Inside Out

There are a lot of decorations and furniture in this world. A lot of it isn't inherently fancy or impressive, but people have projects for that. Many of those projects take something boring and make it look downright awful. Which is like shopping at a thrift store and going out of your way to pick out clothing that looks worn, old, and like you bought it at a thrift store. Or worse, going to a resale shop that specializes in "retro" clothing and buying something used AND horrific looking for too much money. There's nothing wrong with buying inexpensive clothes (thrift stores, sales, outlet stores) or decorating boring furniture, but it baffles me how people think these things look good.

I used to want to be an interior decorator. The way I saw it, I had what I needed--artistic sense of style, ideas for budgeting, I could work for myself, and I had been walking into rooms thinking about making them fancy my whole life.

I realized that this career move would be a mistake. The main reason was that I began to realize that everyone's taste is different. Everyone thinks their taste is best, and sucking up my opinions to somehow meet the needs of my clients made me feel like I was compromising a code of ethics. I was something holy, and I refused the idea of letting complete strangers make a mockery of their homes. Also the reason I generally hate the show Trading Spaces.

The house I grew up in was beautiful, but it was that way because my mom kept its charm and transformed each room. She also spent a lot of time at the hardware store where I'd stand in the paint sample section and stare at all the gorgeous colors. I don't know what my mom saw when she walked into an open house with a "for sale" sign, but I saw curtains, pictures, furniture, and the works. I loved our house though, so it took a long time for us to really pull up our roots.

What made me truly comprehend this was my mom.

She's an eclectic decorator, but not in the same way I am. Years of putting up drywall, finding stained glass, and texturizing the ceiling took its toll on her. When we moved into the house she currently lives in, the previous owners had gone about making it homey. To me, homey, is another term for homely or dorky. The kitchen had hokey tiles. The den was the color of dying dandelions. I ended up with the baby room, which meant that I had sponge painted fish on my wall. Not overtaking the room, just on one or two walls. Enough to get under my skin.

My mom hates painting, so when I begged her to let me paint the room, I was told I wouldn't get any help and that I'd have to move out all my furniture. Where!? We'd just moved so there was no place to put anything. My room was my sanctuary. I didn't have any out of the ordinary ideas to change it without paint. I had to hide the fish, so as a teenager, I covered the majority of the fish with whatever looked cool--magazine ads (I also wanted to do that), comics, calendar pictures, mirrors, stickers, and free posters (I used to get a LOT of those). Now everything is pretty much taken down. The fish are still in mid-swim.

Meanwhile, my mom decided that anything she liked could go in the backyard. When we went to Mexico, we acquired a metal, turquoise sun. It looks FANTASTIC. She put it on the wall in the backyard. Then she added a bust of Ceasar to conquer the other side of the yard, metal drink holders, an angel bird bath, a wooden carved plant holder that looks like Gandalf the Gray, and cement stepping stones.

My biggest complaint was that Ceasar and the Mexican sun existed in the same backyard universe. "This does NOT go together!" I exclaimed. "Especially with the lattice right next to it!" However, my mom is not keen on being told how to do things, so her response was that when I moved out, I could decorate however I wanted.

It didn't matter to her that the house looked hodge podge. She wanted cool things, but she wanted them to live in chaos like a Picasso, Van Gogh, M.C. Escher, Frieda Kahlo, and Keith Harring pictures all in one. While all these artists are interesting individually, I think they would riot if they knew they all had to live in the same space without some sort of interesting/artsy way to keep the peace.

My husband will vouch that incongruent decorating sends me into freak out mode. I wish there was a better word for my style, because I feel like eclectic has a bad connotation connected to what I mentioned above.

I troll the architecture, design websites, and magazines. It's just something I love to do. Some people read, but I look up homes and decorating ideas. Occasionally, I yell at the internet, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? THAT LOOKS TERRIBLE! YOUR WALLS ARE GRAY, PROBABLY LIKE YOUR SOUL!" Or "Really?? Frame upon frame with NOTHING inside? Yeah, that looks awesome. Because frames were made to be stripped or glued in a weird collage!" But the web didn't make it. It's merely a messenger. Thus, it's adept at being in zen neutral and ignoring your request. Don Draper is right, the universe is indifferent.

Someday, I will have the house of my dreams and probably a child that has an aversion to my taste. At which point, I will tell them to go live with Grandma.