Decorating 101010101

As I may have mentioned, Ken and I have been doing a little preliminary house hunting with an eye towards downsizing. The perfect house slipped through our fingers a couple of weeks ago—the owners had accepted an offer literally hours before we went to see it—and since then, it’s been slim pickings. But the whole adventure has given me food for thought regarding our own de-cluttering since it’s become very apparent that some people, when they put their house on the market, just don’t give a sh*t. The other day, we went to see a place, older and even bigger than our own house, but at a price point significantly lower. The pictures on the online listing showed a LOT of Christmas decorations but the house had been on the market for a while and we just assumed the photos were from last year. Then we went to see it in person. The photos were NOT from last year. To say the owner of the house is a Christmas fanatic would be an understatement—there were fully decorated Christmas trees in every room, garlands draping over every surface, and more Santas, elves, stockings, and other Christmas paraphernalia than I’ve ever seen, even in a store that only sells Christmas sh*t. And the icing on the cake? In the dining room, under the fully decorated Christmas tree, were wrapped presents. Hundreds of wrapped presents. I’m the kind of person who’s still trying to buy gifts on Christmas Eve, and this lady has all of her shopping done mid-November?! I didn’t know whether to be impressed or horrified, and I haven’t even mentioned the outrageous number of dead, stuffed animals that decorated every room–there was a giant fish mounted on the wall above the headboard in each of the bedrooms, and a flock of taxidermied geese in the foyer. And yes, the geese were draped with Christmas garlands. Ken was looking quite happy about the whole situation, considering he’s the one who really needs to Marie Kondo his crap, but I didn’t want to give him any ideas, so I said to our agent, “I can see why you said it was important to scale back on extraneous stuff. I guess this person didn’t listen.” And then we both looked pointedly at Ken. Ultimately, we all agreed that it was very difficult to get a sense of the house or the space with so much distraction, and it made my own decorating taste seem minimal by comparison.

And I do have a very distinct decorating style, which I like to call Oscar Wilde In The Haus, which is like when a gay Victorian poet has designed your decor:

My Office
Oscar Wilde’s Office

Which makes it even more weird (is weird even the right word?) that I recently got this ad from Wayfair with the caption “Your home makeover starts here.”

What exactly am I remaking my home over to? The f*cking Vatican? In which case, I need a LOT more stuff in my house because I’ve been to the Vatican and it is just PACKED, kind of like that Christmas house but with Jesus instead of Santa and taxidermied priests instead of geese. Could you imagine having a cardboard Pope as your aesthetic “statement piece”?

Guest: Is that–?
Me: Pope Francis? Yes.
Guest: Why is he–?
Me: Standing in the corner of the living room? He’s just hanging out. Do you want a blessing?
Guest: No, just a drink. I mean, that’s okay, right?
Me: Is the Pope Catholic?
Guest: Uh…I don’t know much about religion.
Me: Me neither. But I like his outfit. It matches the drapes.

At any rate, I’ve eschewed His Holiness as a decorating motif. I think I’m more of a “giant cardboard cutout of RuPaul” kind of gal. At least, that’s what Oscar Wilde would have picked.

36 thoughts on “Decorating 101010101”

  1. Ever since I was a little girl, I had this quirky fascination with trains. I remember vividly telling my mom, with all the conviction a seven-year-old could muster, that one day, I’d decorate my entire place with trains. She’d chuckled, using that classic parental response, “when you have your own place, you can do what you like.” Oh, how those words stayed with me!

    Fast forward to today, and guess what? Amelia, my wonderful wife, and I decided to embrace that childhood dream. Our living space now boasts an eclectic theme centered around freight trains! The furniture is adorned with railroad memorabilia and model locomotives, and we even have a miniature train set that is on display along the perimeter of our sun porch. It’s whimsical, unique, and so very ‘us’.

    So, hey Mom, what do you think of your daughter now? This is our little world, a nod to the dreams of a little girl, who was always a little different, and the freedom of adulthood. It’s proof of the fact that sometimes, the whims of childhood can indeed make for a fantastic reality. Here’s to keeping the spirit of those youthful dreams alive!

    As for the Christmas themed house, I would find that creepy. In all of my years in public safety, I have seen it all. Literally. But a house filled with Christmas things? That would be a new one, even for me.

