Tammy Curtis, Publisher
We live in an era of perpetual choices about everything. From where to eat, what to eat, what type of laundry detergent to use, even what type of fuel to put in our cars. Every day we are faced with a plethora of multiple choice questions. It is no wonder so many Americans down some type of anxiety reducing medication to make it through each day. When we were growing up there were two styles of home decor and all had the same paint choice, flat white. One style boasted the lone picture hung on each wall, usually of a family member. The second option were homes in which the walls were graced only with bank or car dealership calendar enhancements to their match holders and crocheted hanging potholders. As I grew older, it became a little more complicated. Homes had an entire hallway of framed photos of every pose from the department store photo studio of every session since each child was born. It included a few who had gone on long before we were even born with varying sized and types of frames. The complexity continued into my twenties as we all strived to be the Home Decor Goddesses we had never been. We suddenly became deeply influenced by the color of the year. We were all in some type of unknown group in the pre-Pinterest years where we became decorators. I am not even sure how in a deeply rural America with only access to three television channels and no Internet we managed to know what these desired themes were. All that mattered was that we had blue glasses, salt and pepper shakers, burner covers, cookie jars, and dishes to match our ribbon wearing white geese If we were really the coolest of eighties ladies we also accentuated those with the contrasting wallpaper border, and carried the entire goose theme through to the depths of our kitchens… lining our pantry shelves with white and baby blue gingham. We were proud and in some odd way, felt refined in our new found style. When we finally built our new home in 2005, I was over the top about decorating it and planned its layout and wall decor for nearly a year. The paint color was the hard one but I was ecstatic when we finally agreed upon Mississippi Mud for our living areas and a cozy pale yellow for the kitchen. My grandparents came as we were working and I will never forget their words, “Are you going to leave it this dark and different colors?” I was slightly offended they didn’t love our choice. Grandpa explained“ White goes with everything and if you go to sell it you won’t have to repaint.” Still miffed a little I let his past professional life of working in a hardware store that sold paint, goin one ear and out the other. “Whitewalls? How boring. He is old and no one does that anymore,” I thought. We were refined and white was not part of that process. Then out of nowhere, the hunter green and burgundy came on scene. We all had to have it, like a bunch of sheep, we were drawn to it like a moth to a flame. With it came the required loud floral wallpaper enhanced by gold metal items, sconces and candles and our last names crocheted and matted. Angels flew their way into our homes during this time too. As we bore our children, we be-came Home Interior princesses. Many a husband lives today never knowing the exorbitant amount of money we spent insuring we carried the wall decor through nook and cranny of our entire home, including the before neglected bathroom. There is likely nota husband alive who hasn’t knocked a shelf with a figurine, some greenery and its neighbor the glass candle sconce off the wall attempting to make passage through a close area. This was also the era where it became vitally important that no one knew our secret. SHHHHH…We possessed, excess toilet paper-other than what was on the roll. It was simply uncouth to show your roll. We also did not like visitors to know our commode lid was very common and typically white. So being the crafty little beings we had become, we took the padded, lace enhanced photo album cover we had, previously perfected and extended the plan to the toilet lid. We put that sucker out there on display too. Thinking back, I am sure the sanitary condition of that thing was somewhere between a train station and elementary school bathroom. The layered floral custom lid cover set off the crocheted toilet paper topping doll who made her home sitting on the back of the throne, reigning over the entire room with her plastic beady eyes as each person utilized her facility. Somehow as hard as we tried to hide the distasteful tissue, in the absence of it, the one positioned on the throne always somehow knew to look under her dress. Somehow long after the gold framed gaudiness found its way to thrift stores across America and three thousand unneeded geese and angels were now singing quietly in the at-tic, the apple came out of nowhere. Joining her became yet another way for women across America to display their unique decorating skills. We were suddenly no longer required to have cookie cutter homes. Five other choices also came with choice A. in the mid-nineties. Holstein cows, sunflowers, roosters, chefs and grapes were debuted. We were thrilled we had choices and had passed the goose era and moved forward to an age where we could finally be “unique”. We were still slow learners and with as much vivacity as we had put forth during the great goose grind, we put equal effort into collecting one of each mass-produced item bearing the likeness of our choice A-F, and ensuring everything matched. Again, about five years later with the dawning of a new century a parade of cows, roosters, grapes, apples, sunflowers and chefs were off to their final resting places. I am sure in some last ditch effort to not force our husbands to repaint the barn red kitchen walls that took eight coats to cover, when we screamed for apples, came another wave. This is where, as a grown woman, I finally had a decorating awakening and broke away from the pack… sort of. I went wild, I went non traditional. I went Campbell’s soup kids, but I had to leave the before mentioned wall red or risk certain death. The fat faced cuties reminded me of my own two who were now in their late teens. Again, I did the famous creation of cluster as if it were some challenge to see how many items I could manage to get stacked and mixed with other things for an eclectic look. I always prayed my cabinets would hold the hundreds of items stacked strategically atop and not collapse. They did, but as the years moved on it truly became about simplicity and I didn’t want to take down and replace six dishwashers full of items twice a year only after photographing their placement beforehand. I wanted simple, but I still wanted color, and not red. This one took the longest. I finally got me a handy dandy bright green wall and did a citrus theme and cut back drastically on the wall and cabinet decor. As the half century mark knocked on my door, I finally realized what true simplicity was and heeded the words of my long-gone grandfather who said the problem with America is we have too much stuff and too many choices, and it complicates our lives like clutter. I got rid of everything except very few unique items to which I felt a personal attachment. For the first time, I went with one color through the entire house. Grandpa always told me what was wrong with America,(besides women had to go to work and the proverbial traditional family structure of his time collapsed and had to be redefined) was when industry boomed and created too many choices for Americans after World War II, the war in which he nearly lost his life twice. While choices are good, whitewalls in both homes and on cars were from a much simpler time, strangely enough, one as we get older, we yearn for. As evolution would have it, the white walled homes of the farm house era entered. If Grandpa was alive today, he would be so proud… because he had white walls. I don’t…YET
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