ABOVE: Grandma’s souvenir spoon collection gets new respect as an enlarged photo, framed in a wide mat and set on a dining room wall. Carlyn Yandle photo
Whether we all planned on it or not, our personal consumption habits are suddenly going through a major shift. One of the first shifts is an attitude adjustment. Consider this new-think: Now is the time to enjoy what you’ve already acquired.
That includes your home, and all the little things inside it that make it a unique space, a reflection of you. (Already I can feel the cringing. If it’s any consolation, I’m typing this week’s column with my back against the kitchen so I don’t have to look at the piles of half-completed projects.)
I realize that nesting might be a foreign concept to many Vancouverites, who are more about Out There than In Here, but as attitudes shift toward dining in and entertaining at each others’ homes more, our interiors are going to become more important. ‘House-proud’ isn’t a descriptor just for little old ladies anymore.
Inviting a friend or neighbour over for tea is no longer a quaint notion, but a comfortable alternative to meeting up at the nearest Starbucks. That will lead to new thinking about how nice homemade num-nums would go with tea, and how you might make your home a little more presentable.
One of the first things I tackle when I’m organizing a home is collections, from stemware to sock monkeys, matchbooks to men’s pipes. Whether they’re taking over the place, like framed photos cluttering all available horizontal surfaces, or in deep hiding in the back of closets, collections are generally deemed too important to part with. My goal is to help the owner of the collections live with them in harmony. Often that means corralling family photos into an elegant book that lives on the coffee table or grouped into one big wall of family fame in a hallway. Other collections might be ‘recontextualized’ — presented in a new way — to enhance their form and number, like lining up a someone’s 20 pairs of must-have stilettos on floating glass shelves in the bedroom.
If you’d really rather part with a collection but want to honour it in some way, consider arranging each item in an interesting grouping, then taking a high-resolution photo which you can have enlarged and set in frame with a wide mat for dramatic effect. Hang the picture in a room that is most related, or in sharp contrast, to the collection — something for your guests to brew over at tea.
