I picked up a women’s magazine in a friend’s house. It fell open to an interior decorating article, which of course I read. I’m kind of decorating-challenged. What some women do almost instinctively I really have to work at, so I always enjoy books and articles on the subject.
One thing this article kept stressing was the importance of little homey touches to make a house feel “lived in.” Personally, I would assume that any house containing people would automatically look lived in about three weeks after the decorator left with her last pay-check. But maybe not. Maybe there are people who need help to keep their environments from looking cold and sterile.
To help people like this (none of whom, I assume, are reading my blog) I looked around my house for “homey touches” that let you know that my house is “lived in.” I found:
- A glass jar on the window sill containing two halves of a dead bumble bee and half a banana. (Supplies for the afterlife?)
- A Lite-Brite work in progress, spread across the kitchen floor.
- Sixteen shoes consisting of six pairs and four singles jumbled in the hallway.
- An eraser stuck full of straight pins and with eyes drawn on it posing by the pencil sharpener.
- Plastic dinosaurs eating each other in the houseplants.
- Two yellow marbles rolling around at the bottom of my waterbottle.
- Three tubes of toothpaste, nine toothbrushes, two hairbrushes, and two soaking wet towels strewn over the bathroom sink.
- All the boards but one taken out from under the bunks and forming matchbox car ramps in the boy’s bedroom.
- About sixteen flowers cut out from magazines and taped all over the headboard of my daughter’s bed. Scissors, tape & scraps left on her night table, of course.
- Shredded scrap ends of yarn, snipped with scissors and strewn like confetti over the doormat, steps, and front sidewalk.
- About twenty rubber bands snapped around various places (door knobs, handles, stuffed dog necks, lamps, books, videos, cups, and the baby’s wrist.)
- Hemp rope tied around the legs of one of the beds.
- A few miscellaneous odds and ends: a christmas ornament hung from a nail on the wall, a rolled-up hammock in the living room recliner, a cup full of pencil shavings on the wardrobe in the hall, half a hot dog in the diaper bag, tweezers hanging from a blind cord, a plastic snake coiled up under the computer desk, etc.
Sometimes I feel like I live in an I-Spy book. You never know where you’re going to come across the barbecue tongs, an earring, the screwdriver, two grapes, or a knob off the stove. One of the more common exchanges you hear around this house is “Mom, where is my…?” and the response, “Oh, wait- I just saw that somewhere. Let me think…”
If you wanted to be negative you could say that my house is messy and chaotic. But look on the brighter side- it’s also a treasure hunt! You never know what you’re going to find if you look under the couch cushions or empty the pockets in the laundry. For about a week the house was infested with acorns. Every time I swept or tidied I filled my pockets with acorns. I threw out every single one I saw, but still they rolled out from under book cases and peeked out of shoes. They appeared in the dirty dishes and floated in the bathwater. I could have sworn they were breeding in the walls like cockroaches! But one day they just disappeared, and I haven’t seen an acorn in months.
I like to think of it as one of the mysteries of children. Things appear and disappear. Everyday objects get turned upside down, used as vases, put on heads, decorated with stickers, or made into caverns for lego robots. Few things stay where they’re put, but in return things that you had forgotten about suddenly appear. And things you wouldn’t have noticed in their proper place suddenly speak to your heart or grab your attention. The little sock, the blue bead, the single crushed dandelion, a cut-out heart, a penny, a ring.
Childhood isn’t one big thing- it’s an accumulation of little things: little handprints, little moments, bubbles, kisses, melted candy in pockets, sand in tiny blue shoes, little dolls and little rocks, tiny treasures that look like junk to adult eyes. Childhood is bottle caps and chocolate coins, pink shoelaces and barettes that look like stars, sparkle lip gloss, yo-yo strings, live frogs and dead spiders, soap shaped like a seashell, holes chewed in the bread bag, cheerios under the rug, tears on long eyelashes, and a small hand wrapped around your finger.
Little children are experts at living life to the max, being in the present, and taking it one day at a time. Maybe the reason these young, hip magazine people are having trouble with sterile decorating is because there is very little real “home” in their homes. In lives full of jobs, restaurants, night clubs, travel and social climbing, there’s no room for children, the messes they make, and the life they bring. And though sometimes I may pretend I envy them, with their nice clothes and nice cars and clean houses, I don’t really envy them.
I’ve made my bed and I’ll lie in it, cookie crumbs and marbles and spit-up and all. Yeah, definitely looking lived-in!
"Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation."
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