Not My Style

Twenty one years ago, we bought a "fixer-upper" house. We're still fixing.

The good news is that it's starting to show. We spent years with a house full of kids, and I'd rather send them to camp and take them on vacation than get new flooring. Now that the "baby" is halfway through high school, though, we have a bit more time and money to put into the house.

I've spent a lot of time in home improvement stores, furniture stores, thrift stores and between the pages of decorating magazines. There's always good ideas to be found, but there's also those things that, no matter how many times I see them or who recommends them, I just don't like.

Don't take offense if you like every one of these things. I'm not saying that you're wrong. I don't think there is a "wrong" except in matters of morality. And, I'm very clear that I'm the one out of step. Nevertheless, none of these things gets me excited in any way.

1. Throw Pillows

I know; I can tell you all the reasons that they "warm up a room," how easy it is to "switch out your look," why people like piles of them on their couches, beds, floors - I just don't like throw pillows. They're uncomfortable; the first thing I do when I'm on a piece of furniture that has them is take them off. They just don't serve any purpose for me. The family room set I own now came with co-ordinating pillows, and the only time I've ever used them is when I'm sleeping on the couch; they're big enough to be used for my head. Otherwise, I toss them on the floor.

I remember learning how to make throw pillows as a kid. I enthusiastically made a bunch of them - and gave them away. I liked making them, I liked how they looked - I just didn't want them.

And don't get me started on cost! Good gravy! I once said something very unpleasant out loud when I saw a $245 tag on an 8x8 pillow.

2. Carpet or Rugs

This is more an aversion to their upkeep than to their look. I hate vacuums. HATE them. They are roaring monsters marring the peace of my home. Plus, they usually kick up enough allergens to make me deeply miserable, even the expensive ones with HEPA filters. And carpet needs vacuumed all the time. You can barely breathe on a carpet or rug without needing to clean it. Yuck! From an allergy and asthma sufferer's viewpoint, there is no way to get all the irritants out of carpet, even shampooing it. More yuck.

My dislike of carpet probably solidified in my last house. It was a darling house with a great layout - except for one thing. The living room and dining room were combined (a "great room"), and carpeted. I had two toddlers when we moved in. There is NO WAY to keep carpeted dining room floors consistently clean with toddlers. Even ordinary foods like crackers were a nightmare. Don't get me started on yogurt. Yes, I tried plastic mats. Have you ever met a small child who keeps their mess on the mat?

When we bought our current house, we almost immediately started ripping out the carpets. There was no way in the world that I wanted over two thousand square feet of carpet.

People thought we were crazy. After we put vinyl floors in our children's bedrooms, they really thought it. My niece reported to her mother, in puzzlement, "They put kitchen floors in the bedrooms." We got lots of questions as to why. We heard lots of, "Won't it be loud?" After many years and accidents involving diapers, vomit, smashed fish tanks and spilled nail polish remover, I am happier than ever that we put in the vinyl. On carpet, it would have been a nightmare. On vinyl, we used paper towels and were done. The worst was actually the polish remover, which ate a few tiles. We took those out and put in new tiles - done.

I also heard lots of, "But you're laying down rugs, right?" No. I did not rip out carpet to put in rugs. "Won't it be cold?" and "Don't you want softness underfoot?" puzzled me. No and no.

We have vinyl, laminate and wood. Eventually, all the hated carpet will be gone. Hallelujah.

3. Candles

I like the theory of candles. I like making candles; when I was a kid, my mom bought several candle molds and big slabs of wax, and we made lots of candles. We kept some, and we gave a lot as gifts. I love the look of candles. I like having them for emergencies. I just don't like burning them.

My friend Linda explained this succinctly: "Of course. You're a parent. All you see is an open flame."

That sounds nice, of course, but I didn't burn them when I was a kid. When I was in my teens, my brother worked for a while at a candle factory. That Christmas, we all got candles. Mine was gorgeous; it had seashells embedded in it, and a scent with a name like "Windswept Seashore." When my brother came to visit about four years later, it was still on my shelf. "You're supposed to burn it!" he said.

