Chippewa Valley 5ive for Women The Chippewa Valley’s Premier Magazine for Women!
Related Articles
Decorating comes easy for some, while others struggle with the basics of furniture placement and color choices. Then there are those of us who just do. I have no formal training—aside from a middle school Home Economics project where we created our dream house complete with carpet samples and a room-by-room floor layout. I loved that project! I would pore over my parents’ copies of Good Housekeeping and even the Sears catalog for inspiration and furniture photos to cut out for my “dream house.” It would be fun to see that project now; all I remember is a canopy bed with sheer curtains and a pink bedspread and plush shag carpeting. Oh, the seventies!
Forward 30-some years … I just do. I think I just have good instincts. If something doesn’t work, I try again. I can’t tell you how many changes I’ve put my dining room through. It’s a difficult room. There are doorways, a wall of windows, a fireplace, and a register heater to work around. Plus, you have to pass through it to get to the kitchen.
But I digress; the title is “collections.”
What do people worry about when it comes to decorating? As I pondered this, I conducted a very thorough and scientific study: I posed the question on my Facebook page. Impressed yet? You should be. I got a potpourri of answers ranging from misunderstanding matching to furniture placement and window treatment selection. The one that stood out as most concerning for people: collections. When is it too much? What’s the difference between a collection and clutter? What to do with it all?
Let’s tackle the too much question. The answer: when it goes from “Oh, that tiny spoon is so cute; let’s buy it so we always remember our trip to the largest ball of twine in America!” to “It’s time to knock out this wall and extend the kitchen into the garage so we have room to hang all our tiny spoons.” Who in Wisconsin needs to park their car in a garage anyway? After all, scraping and brushing snow off your car burns calories!
When does a collection become borderline hoarding? When you have to go to bed an hour early to clear off mounds of decorative pillows, you have too many pillows. When every flat surface in your home is covered by snow globes or picture frames, you may have too many. 
Start by paring down the collection. I recently went through all my Eiffel Towers and kept only 10 of my favorites. All the rest went. It wasn’t easy, but now seeing them grouped together in my entryway makes me smile instead of fear tripping and being impaled by 50 Eiffel Towers.
Know the difference between a collection and just gathering crap. I don’t need a t-shirt or spoon to remember going to DC. Instead I bought a replica copy of the Declaration of Independence that I photocopy and use as giftwrap.
Make your collections work for you. If you like vintage suitcases, stack them at the end of a hall and store your Christmas ornaments (or collection of Santas) in them. Any collection looks better when grouped all together. POW! Insert dramatic effect here.
To recap, keep only what’s important to you and get rid of the rest, recognize the difference between crap and a real collection, make it work for you, and group collections together for impact. Oh—and all middle school teachers should make students participate in a dream house project; you may be training a future designer.
