Manolo for the Home

There are few chores sadder than taking stock of the possessions left behind by an older relative forced by circumstance to move into a “home.” The things we gather over time define us in our own minds, but say something completely different to the outside observer. Some people–my mother, for instance–want everything to be new and flashy and modern. To them, anything vintage or outdated belongs in the dumpster.

Me? I like retro anything, even if it’s so kitschy as to be rather…ugly. I wouldn’t want a room full of kitsch, but a few crazy pieces of tacky history here and there can make an otherwise bland a room POP. People who visit say, “Oh my goodness, where’d you get this? My crazy old aunt had one just like it!” A ceramic cat or a crazy lamp really take people back…to spring vacations spent at the houses of grandparents…to their own childhoods. Everyone sees something different.

The story behind this photo and the ones that follow is this: I have a friend whose aunt is moving into a home, and it fell upon said friend to catalog the stuff left behind. His ladyfriend, Jennifer P., took pictures, and I found them to be quite moving.

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With apologies to those who live in the southern hemisphere, I’d just like to say thank goodness that spring has finally sprung. I was getting terribly sick of keeping my house hermetically sealed against the cold and dreary weather. Now that I can finally sit outside without risking hypothermia, I’ve realized that my complement of weather resistant furniture is woefully inadequate.

In fact, my entire collection is limited to two plastic armchairs and one tiny plastic table because the only outdoor space I had as of a year ago was a 5′ by 10′ bit of deck hanging in space. Now I have a deck that’s quite a bit bigger and also overlooks an entire yard, which means I’m looking for an upgrade.

In yet another moment of synchronicity, I was on the phone with my gram whining about my lack of weather-resistant seating surfaces when I found Ballard Designs‘ summertime catalog in my mailbox. I wasted the next fifteen minutes losing myself in daydreams of customizable umbrellas, intricate cast aluminum lounges, and faux bois planters.

So, yeah, it’s time to hose off the plastic and shop around for some good deals on outdoorsy accessories because $600 for a chaise isn’t going to happen any time soon.

Everyone has that short list of items they’d take with them to that hypothetical desert island that comes up now and again in conversation. Much of the time, those things special to us wouldn’t be of much use to us on that island (what good is a Kitchenaid mixer without electricity?) but we’d haul them along with us anyway. Human being are kind of like magpies that way, and more power to us. I think that our ability to imbue inanimate objects with emotional value is fascinating.

Here’s my list, which I put together just now. I didn’t let myself think too much about my choices because I wanted to see where my impulses would take me.

1. I try to keep an unending supply of petit fours in my pantry. Sometimes I buy ‘em, and sometimes I make ‘em from scratch. You don’t want to run into me on the street when I’ve run out. Little cakes…they are my crack.

2. My collection of Russian khokhloma kitchenware is important to me because it represents a connection to my heritage. Well, part of my heritage seeing as that I’m what one might not-so-politely call a mutt. In more courteous conversation I hail from “mixed ancestry.”

3. I always admired my grandparents’ collection of masks from different parts of the world, and now I have all sorts of masks of my own. Why do I like creepy faces hanging inside my house but hate the creepy faces hanging outside of other people’s houses? I’m going to guess it’s because mine are culturally relevant. I do worry that they’re going to scare the hell out of my kids someday!

4. My red Oreck upright rocks my socks — it was a hand-me-down from my grandparents, and thank goodness for that. Vacuums are way more expensive than I assumed they’d be back before I ever had a floor of my own to keep clean.

5. As annoying and yucky and mean as they can be, I adore my my quatro of cats. Did you think I was going to say “the litter box?” Having living beings around is, in some way, invigorating, if only because I find myself chasing them around the house with the spritz bottle.

I guess at my core I am a crazy, cake-eating cat-lady neat-freak who has a weakness for other cultures. Now tell me, what are the five things that you wouldn’t want to live without? And what does your list say about you?

I just happened upon a The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Staging your Home, which is how you know some concept has officially entered the collective consciousness. Naturally, there’s also a Home Staging for Dummies.