My sister gave me taper candles and candlesticks for my first Thanksgiving with my husband. She was terribly disappointed to hear that I put them on the table, but didn't light them. "You were supposed to have a candlelight dinner!" she said.

My son just found an Advent candle, with 24 marks on it, that someone gave me as a gift years ago. I've had it so long that the side of it that faced the window has faded to a very pale pink from its original cardinal red. "You're supposed to burn it!" he said.

I like the look of it when I go to people's houses and they have masses of lit candles for a party. I would just never do it myself.

Maybe it's the fact that lovely candles end up as misshapen lumps after you burn them. Maybe it is the open flame. I don't know. I think they're great; I just don't burn them.

4. Artificial Scents

My youngest has never met an artificial scent that she doesn't like. Perfume, air freshener, incense, potpourri - she loves it all. She would live in a constant cloud of it if she could. When I told her over-scented self that no one should be able to smell her perfume unless they were hugging her, she said, "What would the point of that be?"

Even when I enjoy a scent - those cinnamon scented pinecones at Christmas, for instance - I don't want to live with it. It's too much. It's like having a favorite song playing 24 hours a day. Pretty soon, it's not your favorite any more.

"Mix it up!" "Get one of those fresheners that changes scent every two hours!" "Get the lighter, more natural scents." "You'll love this product!" I've heard it all. I do not want products with scent in my house. I don't like them.

I'm not crazed about it - I don't ban scented soap, cleaning products or my daughter's perfume - but I don't seek them out. I'm just not interested.

5. "Stylish" Anything

I cannot stand articles or individuals who tell me about the value of being stylish or "keeping it fresh" or "updating your look." If it is in style today, it will soon be out of style. I am not going to constantly replace my stuff because what's popular has changed.

Besides, why in the world would I decorate with someone else's taste? I do not understand what I call Conviction By Consensus - "Other people think this; therefore, I think this." It just looks like Groupthink to me, and I don't "get" it.

Of course, I was once told that it was "self centered" of me to make decorating and food decisions based on the idea that "I like it." To choose something merely because I enjoyed it was viewed as a very bad thing. "It's like you're saying that you're better than everyone else."

Um - NO. I'm saying that I'm living my own life - decorating my own house, eating my own food, and, while we're at it, choosing my own clothes, entertainment, etc. You are living yours. Do you ask me to choose your furniture? Your clothes? Do you ask me to decide on your meals? Movies? Anything? No? Then why in the world should I put what others think about that paint, sofa, book, meal or hairstyle over my own taste? I choose to have things, people, events in my life if they make me happy, not if they make you happy. You get to choose for you.

Just by chance, it appears that I've chosen trendy kitchen cabinets for my kitchen remodel. They're white, which the magazines tell me is in fashion. People with lovely hardwood cabinets are being urged to paint them white in the interest of updating and brightening their homes. I like white cabinets - I like white anything - but I also like wood.

The magazines also tell me, repeatedly, that clear acrylic chairs are perfect in a kitchen. They "visually open up the space" by not being bulky or heavy looking. This is true. Still, I hate them. I am not fond of anything sleek or futuristic looking. I generally do not like shiny, either.

The magazines also tell me that mismatched chairs, dishes or silverware are charming. I am fine with that; I don't mind matching, but I don't need it either. Those same publications, though, tell me that the fact that my refrigerator (white), dishwasher (stainless steel) and stove (black) do not match is tacky and makes things look disjointed. So, mismatched chairs = OK, mismatched appliances = bad? Sigh. I can't get into that mindset.

This is why I don't shop with other people.

Don't worry, I'm not thinking terrible things about you if you have throw pillows on your acrylic chairs in your white cabineted, carpeted, scented room. I probably admire a great deal about your rooms. And your clothes. And food.

Just please, don't get bent out of shape if we do things differently.

