Wabi-Sabi / 07

I sometimes struggle to find a way to reconcile loving beautiful things and desiring a simpler, more sustainable liefstyle. Sash from Inked in Colour gives me hope that there is a common ground, that one does not negate the other. She is inspiring in the truest sense of the world; I leave her words eager to change and improve. 

Tell us about your home.

I live a simple and uncomplicated life in a little rented shack in a little town in South Western Australia with my little partner in crime - my two year old hurricane. Our home is an in between place for us that we are soon to move out of... It has been the place where I have done a lot of reflection and it's been the vehicle for an enormous amount of confidence building. There is a lot to be said for a safe place to call your own... especially during times of great emotional healing. When we moved into this home, we had nothing but a few boxes of clothes, books and a whole lot of borrowed furniture. Over the past 12 months we have turned this little house into a warm and inviting space, procuring only second hand and discarded furniture and household items - most of which have taken some work to get up to scratch. I've got a real passion for turning trash into treasure and our home is made up of bits and pieces that have great stories of past lives that they will never tell.

Our home is often chaotic, but it's always full of laughter and music and wine and good food and whilst for many months you wouldn't find anyone here except Bo and I, now it is often filled with the voices and stories of friends.

What is your relationship to mess, to disorder?

I have a good relationship with the mess that is in our home. Whenever I'm creating, our house is total chaos. Whilst I am continually trying to multi-task, I am not particularly good at it. My energy is generally focused on creative pursuits, photographs, tea parties... and not on tidying. I don't own a vacuum cleaner. I'm terrible at remembering to do the laundry. I have boxes of recyclables and jars all around the house because everything has second and third and even fourth uses. So I hang on to them. I love having so much space to spread out and make mess and exist... I've never had this kind of space before. I've never had my own space like this that isn't controlled by someone else. So it's liberating. To know that no one is going to come home and tell me what to do. There is so much freedom in that.

So we make mess. And we drag in dusty old furniture that has been discarded on a street corner. And we sand and we paint and we laugh and we jump on the beds and we walk around the house leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind us. And we don't care. Because eventually they get swept up, and eventually the laundry is done and folded and put away... and eventually the dishes are washed and the floor gets scrubbed. Life's too short to worry about silly little things like crumbs on the floor and dishes in the sink. Isn't it?

How does your home reflect wabi-sabi?

It's chaos. Disorganised. Colourful. Messy. Chaos. Pretty much every day of the week. Life for us is a juggling act between creative process and real life responsibility. In the kitchen there are text books and post-it reminders on the wall, a sink full of dirty dishes and spilled flour on the floor. In the lounge room there are sweet potatoes sprouting in jars, balanced on top of research papers and picture books.

Our back room is a study, but I don't work in there, instead it's used for drying out (and sprouting) seeds and painting cardboard-box cities on rainy days, it's the place where mount-washmore lives and it's the best place in the house to build a fort out of blankets. In the backyard, once a week, it looks as if we host a Chinese laundry as it's one thing I can never get on top of. There are food shoots set up in our front room and little hands stealing little snacks from little plates that I then have to remake and reset and reshoot.

What do you find beautiful?

I think the most beautiful thing about someones home is their mess. The honesty of it all. I love walking into a friend's house to find crumbs on the floor and kids half dressed and the smell of something amazing baking in the oven... a couple of wine stained glasses from the night before. I walk into a house like that and I instantly feel at home. I hope people feel the same when they come into our colourful, disorganised home. There is nothing like a bit of good old honest mess to really help you get to know someone.

I find beautiful little messes around our home every day. Dinosaurs in the shower, toothpaste painted on the sink, a biscuit and a story and a torch under the blankets on my bed - little reminders of the adventures of the little soul who lives here - little reminders that this house is her home and she doesn't care what it looks like, or if the rug is in fashion - little reminders that home is not about being pristine and pretty like the page of a magazine. A home is nothing without the real lives of the people who live in it. The people who love in it. What's more beautiful than that?

Thank you so much for sharing these beautiful images and thoughtful words, Sash. 

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