A New Day

I just noticed blogger has a place to insert a personal movie, and am excited about getting one ready. I thought it might be fun to do a basic decorating thing. I would like to point out that decorating was not always called decorating. It was home making. Today it has been made into a big deal, but it used to be a way to create a home that made it friendly and comfortable. I wrote an article about this earlier in this blog, on how you can "decorate" without appearing to decorate. It is the way you arrange things and clean them and the atmosphere you create. I am working on putting labels on all the articles so that there will be a decorating category, but this is taking some time. The story I wrote a few months back was about "decorating without decorating." It was how we used to arrange things before we even heard of the term "decorating." Someone had commented that her husband did not like decorating and wanted everything left alone, so I showed how cleaning could be decorating, and arranging could be decorating, and putting things away could be decorating. For example, you see a bare spot, and you put something there that you need to store, whether it be a basket or a trunk. You clean off your kitchen cabinet surface and you place a bowl of lemons there. Emily Barnes, in her book, "The Spirit of Loveliness" even goes so far as to suggest that after you thoroughly clean the fridge, you put a jar of parsley or celery in water and set it there to greet you when you open the door. Yes, even a cupboard or a fridge can be decorative if you clean and arrange things right. I showed how a lamp and a photo in a frame could be part of the decor. Everyone has these things and if they are chosen with care and arranged thoughtfully, they are part of decorating. You can clean the bathroom and carefully fold a towel and hang it up. That can be decorating for those who don't know how to decorate. That is how it begins.