Design for Your Life

Aunt Thelma's cabinet

My training in interior design was great. I loved what I learned and have enjoyed it since I left school. The problem with my degree is that I really didn't learn to design spaces with real life families. What I learned was to design for people who don't really live in their homes.

The best design advice I think I've ever gotten from someone was an organizational book. It said something to the effect that you put an item where you are going to use it, then you make it look the way you want it to look. That's the part I enjoy.

As I am rearranging different pieces of furniture in my own house, I am getting closer and closer to that model- putting things where I use them. The secretary that has been on one wall in my den for the past eight years has come to my bedroom to be used as my desk. Aunt Thelma's cabinet that has many different homes will move to the den. And I hope that the cabinet that houses a television that we haven't turned on in months will disappear completely.

Uncle Griff's Secretary

No, I don't have the latest style of furniture, nearly all of it is hand me downs. But I love it. Most of the pieces have a story to tell. The pie safe that houses our current homeschool work and actually sits beside the homeschool table was my great-grandmother's. I remember it at her house, then at my grandmother's house, then at my mother's house (where it had to be refinished because of a fire). Now it sits at my house, enjoying the life that runs by. The doors are opened a hundred times a day for a little girl to grab a hand full of crayons, or a stack of Bibles to be gathered for family worship, or a deck of cards to be retrieved for the latest magic trick, and yes, the stack of books that are training our school girls' minds and hearts.

So, I'm glad that I was trained to look at the latest trends in design in the 1980's. But I'm even more glad that I have learned to live in my home with my family and love the style we have grown here.