Homes magazines - musings

[innocent_lex]

If all you knew of the houses in this country you had learned from homes magazines, you'd think everyone had masses of space and no stuff. I do wonder at times if it's true all these people have no stuff or if they hired some massive storage shed while the photo shoot was happening. Or perhaps they just moved their stuff from room to room as needed. Or... everyone in the country is in fact tidy and organised and I'm just not. Hmmm.

Also, those dinky little pamphlets they include every so often that are always called something like 'the ultimate guide to storage' make the assumption that people have massive amounts of space for this wondrous storage. Apparently the most important items you should get include:
- a stylish room divider that's seven feet tall and six feet wide onto which you can artfully put a couple of vases, the odd antique book, and perhaps a photo of Auntie Maud
- a stylish church bench with coat hooks above it and cunningly disguised pull out drawer to hold your wellies, and which should only take up half the space in your twelve foot wide hallway
- a delightful desk with charming cubbies where you can file the two or three letters you get each week from Auntie Maud and your publisher, and which costs £1200
- a lovely pull-out cupboard which can hold a couple of loo rolls and new soap for those bathrooms where there isn't space to put a loo roll holder on the wall (but there's somehow room for a cupboard...)

Of course, it's possible I do have enough space for some of these things, and once I've dug through the stuff that's still all over the house even after I filled an entire skip up in November I might rediscover that space.

Comments

[sg1scribe.livejournal.com]

I have a radiator in my loo. I think it is very clever the way the radiator designer thoughtfully designed the on/off tap to double up as a dead loo roll holder. Of course, there is a problem when the next loo roll dies, because then the first dead loo roll has to be carried to the bin to make way for the second dead loo roll. Does the magazine have a dead loo roll storage item?

BTW - did you get my email about weekends? No one has responded and I'm feeling neglected, unloved, unwanted, and rather like a dead loo roll.

[innocent-lex.livejournal.com]

They have not mentioned dead loo rolls once, that I can recall. In fact, rubbish is not sexy and therefore not included in these guidelets, unless, of course, it's recycling - you're allowed cute bins for recycling, particularly ones that take only vegetable and fruit peelings (because that food is healthy as well).

And yes, I got the email. Must reply to it!

[sg1jb]

Hmmph. You feel like a dead loo roll? (uhm, just what is a dead loo, anyway?)

Didn't send any weekends email to me. No one sends any weekends emails to me. In fact, no one is sending me any emails of any kind. I'm the dead loo roll that's fallen off the radiator tap and rolled behind the toilet, out of sight and totally forgotten, left to moulder in the nether reaches of no-man's land until I disintigrate.

Anyway. So ... Weekends? Are you plotting getaways? I wanna come, I wanna come. At least, I wanna hear about them, in any case -- any chance you guys can do you weekends plotting in that other place, where those of us who can't come can be vicariously involved?

[innocent-lex.livejournal.com]

Please do come - Barcelona sounds like fun. And actually, there's no reason at all that we can't have lots of writing weekends and if you just happened to be in the country...

[jayb111.livejournal.com]

People who have no stuff probably have no books, never read, have no hobbies or interests, never work from home, and are very boring. I'm happy with my clutter.

I once saw the appalling House Doctor woman telling a family to take their books off their bookshelves because they looked untidy.

[innocent-lex.livejournal.com]

I'm generally happy with my clutter, until I can't find something that I know I just saw yesterday. And yes, even more unbelievable than people who have no stuff is people who have no books and don't read. At least, that's what I thought until I saw how many people in the UK don't read: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7178598.stm

The appalling House Doctor woman has a set of extremely simple rules which don't allow for people actually living in their house while it's being sold. It's frightening.