I follow a few interior design and home decor accounts on social media. I get tons of useful tips for our home, but exposure to stuff I’m encouraged to buy and watching people renovating perfectly good looking spaces to satisfy a trend, can feel exhausting. When I follow accounts and I find my to do or to buy list ballooning, then I have to reassess. How can I still give myself the joy of browsing through and appreciating good content, without feeling the need to buy stuff and update our home?
The Buzz
An adjective I have come to ignore when listening to interior design accounts is “timeless”. The word has become useless. I remember a time when experts labeled granite as timeless. However, this is no longer the case. I see DIYers painting their perfectly good granite because they want a white “marble-like” countertop. Or if the designer has the budget, they get rid of the stone countertop because of the outdated granite look and color. Or maybe the perfectly good countertop has a rounded edge. Designers preferred the rounded edge cut for countertops before, unlike the straight edge we see most often now, so in this case, out the granite goes.
I understand the beauty of cohesive design and a home decor refresh. I love the idea of taking care of what you have and what you own. But at some point, caring and nurturing can turn into an endless quest to add more. For instance, an empty wall becomes a problem. So we add built-ins. But the built-ins now need stuff, so you buy vases, books, and all sorts of knickknacks, to fill up the space. Another scenario is switching to light-colored wide plank hardwood floors from dark ones. Once you have the hardwood, next is to get rugs as a design element to pull together a space, in essence covering the floors and making it harder to clean.
One of the weirdest content I have come across is paint color of the year. At one point, pink dominated, and then black, and now it’s green. Some of these colors might look great on screen, but not so much in person. Moreover, after painting, this can mean changing the furniture to match the new paint.
A Totem
I find that to get the best of out of home design content without feeling lacking or the need to constantly change is to have a totem. A totem in general is an object or animal that holds meaning and a symbol. In terms of home decor and design, I find my totem to be a YouTube real estate video of a home in Glendale, California. It’s a symbol of simplicity, function, and utility. This video reminds me to keep my color palette simple, declutter, and that there’s beauty in open blank spaces. Just because wood panels are trending and look cozy, it doesn’t mean I need it. I believe this totem works because our home already has some similarities to it, and that helps. Of course I have pictures of my own home, but seeing this, is like seeing what is mine from another person’s point of view—fresh and new.
If you’re feeling like me when it comes to interior design, I hope you find your own totem to remind you of what you truly want and the style you prefer. Variety and exposure to tons of ideas is great. But it requires us to be steadfast about what we prefer or risk wanting everything and feeling like you have nothing.
A Side Note on Totem
In the movie Inception. A totem is used to know your reality or whether or not you’re in someone else’s dream or your own. In the movie, a totem, is something you can hold in your hand. Holding it is something only you can construct: how it feels, how it weighs in your hand. It’s a reminder of the real you in a made up world. This article is very much inspired by this concept.