I only saw a single staged home when searching for properties around Boston, and I was more than a bit surprised. I saw many, many houses that looked like the owners (or previous owners) hadn’t even bothered to run a dust cloth over the windowsills. Personally, I was mortified when I couldn’t really even tidy up when showing my old apartment. Yes, I could clean the cat hair out of the corners, but the mountains of boxes made staging utterly impossible. However, the apartment was in a desirable area and cheap to boot, so it was snapped up quickly.

Why stage? According to a study conducted by Realtor Joy Valentine, staged homes tend to sell more quickly than their un-staged counterparts. Even better, the average difference between the sale price and the list price is 6.3%, versus a paltry 1.6% for unstaged homes. That means mo’ money. It’s pretty easy, too, when you consider the basic rules: declutter, let there be light, give a good first impression, show off your trendiest and more beautiful stuff, make rooms look bigger, and hide life’s detritus.

You are, after all, selling a HOUSE not a HOME, and there’s a big difference between the two. My mother-in-law had a beautiful house filled with fabulous antiques that really enhanced the space from the point of view of someone living in the house. But her house didn’t sell until she took the advice of her Realtor and put all those wonderful pieces in storage. He said, and I quote loosely, that people coming to see the house were gushing over her antiques and forgetting all about scrutinizing the structure housing them. Oops!

Here are some basic staging tips from About.com:

• Arrange sparse pieces of furniture in an appealing grouping known as a vignette
• Showcase a generous usage of soft fabrics such as silk, lambswool, satin
• Display unusual knickknacks in units of 1, 3 or 5
• Drape window coverings with simple lines
• Add unique elements to shelving, bookcases and fireplace mantels, which draw attention to predetermined areas

If your furniture isn’t that hot, pick the best pieces and stow the rest. If you don’t have any high-end knickknacks, pick the funkiest, hippest ones that will have mass appeal–think a kitschy vintage glass elephant statue, not a penis-shaped lava lamp. Frankly, I try to keep my kitchen and living room at a staged home level of neatness all the time because, hey, I never know when the Queen or Patrick Stewart might drop by.

Whatever you do, for goodness sakes don’t “chop” your pillows. That was considered cool for about a week until someone finally had the guts to tell the San Francisco staging company that started it all that chopped pillows look ridonculous.

Etsy is one of my go-to destinations when I’m looking for cool stuff to feature on Manolo for the Brides, but it never would have struck me to look there for furniture. After all, shipping charges must be outrageous, right? And who wants to buy furniture you can’t inspect first? I’m not so sure anymore — a short search for furniture netted me all sorts of chill chairs I’d be more than pleased to install in my own home.

Here’s a sampling:

This “Swanky Louis XVI chair” is brought to you by Dinwiddies,maker of funky purses, pillows, skirts, and more. I’m personally in love with the giant stuffed olive.

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As dedicated to simplicity as I am, I’m still guilty of keeping some things around just because they’re fun to look at. For example, I found a vintage matchbox in my (currently) non-working nineteenth century vintage sewing machine, and I decided to place it in a prominent spot atop my bookcase. I have pitchers I never use and Japanese bowls too small to serve any useful purpose. And yet I keep them all because they bring me joy or inspire me or remind me of relatives far away.

So, yeah, just what I need…more glass, knickknacks, wall decorations, and balls. If I had to choose just one of the pretty things above, I think I’d go for the pears, though my cats are currently gathered around my desk begging me to get the vetiver balls instead. I suppose I could put them in the empty hand turned vase that right now does nothing but serve as a receptacle for handmade paper eggs.

What can I say? I’m a slave to my eyeballs.

A great feature recently up at Telegraph.co.uk brings together experts like award-winning landscape designer Bunny Guinness and interior-designer-slash-author Paula Robinson to compile a list of fifty ways to spruce up your house, inside and out.

For the most part, the improvements they suggest will cost you. Replace all your radiators with an underfloor heating system? Knock out tatty tiles and replace them with slabs of marble? Um, right. I’ll be sure to do that when the economy bounces back, but for now I’m married…and not willingly…to the DIY ideology.

That being the case, I pulled five of the less expensive tips out of the piece. If you’re in the same boat as me, they may help you freshen up your home without spending a bundle.