The Pirate Bathroom

"I'm going to decorate my downstairs bathroom in a Pirates of the Caribbean theme," I said.

There was silence on the other end of the phone. Then my daughter said, with hesitation, "You're kidding... right?"

My oldest daughter is stylish, chic, elegant, appearance conscious - all adjectives that do not apply to me. Her home is tasteful and coordinated, with mostly new furnishings. My downstairs bathroom has been out of commission for years, and the idea of having it redone delighted her, but the idea that her mother, a grown woman, would deliberately choose a theme park ride as decorating inspiration did not sit well with her.

"No, I'm not! I'm serious! It'll be great! I'm already shopping at thrift stores for decorations!"

"Oh, Mom."

This bathroom is now my favorite room in the house. It makes me very happy.

(It is also a point of pride with me that Pirates was one of my favorite rides going back to the early 1980s. While it's fun that pop culture is embracing them, some of us loved the whole idea before it was cool.)

Our house was built in the early 1970s. It originally had 2 bathrooms, one downstairs and one upstairs. The original owners added onto the house, so we now have, among other things, a 3rd full bathroom off of the master bedroom.

A few years after we moved in, the downstairs toilet started to leak, so we stopped using it. Then the sink leaked; we stopped using it. Finally, the tub started to leak. We just closed the door and ignored the room for years. Hey, we had two more full bathrooms. We had limited money and a house full of children. Don't judge.

Eventually, we started tearing things out. We did it bit by bit until we hit a real stumbling block - the tub. It was a cast iron tub/shower enclosure. It had been set into place before the walls were built, and it was too large to fit through the doorway. We were stumped - how did we replace a tub that we couldn't remove? We closed the door again, and pretended that the room didn't exist for several more years.

Then, my feet needed operated on. OK, they'd needed it for a long time, but we finally had youngest children who were teens capable of taking care of themselves and me. When my doctor first suggested it, my oldest kids were in elementary school, and I had a one year old; bed rest was not going to happen. The younger kids were now also homeschooled, so we'd rarely need to leave the house while I spent the projected 4 to 6 weeks off of my feet.

But, that meant a working bathroom on my ground floor, since going up and down my stairs would be next to impossible while I recovered. We had to get the bathroom up and running before I could schedule surgery.

We finished demolition, including sawing the old tub and shower in half. Yeah, that was interesting. We tore out the water damaged drywall. Finally, we tore up the rotted, splitting floor. The room looked like this:

My husband intended to do most of the work himself, but between his 12 hour shifts and life in general, this was not a good plan. A friend helped us get to the point that we then hired a pro to install everything and finish the room. Instead of a tub, we went with a handicapped accessible shower.

God bless talented contractors!

I was in such a hurry to paint it. Of course, "hurry" is a relative term. My almost 15 year old had never used the bathroom. Then my husband installed the flooring.

Normally, I like white walls and white blinds, maybe with white curtains over them. I know, very institutional and bland. I like it anyway. It's restful. If I add colors, I want to add blue, any shade but navy, and other pale colors. My daughter's room is a pale pink and my son's is a pale gray. Both are so light that they're almost white. The upstairs bathroom is white with blue and green sponge paint, and an ocean theme, with my collection of beach sand in decorative jars (yes, I collect beach sand), shells, and a shower curtain with dolphins and palm trees.

Downstairs in the new bathroom, I went with a totally uncharacteristic color palate. I wanted amber, ruby and deep brown. I wanted it to look like it could belong below deck on a pirate ship, or in Disneyland. I wanted the feel of a storage room heaped with treasure.

I'm a competent stage technician in many jobs, but my area of expertise is set dressing and prop making. The last show that I got to "dress" was A Christmas Carol, and I loved it. When my kids have had proms to attend, I dress the photo backdrop in our bedroom studio to match the theme. I've done "Arabian Nights," "A Night to Treasure," "A Night at the Museum," "A Night in Paris" and more with things I have on hand anyway. I'd also been collecting things specifically for this bathroom for a long time. That ring of iron keys is one of my favorite purchases.

