Book group last week was once again, most excellent. We read chapter three of Making Home by Sharon Astyk and finished early enough that we were also able to discuss it. The chapter was about creating a working home as opposed to a showcase home. You know what a showcase home looks like. We see them featured in Better Homes and Gardens and House Beautiful. We watch HGTV and Martha Stewart for tips and ideas. The houses are immaculate, the color and arrangement of everything so perfectly right, nothing is out of place, there is no clutter, no pet hair, no dirty dishes in the sink or stains on the carpet, everything looks brand new or fashionably antique and expensive. So very expensive. Most of us don’t have homes that look like this nor can we afford them. But that doesn’t keep us from imagining ourselves into one or trying to emulate the look and effects on a more affordable scale.
For Astyk, there is something inherently wrong about a showcase home from the perspective of sustainability and a post-fossil fuel economy. Because a showcase home is a home that does nothing but consume resources, not just in time and money but also in material and energy costs. A showcase home is not an earth friendly sustainable home. We need to try and change our mindset of what constitutes beautiful.
And so Astyk proposes the idea of the working a home. A working home is a home that is lived in. There are muddy boots on the mat and scratches in the wood floor. There are buckets of tomatoes sitting on the kitchen counter waiting to be canned — no expensive arty ceramic bowls with perfect fruit no one is actually going to eat. There are things happening in a working home because people spend time there, cooking, gardening, working on projects of all kinds, living.
It is not that one can’t pay attention to beautiful things in a working home, but that more often than not, the beautiful things are useful and functional things too. A working home is one that serves our needs rather than a home that we serve.
The group discussion was very much a confession of “I feel guilty because…” as we all talked about our homes and their very un-showcase qualities from the garden tools scattered everywhere to the dandelions and prairie plants in the front yard, from the patchwork quilt in progress on the dining room table to the kid’s toys spread around the living room. We all admitted to apologizing to people “for the mess” or having a cleaning frenzy before inviting people over, hiding as much evidence as possible that we actually live in our homes and do things there.
We also talked about how we’ve gotten better at not feeling guilty, how we’ve learned to see beauty in unexpected places and wished we could get our neighbors to see it too. And we talked about how we’ve stopped inviting into our homes the people who are offended by how far away they are from the centerfold of House Beautiful. Nonetheless, we still have lingering doubts and worries about not being “normal.” It’s ok and only natural. But it is worthwhile to keep swimming upstream against the cultural current that tries to convince us we should be striving for a house that is merely inhabited rather than lived in.
Probably because of the way I was raised (by academics) I never thought my home should look any certain way. Our first homes were apartments, and then a townhouse we shared with a third person. When we moved to Ohio, we bought a house and have lived here ever since, mostly with children and cats. The first time we had much nice furniture was last year, when I brought it home from my mother’s. We enjoy her pretty things, but we certainly use them. I did buy some pretty wooden coasters when I was in Hawaii, for one of her tables that I don’t want to see ring-stained from drinks being put on it (we’ve never had furniture that really required coasters before).
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Jeanne, lucky you to be able to avoid the home decorating frenzy. I have too in many ways but there are family members who clearly disapprove that I don’t have fancy china and waterford crystal and expensive gew gaws to dust. Thankfully they live over 1,000 miles away and rarely come to visit.
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(laughing) well, I do have waterford crystal and fancy china (from my mother and grandmothers) and we bought a fairly inexpensive china cabinet to keep it in (local Amish oak). We use most of it, though! The only thing that keeps me from using it more often is that it has to be washed by hand.
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LOL, oops! But you didn’t buy the crystal and china to make a show of it and I assume you don’t get snobby about it 🙂
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I think the key is what people perceive as traditional concept of beautiful. My mother ran such a pristine home and everything was a task there…no crumpled sheets, no dirt on the floor. After a point it was almost clinical. Maybe thats why my own apartment is very basic and simple…I do not have too many “thing” except books and crockery, both of which are in constant use. Otherwwise the apartment is sprawling with simple open spaces and while at times there is an urge to “preetify” it, I know for fact that once I do that I may be trading in comfort for traditional perfection!
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cirtnecce, yes, agreed! Falling for that traditional perfection is exhausting. I suspect it is women who have more guilt and difficulty with it than men.
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I agree completely!
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I so agree with this. Another sad thing is the concept of ‘outdated’. My husband and I bought our furniture in the early 1990s, and dark wood is now unfashionable. I have modern accessories, but refuse to replace good furniture, or some pictures and ornaments that hold happy memories. I think its so sad when people are made to feel they have to have blank homes with no history.
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I agree! I don’t recognise the show home/working home dichotomy Astyk seems to be writing about, because I don’t know anyone whose home fits into that show home category – or only insofar as they try to keep it cleaner and tidier than I do. Most people’s homes have to be functional, and can’t afford to buy fruit that they’ll never eat.
What I agree with is your point, Michelle Ann, about fashions in home decor, they seem ever shorter lived and a lot of people do get rid of perfectly functional furniture in yet another pointless form of over-consumption. And I agree that homes should have a bit of history and personality.
