Another beautiful morning. Another great walk with my husband.
It’s beautiful here.
We’ve walked six days in a row and we’ll probably take tomorrow off as it’s Farmers Market day and Don has to get going early in the morning. I’ll probably mow the lilac side of the front lawn, so that will give me some exercise.
There’s much I could and should be doing around here, but all I want to do is sit on the porch and read. Maybe I’ll clean somewhere in the house this morning so I’ll feel as if I’ve earned my reading time – maybe the bathroom – my least favorite thing to do around here.
I’ve been thinking about decorating and the continual emphasis on defining one’s style. I’ve never understood this need to categorize something. Is it that it makes one feel secure in a style choice? Like, “country” or “mid-century modern” or “boho?” Does it bring comfort to conform to one style? Or maybe it’s simply that the home/apartment owner likes that style exclusively?
As you know, I like things eclectic and undefined. I think it’s much more interesting, because that lack of confinement within just one style allows the owner’s personality and passions to shine through. We’ve definitely become more eclectic in the past several years. Almost everything here is vintage/used; different time periods, different styles. We have an overall color scheme and I think I have a pretty good eye for pulling it all together. You can’t look around our house and say that it is anything definitively. It’s just us.
You could say it’s funky, I guess. I’m fine with that.
And hopefully, cozy. I’m fine with that, too.
I’m always bemused by the whole ‘boho’ craze. I’m of an age, you know, and boho is basically the way everyone decorated their dorm rooms and apartments when I was in college. It was an inexpensive way to adorn a space. Been there, done that. And I have a confession to make: I was never a fan of macrame, except when necessary as a plant hanger. Macrame wall hangings? No. Houseplants, yes. But houseplants are eternal and are not defined by ‘bohemian’ or ‘boho’ even though we see a lot of them in those spaces.
But we know that decorating styles recycle and eventually become the hot ‘new’ look.
Except they aren’t.
It’s all personal taste, of course, and that particular look was never my taste even when I was living it in the seventies. Neither was mid-century modern, because my parents decorated in that style. And just as my mom eschewed her mother’s style, I’ve apparently done the same. The difference being that I admire the lines of certain mid-century furniture and like to see how homeowners use it in their living spaces. (And I like decorating my modern dollhouse in miniature versions of mid-century furniture, but that’s another story.)
Anyway, I’ve always tried to dodge any sort of label, whether it’s about me, my personality, my reading choices, my political beliefs, my spirituality, or my home. I think labels are limiting and we’re all much more complex and interesting than that.
Just a little of what I’ve been thinking about on a Saturday.
Happy Saturday.
