Your home reflects your personality so let it shine through!
My aunt Faye loves houses. She’s the kind of person who will drive by a beautiful house and stop to ask them if she can see inside. I was with her once…mortified…but it was very cool going into a stranger’s house. I’m not sure why Aunt Faye loves seeing the inside of houses; maybe it’s for the same nosy reason I do…I like to learn things about people. I like how someone’s home reflects who they are.
If you go into my brother and sister-in-law’s house, you will find a lot of kid toys and German flags and pictures of family and friends in frames. If you dig around (which I don’t but I’ve been there enough to know) you’ll find a cabinet full of cookie tins. You’ll find a lot of baking sheets. You’ll will find a lot of animals, inside and out. Somewhere in their closets you’ll find my brother’s State Trooper uniforms and military stuff and probably a lot of t-shirts related to German soccer. The house is not the type with everything in place. In fact it’s more like an explosion of life in motion. Without even knowing my brother and his family, you know the kids are #1, they value fun and life over chores, they love family and friends, they love animals, they have a very strong tie to Germany (my sister-in-law is from there and my brother was stationed there in the military). You know there’s some baking going on…serious cookie baking in fact….It’s the kind of place with a pulse.
Or you can go to the home of someone with a home for show; a home that resembles a furniture store show room with nothing personal, everything hidden. There is no pulse in these homes. The dweller is striving for perfection. This perfection can tell you that here lives a person consumed with impressing others or someone who is OCD or someone who is avoiding something in life. They focus so hard on keeping everything in check so they will not have to face something…themselves? Some issue? There is something painful there they can’t cope with. Some hurt. Something in the past they think they can fix by cleaning. There are things in their personality they don’t want you to know. If they have all the best kitchen equipment on the counter top (the mixer etc) but you open the cabinets to find nothing or minimal pots, you can assume this house is primarily for looks, to impress others. No real cooking goes on there. There are clues everywhere, even in a museum of a house.
I favor houses with a pulse…I like to see homes with weird collections and unique pieces of furniture and things that seem to have a history. When someone tells me that they admire so-and-so’s house because it looks “like a magazine” I yawn on the inside. What’s interesting about that, other than a fascination with perfection. Perfection (or the attempt to achieve it) is rather fascinating but ultimately a bore. The reach for perfection has its uses. Trying to be a perfect pianist or painter or writer or baker etc can improve your skills but you’ll never reach perfection…ever. Trying to be perfect at anything that is your true passion (and maybe it’s decorating) can be meaningful in its way. But striving for perfection without joy is like gorging yourself when you’re not hungry. Strive for pleasure over perfection I say 
So today I thought I’d share a link to one of my absolute FAVORITE sites related to homes….you get to see inside the homes of creative types: http://www.theselby.com/ these are the spaces I love and would want to spend time visiting.
Tags: decorating, houses with character, perfect houses, perfection