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Oh, I mean ‘and THEY can’t afford to buy fruit’ – meaning the people, not the homes. I’d like to see a house buy a pound of apples!
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Helen, I knew what you meant but it would be interesting for a house to buy fruit 😉 I know a few people whose homes are show homes. Interestingly, they all tend to be baby boomers and the older they get the more relaxed they’ve become probably because they don’t have the energy to keep up with it any longer.
Yeah, the whole home decoration industry is crazy! The idea that you should change everything every year or two is so wasteful. I’m all for painting walls a new color every 5-10 years but to replace drapes and furniture and rugs and everything to whatever the latest fashion is, wow, no thanks.
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Michelle Ann, oh my gosh, yes! Astyk somewhat addresses that by talking about how we are told our homes are supposed to be “stylish” and fall into categories like “country” and “modern” which we constantly have to update as the idea of what those categories mean changes. It’s ridiculous.
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Around holidays, it is interesting to see the home dec blogs list items (and prices) in their beautiful vignettes. Whew! A small vignette adds up fast. And storage for all the seasonal displays? It takes a lot of effort to keep those homes on display all the time; I don’t have the energy. I would have loved hearing the discussion (and confessions) on this chapter! 🙂
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jenclair, oh the holidays! That’s even crazier! We didn’t even think to go there. yeah, I’ve seen those gorgeous holiday spreads in magazines with all the garland and lights and beautiful ornaments and it is pretty but all the work! No thanks! And yeah, where do you store all that stuff when it isn’t Christmas or Easter, etc? No wonder storage rental facilities are having a boom in business!
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this past Christmas we got so many catalogs with things like quilts especially for Christmastime that we started a running joke about having an entirely separate “Christmas house” that we’d go to for that season and then leave uninhabited the rest of the year. It really makes you wonder about the one percent, doesn’t it?
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Ha! Christmas house! It does make you wonder about the 1%. they generally have many houses and servants to take care of them so they don’t have to. Which would mean you could just tell Jeeves you’re coming in two weeks so put out the Christmas decorations and you wouldn’t have to take them all down afterwards either :0
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Magazines drive me crazy with their articles on how to create the perfect ambiance for for each season, treating home decor as a fashion statement. One month they tell us to go grey and then two months later, its blue we should be going for…… Seldom do these pieces think what its like to live with all the stuff in the photos.
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BookerTalk, home as a fashion statement is definitely where things have gone and it’s just crazy. I don;t know how anyone could keep up with it or why they’d even want to!
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After 40 years and having recently downsized I must admit we are stuffed with ‘stuff’ despite getting rid of a lot, and as I am always doing things in the house, knitting or sewing and books everywhere – it’s never going to be tidy. When we viewed our house before buying it, it was so minimalist that it felt like sensory deprivation! My mother thought that daughters were for doing housework, as soon as possible, before school age – and that puts you right off it! She also re-decorated every year and had summer and winter curtains so everything was constantly changing.
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pining, being made to do housework before school age, yeah, that would put a person off! How did your mom manage to redecorate every year and not be exhausted? Makes me tired just thinking about it! I feel like I would be quite comfortable at your place with all your books and projects 🙂
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She got my dad to do the painting and wallpapering! You would fit in well here, but I’m sure you would find our garden too small.
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Oh that’s funny! I suspect your garden is much larger than mine, plus yours looks out onto woods and mine looks at an alley and other people’s garages!
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This is excellent, I agree with it all. There are books everywhere, drawings scattered all over the floor, seeds sprouting in the corner, untidy craft bags, toys, and ‘projects’ in the sitting room. This is definitely a working, lived in home. And we try to source our furniture sustainably (vintage, or plain old second hand). Did you talk about sustainable cleaning products or energy sources? I love your sustainable book group!
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Maggie, I love the sound of your home! We did not talk about cleaning products or energy sources, but we have talked about energy before. There are several people in the group with solar panels and one person says she doesn’t own a clothes dryer. A few of us are trying to wean ourselves off using a dryer which as you may know is a big energy hog. I need a new roof on my house in the next year or two so we are investigating getting solar power at the same time about which I am very excited. It’s really nice to have this book group full of people who are great resources!
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This is a very interesting topic. I would never clean if I didn’t have company, so I try to make sure we have guests coming over every couple of weeks. I love living in a clean house, but I don’t have the time to make it that way (and I’m one of those people who pre-cleans before a cleaning service comes, so it’s just not worth it to me!).
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AMB, I do like a somewhat clean house especially since I suffer from dust allergies, but things don’t get really clean very often 🙂 You’re one of those people? LOL, my mother-in-law does the same thing and I asked her once about why she cleaned before the cleaner came and she just stared at me with an appalled look on her face. It was pretty priceless.
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It sounds like a wonderful discussion, and very therapeutic! I fret way too much ab out my house and compare it in my mind to others’ houses (or my idea of others’ houses!) It’s something I know I need to work on! Maybe I should read this book.
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Laila, I know, right? I do that too, imagine everyone else’s house must be so perfect and beautiful and really they are not much different than my own. It’s hard to break free of that though!
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