A Functional Adult's Decor

I have this one blog I read.  (Okay, I read a lot on the Internet.  Just go with me here.)  This blog is formidable.  Formidable and formidable, in the French, which to the French means just so great.  I'm kind of obsessed with it, because the couple that writes this blog feels like what I could be if I lived in a parallel universe where I really was a functional adult.

The amazing blog in question is called Young House Love; it's a home decorating blog by a young married couple. They and I have certain similarities and certain differences:

Similarities we share:

• In late 20s

• Married

• Blogging

• Went to college (I think)

• Lives in a residence

• Wishes home to be unique, personal, tidy, and attractive

Things true about them entirely untrue of me:

• Has small child (!!!!)

• Extremely energetic and hardworking

• Have blog with at least one comment during blog history

• Self-employed

• Owns their own house

• Has a home that is unique, personal, tidy, and attractive

I dare you to take a look at the projects they accomplish on a routine basis and not be impressed, if only by the sheer number of colors of spray paint they own without being taggers.  They are incredible.  They are Canonically Adult – so Canonically Adult that just reading their blog makes me want to lay down on the couch with admiration.

Though sometimes, it inspires a more motivated response.  One day, I mused, why can’t I do this?  Why can’t my home be precisely this classy and chic?  Why can’t I…

Okay, upon review of the various projects they do, I’m definitely not laying tile. That’s out of control.  And I’m not reflooring anything.  I could probably spray paint something to a different color, but I don’t have any fun but wrong-colored things laying around my house.  I could go buy something!  But stores are usually closed by the time I get home from work, and I sleep through all the garage sales on the weekend.

I then began listing all of the obstacles to my own home looking as whimsical, sophisticated, and clean as theirs. That took too long.  So I stuck with just the living room:

• Important decorating elements of living room include two stuffed dinosaurs, a Lego TIE-fighter, a remote-controlled car being driven by a Lego Stormtrooper with a Lego Darth Vader riding shotgun, a model sailboat being sailed by a small green stuffed owl

• Also there is this reindeer skin that Husband brought back from Finland one time, which I worry will make Santa angry if he sees it in the event he can fit through our tiny fireplace

We call it Dasher.

• Said fireplace has pink stains on the brick from time red Christmas candles dripped everywhere

• Various cobwebs that I can’t reach, and don’t want to try lest spiders leap out at me

• Contains a 6-lb bucket of Red Vines from the last time my mom and dad drove down to visit, and my mom felt that she needed Red Vines for the trip down, so she bought this bucket at Costco.  She apparently did not feel a similar need for the trip back up, since it is still here.  Friend K eats them occasionally when he comes over.  Also, half-empty box of candy canes next to it.

• A picture I just leaned somewhere because I have nowhere to hang it

• Cracks in one wall from the few years when the landlord refused to acknowledge the roof was leaking, and the wall swelled up with water

• Totally inexplicable water damage on the ceiling

• Husband won’t let me repaint the walls because he hates calling our landlord about anything, mostly because the landlord usually doesn’t answer unless we threaten not to pay the rent until he calls us back

These were some formidable obstacles, the mere listing of which exhausted me to the point I needed several episodes of The Big Bang Theory for rescuscitative* purposes.  But over the next few weeks, I occasionally saw an opportunity to make something a little nicer in the house and took it.  I finally hung up the picture frame that had leaned against an end table for four months.  I tried to hang up my work clothes as soon as I'd changed out of them - or, I tried most days.  And after we had a bunch of champagne corks left after a party, I put them in a Mason jar and put that in the bathroom.  It looks kind of pretty.

Yay.  Decor.

 As the above, minuscule steps show, I'm hardly a reformed home guru now.  As I type this, I am looking at two plates piled up next to my computer with PopTart crumbs on them, a Heineken coaster (brought by Husband from Germany six years ago), a lip gloss, and what I think is the install CD for my webcam.  But maybe there is some small hope for me yet.  
Maybe I'll convince Husband to let me paint over the cracks in the living room walls yet.  And actually do it, too. 

*  A real word.