone around you in a deep, meaningful way, because it's now ordered to our loved ones' interaction, comfort, and happiness.
It's a gift to your creativity as a woman to be finding ways to make all sorts of things, especially humble things, more beautiful.
Do you remember our “Pretty Over the Kitchen Sink” challenge? And our “How Do Others See You?” challenge? It was so much fun to work out those little issues together, wasn't it? And you did so well. To this day, I click over to some of your posts on {pretty, happy, funny, real} and think, “I remember that doorway!”
To challenge you, let's make this week's {pretty, happy, funny, real} about one thing in your bedroom that you made useful and/or beautiful. Pretty up (and of course, clean out) your bedroom and tell us about it! Even one photo of one surface that you finally got cleaned up and looking good, or one before-and-after of a corner that's been bugging you! Or even just your start.
We'd love to see it!
Okay? Okay!
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