    Thanks for the laughs, Suzanne! 😀

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  2. Wow! A visit to the Christmas House really got you in the holiday spirit! I don’t think I’ve ever seen that much cussing in one of your posts before! Don’t worry, Pope Francis will forgive your sins…

    BTW, thank you so much for putting blow molds into my mind last week, because now every night I got to work and drive by the house with a bunch of them in the yard, I have to take a good look at them!

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  3. Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like going through a home tour where every room is Christmas themed. I mean, I’ve been in homes where nothing but dolls were everywhere. Big dolls, small dolls, baby dolls, dolls whose eyes open and close. That was so creepy that after going through the dining area and there were dolls in each of the dining chair. I was like, nope I’m outta here and let my realtor know and we walked out. Staging is the most important part of having one’s house sell quickly, that’s what my realtor mentioned. But I saw some re ally weird decor on my hunt for my house. Another I saw had a lot, I do mean a lot of that Home Interior gold, ugly home decor. Fake flowers, gold frames, gold everything. Come to find out, the lady who owned the house sold Home Interior. But if you want to sell a house take down stuff that dates your house like 1980’s ugly Home Interior….🤮.
    I love how you describe your decorating style, Oscar Wilde in The Haus, lol. I can see it from the side by side pictures. I think you may have been a Victorian writer in your past life!

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  4. So I wonder what’s up with the Christmas stuff. Is the owner dead and a relative is trying to sell it? Does all of the Christmas decor come with the house? Is the owner moving? If so, why not pack up Christmas and either donate or sell it? So many questions?

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  5. I love walking through houses for sale just to check out decorating styles! I have a life sized Jason Voorhees Stand Up, but, unfortunately, he isn’t a focal point because my Trailer is to small.
    My BFF is Catholic and I got her a Pope Calendar last year for Christmas,but I can’t imagine a Pope Standee in her Living Room.
    Your conversation about it made me laugh.

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  6. All that gold lame… Get one of a silver Sailor Moon, put them on your lawn and Burl Ives would be proud.

    Weird? Eccentric perhaps. Quirky, maybe. Fire hazard comes to mind…

    Theoretically, if one can expand a home, add rooms, a garage, one should be able to shrink one too. Get Ken’s SawZall out and start shaving off parts that you’d rather not fill with clocks and bowls of doorknobs. A New Age Michelangelo where instead of marble you’d be carving 100 year old spruce 2x4s and plaster.

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    • Shrink the house?! But I need it to be bigger! We’ve decided we’ll probably stay put and turn the part of the house we don’t use into a writer’s retreat. Now I get my secret library room right here at home😁

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  9. I want to know what was in all those wrapped presents. Were they actual presents or were they just empty boxes covered with wrapping paper? Because that’s the sort of fake-out I’d expect from a house decorated with Christmas stuff year-round. And nothing says “Santa’s workshop” like a giant fish on every wall.
    Actually I think the RuPaul cutout would be an ideal Christmas decoration. After all RuPaul has made so many dreams come true.

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  10. Talking about people selling their houses & not giving a shit about clutter, reminds me of what we see when we’re searching for our next potential property. We hope to move to France next year and I don’t think the decluttering/neutral vibe has really made it to some of the population. Either that or the estate agent who’s taking the pics has no clue what to point the camera at. Probably both. I’ve seen countless shots of rooms with bags & coats hanging on chairs, stuff all over surfaces, even unmade beds. Utterly bizarre. My favourite was a bathroom that contained a very weirdly-shaped avocado bath/jacuzzi that you had to climb tiled steps to get into, an exercise machine, a kind of office cabinet, and a fireplace mantlepiece placed against the far wall but with no fireplace.

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  12. I’m honestly not sure to whom Pope Francis is meant to appeal. He’s too liberal for the Catholics — my devout Catholic relatives hate him (despite my unsolicited reminders that God selected him and surely He knows what He’s doing) — and, owed to being the pope, he’s too conservative for us seculars. Maybe I’ll get one of those cardboard cutouts and prop it up beside my Christmas tree this year — for the express purpose of upsetting everyone I know!

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  15. I was looking through house listings one morning, as you do when you have been trying to find a house for 3 years, and came upon one where, in every bathroom picture, the toilet seats were up…..what? At least they could have thrown a cardboard cutout of the pope in there!

    Thank you for bringing the laughter, Lovely Lady!

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