Do you get the urge to redecorate

Page 16 Something EXTRA September 1979.

Silver Linings

by Terri Andersen
Every so often do you get the urge to redecorate? Does the arrangement of your furniture start to bore you? Do you look at your home with a critical eye and decide it's time for a change? If yes is the answer to any of the above questions, you're in the majority. Which explains why there are so many magazines on the market ready to give you decorating advice. But have you ever tried to copy a room you’ve seen in a magazine? Or have you ever found one that would fit the room you’re thinking of redecorating? Some designers seem to get carried away with a motif and don't know where to stop, until the room looks like a clutter of bargains from a string of tag Sales. When they mix rattan of all shapes and sizes with lattice work and knick knacks that cover every inch of space, then add gaudy prints and enough plants to imitate a miniature jungle, I get claustrophobia. No doubt they expect you to have a live-in maid who does nothing but dust knick knacks and water plants.
Then, of course, there's the other extreme in decorating magazines. You know, the ones that show a 40x60 living room which contains three couches, none of which has to rest against a wall, and there's still enough room to spare for a game of tennis. Most likely there are rooms like that in some palatial homes, but in the average ranch house? So until I find a picture in a decorating magazine that fits my life-style and pocketbook, I’ll have to be content with being my own interior decorator. Not long ago I decided that if I couldn't re-do the living room I could at least move the furniture around to get a different effect. I spent the whole day trying out different arrangements, only to realize that the way it was set up originally worked best for that particular room. All that furniture moving for nothing. Then my husband walked in from work and greeted me with “Hi, hon, what did you do today?” “I spent the whole day moving the furniture around,” I replied, leaning against the wall in an exhausted pose. “You did? It looks the same to me,” he countered, and I knew I might as well bear my exhaustion in silence. I should have waited until he was home to move the furniture with me, then maybe he would have understood the aching muscles along with the frustration of wasted effort I was bemoaning. Another time I did find a new arrangement I liked, only to have everyone dropping hats, books and assorted papers on the floor where a table once stood.
To satisfy these creatures of habit and save my sanity, I had to put the table back where it was or develop lumbago from picking up all the things they dropped on the floor without even realizing the table was absent.
Every now and then I make lists of all the things I’d like to have done to make our house an ideal home....a thorough cleaning, all junk disposed of, roof repaired, yard landscaped, interior and exterior painting, repair cracked window pane, fix the steps on the side porch, etc, etc, And I just found out how to accomplish the seemingly impossible. Friends of ours, after years of putting off all those jobs, managed to get every job on their list done and make their house almost perfect. The reason? They were selling the house. Isn’t that always the way?