There's a lot of memories in here. The beads are from trips to Disneyland, Disney cruises, and my niece's 20s themed wedding. The ornate silver piece holding the coins and gems belonged to my mother. So did the silver goblet. The amethyst is from my rock and mineral collection; so are the onyx goblets and the marble globes. The egg shaped boxes were gifts from my oldest daughter. The jade elephant is a childhood gift from my brother. The shiny rock behind it is my sample of silicon that I used while teaching K-3 geology. The Egyptian figures were things I bought just because I liked them, and they ended up being used in my son's archaeological dig project for our homeschool co-op. I bought the carved parrot in Nassau.

I don't have a medicine cabinet, so I use the cute box.

I'm not a stickler for historical accuracy unless I have to be, so this room isn't a period piece. If it was, I wouldn't use my son's Lego set, or the photographs we took in the Disney ride. (Those are printed on metal, to keep the humidity of a bathroom from being an issue.) The print of a pirate ship was a gift from my middle daughter, as was the plaque with words on it. She used the metal trays when she catered a dessert buffet at a wedding.

I originally wanted an oval mirror with an ornate, gilt frame, but the mirror came in a set with the vanity and sink. I'm OK with it.

I love this bathroom. I love that it allowed me to get the operation that I needed, but I also love just looking at it.

A pirate's life for me.

Am I Blue

When I was a kid, I had fairly clear ideas about the color different rooms should be. No room should ever be green. Kitchens should be yellow – it just seemed sunshiny and breakfasty and cheerful. Bathrooms should be pink. Pink seemed like soap bubbles, shampoo and powder puffs.

(It's worth noting that I've never had a yellow room, or a pink one. Or green, for that matter.)

Blue has always been my default setting, my "go to" color for just about anything. It still took me a long time to notice that, given a choice, I'd decorate any room, and any occasion, in blue and white.

When I was a newlywed, the hot colors in home fashions were slate blue and mauve. This was a switch from the formerly hot colors of mustard yellow, avocado green and chocolate brown and, in my opinion, a big improvement. I loved the gray-blue and dusty rose colors that everything seemed to come in. Still, I tried not to overdo it, knowing that what's hot now is embarrassingly outdated tomorrow.

Geese were also hot. My first kitchen featured ceramic geese wearing big, floppy blue bows. I loved them. (They made my best friend want to vomit, but hey, it was my kitchen.) I had wrought iron hooks shaped like geese in my living room, and I hung heart shaped candles from them. They went with my painting of teddy bears in big hats and old fashioned dresses. Yeah, yeah, I know, it's causing tooth decay just to read about it. I like cute and charming. Deal with it.

My dishes were ivory stoneware with white and blue designs featuring, yup, the geese with bows.  My flatware had blue handles.

One Christmas (when we were several years past the newlywed stage) the woman in charge of our church's annual Christmas dinner decided to mix up the usual planning. "This year," she said in our women's meeting, "I thought it would be nice if we got to eat off of real dishes, with real napkins and tablecloths and everything, instead of paper plates and plastic forks." She passed around a signup sheet, so each woman who wanted to could sign up for one or more tables. We'd bring the linens, dishes, silverware, centerpieces and anything else we wanted. "I think it'll be fun to see everyone's decorations, and get a sense of what it would be like to have Christmas dinner at your homes."

I raised my hand. "Is there a color scheme, or any theme beyond Christmas?"

"No, no. Just set the table however you would do it at your house. Don't go out and buy anything new! Use what you already have."

I was pretty excited about this idea. I signed up to do one six foot table, with settings for eight.

 I wanted to see how everyone else would do their tables. Maybe someone would go with one of those silver tinsel trees as a centerpiece. Maybe someone would have a feather tree. Someone was sure to go with all out glitz, gold and silver everywhere.

When I showed up at the church to do my table, only two other women were there. I had somewhere else I had to be, so I hurried to set my table.