1. First impressions count, so update your front door with paint:

Glossy black looks great on grand, stucco buildings, but rather forbidding next to red-brick or on a smaller house or cottage where soft greys work well. Blue was voted most appealing in a survey of buyers, but whatever the colour, a trick used by high-end decorators to achieve the best finish is to use several coats of paint thinned with white spirit.

2. Give your kitchen a mini-facelift with new knobs:

Standard sized, plain round knobs emphasise the mass-produced look of cupboards. Replacing them with unusual handles will add interest and character. Aim for texture, and avoid bright lacquered brass; it looks tacky and wears badly.

3. Enjoy regular seasonal refreshment without breaking the bank:

Replace cosy throws on sofas with light-coloured linen or ticking (for a classic New England beach house look, you might even invest in fitted linen-mix loose covers that are put on just for the summer and can be thrown in the washing machine when dirty). Even cushion covers can change: find pretty faded linen floral ones or make your own.

4. Learn to use that old sewing machine collecting dust in your basement:

With a little imagination, you can transform antique linens into unusual curtains, blinds, sofa and armchair slipcovers, cushion covers, upholstered seats or linen bags. Vintage white and cream linen is perfect for spring and summer soft furnishings.

5. Check your gutters…seriously, yucky gutters make a house look bad:

Most gutter problems are not caused by leaves, however, but by leaking joints. Plastic guttering has a high coefficient of thermal movement, and this constant expansion and contraction can push adjacent sections apart. Maneuver them back into place, and check that the supporting brackets are lined up correctly so that it doesn’t happen again.

Oh how I wish you were mine, Sari patchwork ottoman. You remind me of a wonderful set of throw pillows that dazzled me in childhood, and you say, “I belong to someone who isn’t afraid get cultural in the pursuit of coolness.” Unsurprisingly, that’s also what Gaiam Living wants me to think when I look at this refreshingly red ottoman. Let me quote their catalog…

Sometimes all you need is one work of art to bring an entire room together. Reclaimed cotton fabric patches, shells, embroidery, appliqué, tassels - they all lend a hand in giving this handcrafted ottoman its fantastic worldly flavor.

Could this bring a room together? I’m not so sure…I rather think you’d need an awfully special sort of room for that to happen. That’s not to say I wouldn’t happily accept this as a gift and stick it willy-nilly in my living room…because I so would. But you have to admit that this is a stand out piece, not some kind of aesthetic glue that’s going to suddenly meld all of your disparate bits of furniture into a cohesive whole.

My favorite area in Disney’s Epcot Center was always the little alcove I liked to call Morocco World. Being the Epcot was generally boring as dirt, I had to latch on to something. Now they have characters from Aladdin prancing around and things like Test Track right across the way, so I wonder if quite so many kiddies will lose themselves in the geometric patterns and abstract design found in that pavilion.

I was reminded of all this when perusing You Love Me & It’s Heavenly, as the future Mrs. Cruz posted some images from Zara Home. Putting aside for the moment that this shop apparently limits the sale of its wares to *sniff* a great many places other than the US, I’m tremendously in love with their showcase rooms.

If Moroccan influences just aren’t your bag, there’s still plenty to see. In fact, a quick tour of the Zara Home web site reveals design elements borrowed from just about everywhere. Stark, cold whites can be found next to browns reminiscent of safaris gone by. Then there are tropical greens, vivid pinks, and muted, modern grays.

Americans, as I mentioned earlier, are plain out of luck for now, so all I can do is look longingly at the web site, cross my fingers, and hope that Zara Home makes its way to this part of the globe.

This is where I’m not going to make inappropriate jokes about cockadoodledoos. The truth is that, like the French, I do like a bit of rooster in my decor. My brother used to work at a rather fancy restaurant that imported hand painted, rooster-shaped pitchers from Europe, and I made him steal one for me. He’s a good lad!

So how can you integrate a little more cock into your life? (Yes, I said no jokes…so I lied.) It’s easy enough to do being that there are scads and scads of rooster themed items out there in proper shops and at antique sales. Many people actually prefer second-hand cock (I just can’t stop!) because it’s well worn and legitimately old fashioned looking. Well-loved roosters aren’t always east to come by, however, which means that new ones are usually the way to go.

This small chest featuring a big cock would look divine in my boudoir.

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