Given that I’ve been a disciple of the Lakeland catalogue since the age of 19, I’m always slightly forlorn that our home never looks as good as I’d like.
People fall into four ascending categories where housekeeping is concerned: absolute slobs; clean but untidy; tidy but grubby (or “Fur coat and no knickers” as my Gran would disapprovingly have put it) and Anthea Turner.
I’m a “Clean-but-untidy”. While visitors may have to step over three pairs of Crocs, a sleeping cat and a broken umbrella to enter our home, I take comfort from the fact that you could literally eat your dinner off my bathroom surfaces. I also have a thing about spotless plugholes and dishwasher filters - unfortunately places that visitors don’t tend to inspect, unless you insist, in which case they tend to look awkward and suddenly remember a dental appointment.
By contrast, most of my friends are Tidy-but-Grubbies - it all looks great, until you go to move something in the bathroom and find it is welded on with soapscum and rust. An old boyfriend’s stepmother was a prime example: her house could have been featured in Country Living magazine, but after two years we found out that she didn’t bother changing the sheets between guests, relying instead on a few squirts of Febreze. The thought still makes me shiver.
I own a brilliant, tongue-in-cheek book called Feng Sh*** by Anna Crosbie, and I’ll leave you with some of her tips:
· Bookshelves make an ideal holding pen for miscellaneous chores – items you intend to file some day, return to the shop for a refund, or post to your cousin in Australia.
· Buy a coffee table with a lower shelf designed to display posh, oversized photographic books. Use the shelf to create an 8ft³ living sculpture entitled “I think my car keys are in there somewhere”.
· Every home needs a pinboard on which to display menus, eclectic business cards, expired supermarket reward scheme vouchers, inspirational recipes and mystery post-it note phone numbers. Cull the contents only when drawing pins become dysfunctional.
My house is looking a lot better since I had lodgers. You see it through someone else's eyes.
ReplyDeleteFor house envy, I find Bodrum is worse. Too much white painted wood in bathrooms, and Orla Keily (is it?) faux-reto mugs. I feel repelled and attracted at the same time.