Saturday, April 18, 2009

The White Room

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/EWgbY)
There's a blog I watch via Google reader that serves up some deliciousness when it comes to decorating/crafting and things possibly a little kitschy. I've been exposed to all sorts of little off beat items through Holly Becker's Decor8blog and watching the process of decorating her teensy little German flat on the Haus Maus to fun. Her Etsy, Take 5 Tuesdays are definitely to watch!

If you want a gift that just a little bit different than anything else, Etsy is the place to go shopping! Ohhh the goodies to explore.And I'm not just saying that because that's where you'll find Anne's Addictions :)

But, I have a problem. All these lovely designer rooms and accessories, all this neat furniture and floorings...they are in the majority white, white on white, white on white with a splash of colour, or beige (ish) at most.

Seriously, who can live like that? Well, besides the single, or partnered with OCD that is. Do any of these designers have kids? And if they do with these lovely white rooms, can they let me in on where they send their kids to school, cause I want me some of that.

I'm just not that neat. Though, damn it, I want to be. I want big windows, whitewashed walls that my artwork would stand stark from, or just waiting to be the perfect canvas to be accented with the palest seafoam green glassware I'll get around to collecting just for my white house.

I find how dark the houses in Florida are quite depressing. (Would you believe I went to a show home in a new subdivision and as I was entering two different groups were complaining of how the house was too bright inside? 'They didn't even need to turn the lights on!' - I loved it, of course! Just not let's double our mortgage, like it.)

White is perfect, clean; a blank canvas waiting for something to happen, perhaps, but I have to wonder, given that white is such a blank page, do people find the white on white décor relaxing? Can they function and find inspiration amongst a singular colour palette?

Maybe it is all those things; a blank canvas of space and openness like where the aliens take the good guys for study when they get sucked up by the mother ship. The sterile room for you to empty the your head space that's been frantically filled with the detritus of lives lived too fast and too chocked full of everything as we move around in our day.

But then again, it might be a logistical nightmare of "All right, WHO put their feet on the couch, and ohmigawd, put their greasy little fingers all over my beautiful white walls!". An OCD sufferers perfect trap.

Being that I love colour (strange I know from a woman who wardrobe is mostly black and brown), would I wake up one day to find my lovely stark-white room is no longer, I've in fact filled it up with colour to a point where it's just as busy as the rest of the world outside my door? And as I ponder that, I have to wonder what that says about me...

Alas, given the way my son tends to abuse the walls and doors, and serve himself up toast that he liberally coats in honey while he's on the couch, I've got another 10 years before I can consider a white room all of my very own. Until then I think I'm just going to have to suffer with the clutter and mess and walls grimy with fingerprints interspersed with periods of perfection (heh, a bit like my mind, really).

Although... there is that toilet sitting there. A splash of white paint, a little shelf, a little vibrant blue glass bottle or two to go on the white shelf above my white commode, and a stunning piece of artwork on the opposite wall and I just might have my perfect room for relaxation...

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