Photograph by Harli Marten
My husband doesn’t understand me. This is not, let me reassure you, a plaintive cry for help. Nor do I need counselling or consoling. It is simply a statement of fact. Emotionally, he and I have great affinity and can talk about pretty much anything to iron out issues in our relationship. And that, of course, is of prime importance. But, when it comes to our home and how I choose to furnish it, that’s where the differences between us occur. He simply doesn’t “get” the way I like to do things.
When we married, I was already living here with my daughters and had been doing so for more than 10 years. I had thoroughly enjoyed having free rein to decorate and furnish exactly as I chose; with no one else’s wishes or taste to take into account. I had come to the house with a lifetime’s possessions and furniture from a much larger property following divorce: once the removal men had fitted what they could into the rooms, they began to stack the remainder in the garage. When they had finished, it was full to the brim – from floor to ceiling, front to back, with boxes and furniture. Clearly, much would have to go.
Over the next few weeks, I had to make many difficult decisions and step up to the fact that, much as I loved most of the things that had moved with me, there just wasn’t going to be space for them all. I duly organised a house sale and invited friends and friends of friends to come and peruse my possessions and buy what they liked. Much was sold or given away, until I was left with only the things I either needed or simply couldn’t bear to part with. These, and the feel of the house, dictated the way I began to decorate: in every room a piece of furniture, a collection of china or the colours in a painting would act as the starting point and be the inspiration for how it was going to look. Then I filled each room with all the other pieces that also fitted with the style.
IT HAS TO BE “JUST SO”
I love arranging objects that look good together, on a shelf, a table, the wall or a windowsill to create a group in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s a practice that seems perfectly natural to me because, I suppose, I trained as a designer and worked as a stylist. Most of my friends are similarly creative and think in the same way as I do. My husband, however, works in finance. He is very clever at a lot of things, but interior design is not one of them. He is not (quelle horreur!) really interested in how things look. So, my need to tweak picture corners because they’ve slipped out of alignment, or slide a vase 2cm along a shelf to its correct position is a complete mystery to him.
When we were courting, he would visit the house and appear perplexed by many aspects of the interior. On one occasion, he stared for a while at a shelf displaying some of my favourite floral china, vintage tins and cards. “Why do you have all these things?” he asked wonderingly “Are they family heirlooms?” I really had to think about my answer. It had never occurred to me to think about this before. In the end my answer was simple, “Because I like them”. Yes, one or two items are of sentimental value, but most have been collected over the years just because I saw them in one junk shop or another and simply “had to have them”. The way they are arranged is because they go together and I find the overall effect pleasing.
On another occasion, in conversation with him, I referred to the horizontal, lime-washed planking on the walls of the “snug”: the little room where I write. It is one of the first things most visitors to the house comment on because it looks quite unusual and is unexpected. I could tell by his blank expression he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. “Planking?” he said, mystified. He had walked into and through that room a thousand times (one passes through it to get to the kitchen) and yet had just never even noticed the walls and how they looked. This sort of thing just doesn’t register on his radar. Style simply isn’t a priority for him. What is far more important is how things work and, when it comes to furniture, whether it is comfortable or not.
FUNCTION VERSUS FORM
I know he would love, more than anything else, one of those armchairs that adjust, at the press of a button, so the leg support slides out and the back reclines. If it had a built-in drinks holder, so much the better. Then he could watch the weekend’s rugby to his heart’s content. “But they’re horrible!!” I cried when he first alerted me to this desire. “Yes, but they’re really comfortable. Why would you want chairs that are uncomfortable?” I argue that my sofas and chairs are not uncomfortable – they just don’t allow for the amount of lounging he likes to do. And they are a pleasing shape and look stylish.
It’s the same with our kitchen chairs. They are all old pine but were bought at different times from different places. They sit round a wide Victorian pine table and I love the fact that no two are the same – each has a slightly different back and legs. My husband complains that they are hard on the derriere and so I added some tie-on seat cushions; but the dog chews the corners of them, so they have had to go. When friends visited for dinner once, one of them commented on how nice the table and its mismatched chairs looked. I smiled at my husband with a look that said “I rest my case”. He raised his eyebrows and shook his head, totally bemused that a whole tranche of people, the like of which he has never encountered, all think this way.
AND ANOTHER THING
It’s not just furnishings that highlight the different way we see things. We were recently choosing a new car: it needed to be large enough to accommodate our cocker spaniel’s travelling crate, as my baby blue, Fiat 500 convertible just wouldn’t cut it. My husband tried to persuade me to get rid of the Fiat, saying that it’s totally impractical and we no longer need two cars. I admit this is somewhat true, but I cannot bear to part with my Cinquecento: doesn’t he realise it’s a design classic? In the end, the practicalities of this small car - it’s great for zipping about town and parking in small spaces – convinced him to keep it for the moment. Meanwhile, he studied the road reports on new, larger cars and tried to talk to me about top speed, acceleration, and handling. I couldn’t have cared less. “Why don’t you concentrate on all that” I countered “and I’ll grade them according to which I like the look of best”. His look of resignation said it all.
I realise I’m painting myself in a rather bad light here: it’s not that I don’t care about comfort or indeed, practicality, but just that I will never select anything based on substance over style. He, on the other hand will always opt for function over form. In the end, we’ve agreed that, like all the best partnerships, we have to compromise and meet in the middle. This way we epitomise the wise words of artist and craftsman William Morris: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful”. That seems like a pretty good premise on which to live our lives and keeps us both happy.
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Another brilliant article Susy! Do you find yourself hovering over your husband's 'stuff' just dying to tidy it up or at least 'tweaking'! I do!
Absolutely loved reading this article. I have one of those husbands too!! Love your Home Truths and can’t wait to read more.