I lay down my white lace tablecloth, the one that had been on the cake table at our wedding. It was what we used for all special occasions. Then I put blue placemats, my blue and white dishes, blue handled flatware and blue napkins. For a centerpiece, I used my blue and white stoneware pitcher set in its matching dish. I had an arrangement of bluegreen artificial spruce, with frosted pinecones and tiny blue and silver packages, that I put in the pitcher. Instead of a runner, I had blue and silver bead garlands and globe ornaments that I ran down the center of the table. It looked exactly like it would have at my house if I was going all out for company. I loved it. I couldn't wait to see what everyone else did with their tables.

Every other table in the whole room was done in ruby red and deep, pine forest green. Every other table, including the ones set up for the potluck buffet.

Wow.

We all know people who simply must stand out, at all costs. They are the kids who'd rather be in trouble than feel ignored. They equate "ordinary" with "worthless," and will do anything to be seen as unique. I am reminded of Louisa in "The Fantasticks" pleading with the Almighty: "Please God, please – don't let me be normal."

Then we know people for whom conformity is everything. They never, ever want to stick out as doing something differently than their peers. They are sure that being the same as those around you insulates them from ridicule, judgment or mistakes. They must have up to the minute fashionable clothing and possessions.

Then there's me. I am sure that I am commonplace and my actions predictable. Then I emerge into the real world, where my Christmas table is an icy, pale blue island in the midst of matching jewel tones and Santas. I had not sought to either conform or rebel; I simply expected there to be more variety.

In the magazines I read, there's quite a bit of holiday variety. One magazine described a woman's color palette of lemon yellow and lime green as "a twist on the traditional green and gold." I saw a spread in which a woman did her home in pink and pale yellow for Christmas, even buying poinsettias in those colors instead of the traditional red. Any color combination can be adapted to the holidays, right? Besides, what's more wintery than snow and ice?

Frankly, blue and white is the perfect combination for any season. Think spring; forget me nots, robins' nests filled with pale blue eggs, fluffy white baby bunnies – tell me you couldn't decorate for the perfect Easter brunch that way. Summer is a no brainer – sand, sky, water, seashells, sailboats. Fall is perfect for denim, navy blue flannel, wool sweaters, plaid blankets and plaid shirts. Winter looks positively Dickensian in deep blue velvet and lace.

A friend recently moved into a new house, and wanted to keep the fresh paint the sellers had used. Both children's bedrooms were blue with white trim. She'd gone with sailboats in her son's room, but was having a hard time thinking of anything for her daughter's room. "It's just hard to make it look feminine," she said. She'd gone with a Peter Rabbit theme, tying the paint into the blue of Peter's jacket. For a preschooler, as her daughter is now, that sounds adorable. My youngest daughter had a Beatrix Potter theme in her first bedroom.  I immediately started thinking, though, of a theme for an older child. It would be easy to stay with the same nautical theme as in her brother's room. Artwork featuring 19^th or early 20^th century women and children at the seashore in floaty white dresses and hats, or charming sailor suits, with the homes in the background featuring intricate white painted gingerbread trim, would be charming. Anything pearl, abalone or mother-of-pearl would be perfect, as would seashells. Or, she could use a garden theme, furniture and accessories featuring the look of a white picket fence or trellis, accessorizing with lots of silk morning glories, hydrangeas and delphiniums, and maybe a mural with a cottage or a castle.

I didn't tell her that. I worried that I'd sound like a bit of a buttinsky. I hate it when people get overly involved in others' choices.

Besides, we've all seen that my taste is not reflective of everyone else's taste.

No one said anything about the Christmas table, either positive or negative. I didn't get any patronizing compliments, nor was I subjected to the lecture about how, "I didn't think we'd have to spell it all out for you. It should have been obvious." (I've gotten that lecture a few times.) As far as I know, it didn't bother anyone. Still, I can't quite get over the fact that everyone else seemed to be on the same page. Is there a code?

Just so you know, if you ever ask me to do any decorating for you, you'd better like blue. Or issue very specific instructions.