I’m a visual person, but I’ve come to realize that the appearance of something is much less important than the story behind it.
My house is evidence of this.
It’s… eclectic.
We tiled our backsplash with something that looks more like a butter dish. Our couches and chairs don’t match. There are little homemade things cluttering every surface. Our Christmas tree is a lopsided mess of objects that mean very little to anyone outside of the room.
I’ve lined my office with books, and when I glance at the spines, memories spark.
I suppose that’s how I decorate: by wrapping stories around me.
I’ve grown to love the fact that I refused to spend that extra few hundred bucks on arm covers for my beloved blue swivel chair and that I had to call back years later and ask for them only to get a consolation prize of “very similar” armchair covers that don’t match in color, width, or texture; they’re ridiculous. But I laugh every time I have to pick one of them up off the floor.
My own fallacy, right there in the living room. It’s great.
The fireplace I tiled with a friend over a weekend — working ’til 1 am and then drinking on the patio until 5 am.
The built-in mantel behind the drywall we found by accident trying to hang the flat screen. And how we left it exposed for months, even though there were cracks big enough for mice to fit through. Me, chasing one around the living room and toiling over whether to kill it or set it free and how far I’d have to walk so that it wouldn’t find its way back.
Oh, and then that guy who finally redid our mantle who was frighteningly brilliant and possibly insane, the same guy that showed up at my daughter’s school board meeting years later and offered the school $100,000 on the spot, after meditating in lotus position for 30 minutes in the center of the room. When I pointed out a blemish in the wood he’d cut, he told me to fuck off. I sort of liked that about him.
Everywhere I look in my house (and my life), I see stories. Stories that I created by following a good feeling, however silly or impractical. And these stories come into my life over and over again.
Frayed edges, chipped paint, the hand-carved wooden zoo animals on the table outside my office that fall over at least once a week.
Far from perfect. Yeah, they take some getting used to.
But they’re so much more rewarding than a straight line ever could be.