Well, here we are, Week 8 of the six-week One Room Challenge. We have made a lot of progress on the front half of our A-frame beach house. As a reminder, here is where we started…
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It’s Week 6 of the One Room Challenge, and as promised in last week’s post, we are not *quite* ready for the final reveal. I am excited to spend some time looking through the completed project posts of my fellow participants, but before I do that, a quick update on our beach A-frame project status:
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It’s Sunday night as I write this post, despite the fact that most participants posted their One Room Challenge week 5 updates on Thursday. Not me, though. I’m sitting on the floor of the A-frame looking at piles of stuff in every direction. Any of you procrastinators out there feel better about what ever it is you haven’t done?
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Hello there! Is 2020 over yet? Unbelievably, no. But there is some good news: twenty select designers along with a couple hundred bloggers and insta-folks are ready to spend the next six weeks distracting you from reality because the autumn edition of the 2020 One Room Challenge starts now!
For those non-design nerds in the crowd, the One Room Challenge was started forever ago by Linda of Calling It Home to hold herself accountable for finishing her own home decorating project. I’m sure none of you have ever had a room in your house that you started to redecorate (or even remodel) only to find months later that things aren’t quite how you wanted them. Me neither. Anyway, the gist of the challenge is that each participant has six weeks to “finish” their selected room.
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“If the Fab 5 came to our house, Antoni wouldn’t have much to do but Tan would go crazy with your closet,” my 8-year-old son told me yesterday while seeing no irony at all in his wardrobe choice of graphic tee and sweat shorts.
The twins and I have been watching Queer Eye together over the last week. “Wait, what?”, you say. Is that even appropriate for 8-year-olds? As my daughter would say, don’t judge a book by its cover. And really, that is the basis of the whole show. Every episode seeks to help people find their own confidence so that they can go out into the world and be who they were meant to be. Sounds a bit like the Hallmark channel? In large respects, it is. But so so much cooler. And with sometimes inappropriate to 8-year-olds but over their heads so whatever humor. We are totally on this bandwagon.
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I want you to read this quote from a 1986 New York Times article about the late design superhero Albert Hadley:
“While Hadley always has his design principles firmly in mind, he also understands that interiors are for living, and that they should be enjoyed by the people who live in them, rather than reflect an idea of perfection imposed by a decorator.”
For some of you, 1986 doesn't even register. I may well have said the article was from 1886. For others, 1986 was all about dancing to Madonna in your bedroom and Top Gun and posters on your closet wall. Whatever. Suspending your age for a minute, what was true about design 32 years ago is still true about design today. Interiors are for living. Albert Hadley understood that. It would behoove us to remember this idea in the age of Pinterest and Instagram.
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I missed last week’s update not due to lack of movement on our project but because of too much movement. I’m going to lay it all out there right now in a very non-gramable fashion. The juggling act is real. I’m barely able to keep up with my family and my work and this remodel. I’m definitely not ahead of it in the way that I would like to be. There are literally piles on my desk that have been moved from desk to floor to bed (because I have no office at the moment) to chair and back to the floor again since I returned from my double conference jaunt a month ago. It is a little bit like the cobbler’s children having no shoes. As I sit here encouraging you to clean things out and make the home around you the place you really want to live, I am constantly aware of the irony of my situation. This beige apartment is closing in on me almost literally because there is simply no place to put the stuff.
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If you have spent any time on Pinterest over the last few years, then you know something about minimalist décor. White walls, black and natural wood accents, simple furniture. Very clean and serene.
I’m sure that you have noticed something else about these serene white rooms because you have kids. And a spouse. Maybe even a dog that sheds. There are no piles. There is practically no stuff. You’ve wondered what the heck these minimalists do with all the crap that comes home from school. And where are the toys? Your house looks more like this than this.
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