"There is a famous law of the physics that states that, with every passing day, the universe becomes more and more disordered; be in no doubt that this law applies equally to the home."

I believe Joanna Copestick may have been a fly on my wall when she wrote these words in her book The Family Home. Pleasantview Schoolhouse made mention of the title and I am so pleased to have located a copy. "Some books," the author says, "focus on specific aspects of decorating without taking into account the daily life within those carefully colored walls and thoughtfully furnished rooms." If you spend most of your days outside the home then this may not pose as much of a problem as it does for those of us who are living in our homes all day every day.

The web and the magazine stands are full of strikingly beautiful images of creatively appointed interiors. Shabby chic is one enduring favorite style.These spaces are often a virtual collage of texture, color, and vintage items. They photograph especially well as still shots and often feel far warmer and inviting than more sparsely adorned rooms. That is, until they are inhabited. The House Thinking bk I read last year pointed out that in practice these rooms often feel a bit claustrophobic and chaotic. Ms. Copestick recommends we "resist the natural inclination to fill every bit of space with furnishings, accessories, and clutter" thereby making "the job of maintaining order a great deal easier." 

Under-decorating does not have to equal sterile and generic however. Simple Scrapbooks magazine ran an article in their SEpt/Oct 2003 issue (which is not online) called Shabby Simple. Now obviously their focus was on scrapbook page design but the technique translates well to the home. They take elements of the Shabby Chic style and use them sparingly to create that vintage, one of a kind image but then showcase them with lots of white space. The purpose here is to give the eye a place to rest. Instead of ‘collage’, think ‘gallery’ and you have the best of both worlds. Remember that people will be an permanent part of your decor.

Lady Lydia has two excellent posts along this same line of thinking. One is STreamlined Home from April 16, 2007 in which she describes reordering her daughter’s home with ideas we can all use. The next is called Creating a Beautiful Home without Decorating.  This last one I LOVE. She has an unparalleled ability to describe a room, in such a way that you can both picture and long for it. She describes the homes of her youth saying, "We preferred everything to be very plain because it was easier to look after, an empty jar or tin can filled with wildflowers might be a centerpiece for a day and then the whole thing was tossed out. Some things came in colored jars and bottles so we kept them and lined the windowsills to see how pretty they were with light coming through them. Making a bed as perfectly as we could or setting a table as neatly and precisely as we were able, using a diagram from a cookbook, was as close to decorating as we got. The idea was to create a scene or mood by the way we displayed the ordinary things we used daily." Like the Family Home book she suggests, instead of purchasing more "stuff" to decorate with, you look at the items already filling your home and consider how proper cleaning and display of those things can beautify your rooms.

The Family Home bk appears to be written by a British woman and the rooms have a bit of a Euro feel with some in the IKEA genre and others more traditional. There are six real family homes displayed. Whether or not the particular styles appeal to you the advice is universal. Throughout all these sources is the advice to "remember how quickly dust can gather and only display frequently used items that have no time to turn into ‘dust me guilt-trippers."  This, along with my favorite advice: find new and creative uses for ordinary items.

You don’t need MORE, you just need to rethink what you have. It helps to remember that universal laws are, well, universal. Meaning that disorder thing is happening to all your friends’ homes too. <g> Our goal is to get up every morning with the firm purpose of creating order out of the chaos our children present us with. Better yet, to help them to do that as well. I am off to practice what I preach. Again.

: )