Home Scenes

Normal looks like disheveled sofas and a boy with a bed head begging to watch more television much to his mother's embarrassment and dismay.

It looks like abandoned journals and water glasses, and  homeless chords snaking across water damaged free furniture.

Normal looks like sweaters at the ready for fluctuating temperatures inside a house that is almost always too hot or too cold according to my mother. It looks like chairs that are never pushed in and remnants of breakfast yet to be put away.

It looks like spilled toys, piles of overdue library books, and a vacuum always at the ready. Normal looks like baskets filled with diapers and forgotten apples, sun hats and plastic dinosaurs, but never a single wipe when you need one most.

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Wabi-Sabi / 08

Milla finds beauty in the small things and reminds me to look closer at the natural world. She is opinionated and smart and thoughtful. She was also the first person I contacted about this series (I think), and she has encouraged me from the beginning. Her blog, The Girl Who Married a Bear, is always thought provoking; I feel like every time I visit I want to write incredibly long responses that never get fully realized. I'm so grateful that she shared her thoughts and peeks of her home.

Tell us about your home.

For five years my partner and I lived for free in a little cabin at the county park he worked at until a few months ago. The house was small, dark, and as it turns out, mold-infested, but it was home. Last fall, we made some big changes to our lives and one of them was moving out of that house.

After considering our options, which on an island can sometimes be a little limited, but ranged from buying a bus from a friend, to smaller cabins and yurts, we landed, the way we always seem to, luckily and randomly to a great, beautiful rental house within walking distance of Charlie's new place of work and some of our dearest friends.

This house is a curious H-shape, the kitchen, laundry room (We have a laundry room?!?! A room for just a washer and a dryer) and bathroom on the one side, connected by a small studio/ kid's room and a staircase to an upstairs bedroom and then the other side of the H is one giant room that used to be the music room of the guy who built this house. 

I can't even begin to guestimate our square footage, but this place is definitely way bigger than what we need. We mostly use the kitchen and the bedroom, just as we did in our little cabin. To me, kitchen is "the living room", the one where your life takes place. Food is prepared while talking out the day, friends gather,  I've never understood living rooms, they always seemed like just the place to keep the TV. Out here in the country, your living room is also the outside; your yard, your garden, the woods beyond it. A big house has little point to most people I know here, because no matter where you live  and what you live in, there is always open space all around it. It may not be solely yours, but the beaches and woods of this island are as much home to me as any old house. 

What is your relationship to the mess, to disorder?

I've always been a messy person. 

It's not that I don't enjoy a clean home, it's just that I find little joy in the act of cleaning itself and the end result to me is not worth as much as doing something more compelling: working on projects, reading, writing, walking in the woods. 

In my childhood home, Saturday was always "cleaning day" regardless of what other fun things we could be doing. I never understood why a house had to be cleaned every week, rather than say, every other week, or in my child mind, never. I would have been perfectly happy with the Alice In Wonderland, never-ending tea-party kind of set up, where once your dish is dirty you just leave it and move to the next seat with a clean setting. Perhaps not the most practical idea, but then I've never been a very practical gal. 

Since I know this about myself, I try to keep my messes in check, but frankly, they always seem to one step ahead of me. We live half outside most days, so we are constantly tracking in dirt and pine needles and other small pieces of the forest, not to mention the mess that firewood brings in, so I try to sweep the downstairs every day. I attempt to stay on top of the dishes, though this is a loosing battle and often I just let them pile up until there isn't a surface to lay another dirty mug on. I also keep a healthy pile of discarded clothes on my side of the bed, which I try to fold and put away once a week. 

I do sweep our floors almost every day and do superficial cleaning often, but I almost never do the kind of top-to-bottom cleaning that my mother insisted on every Saturday. A life-long act of rebellion, I guess…

How does your home reflect wabi-sabi?

Almost everything we own, is found, thrifted, handed down, or borrowed. Our decoration is hodgepodge of things we like and find attractive and things we're simply willing to put up with because we don't want to invest resources in having "the perfect thing". Our rooms are littered with books, open to various pages, with art projects in various stages of completion, drying herbs, jars of fermenting beverages and foods. They are so much more important to me than a clean house. They're the stuff of "home" to me, not a clean, presentable space.

What do you find beautiful? 

Prints from artists and cards from our loved ones all over the walls in random constellations. Bouquets of wild flowers and branches. New plant starts on the windowsill, spiderwebs, weird jars of ruby red sauerkraut in the sunlight, messages written in steam on the bathroom mirror, muddy boots, collections of cups on my nightstand, the signs of life... 

Milla, thank you again. I feel your home is such a wonderful and perfect reflection of you and your family. 

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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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Wabi-Sabi / 06

Before I started a blog, I read lots of blogs, and they were always going on and on about the connections and community that came as a part of blogging. I wasn't sure that I really believed them. However, I have learned that the connections and community are real. In my day to day life, I don't get to interact with that many other women and mothers who share similar ideas and thoughts. For a long time, it made me feel a little weird or self-conscious. Heaven knows there are plenty of mommy bloggers who I have absolutely nothing in common with, but there are some, like Nicole from Rose Runs Wild, who write words that I sometimes feel like I should have written myself.

Nicole, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and for these glimpses into your home. 

Tell us about your home. 

Our home is a two story that was built in 1925, and our neighborhood was one of the first built in Fort Wayne specifically for automobile owners. Before that the land was a horse racing track. That's one of the things I love about older homes, always a story and so much history. It's the first home we have bought and still very bare since we just moved in almost two months ago. I love the light in our home more than anything. The house has big windows in every single room. Even the closets have windows. It's a wonderful feeling to have light constantly pouring in our home. It's filled with character and warmth. 

 What is your relationship to the mess, to disorder? 

We're not friends. Mess and disorder is inevitable, but I try to keep our house as free of it as possible. When things are messy and out of order, I feel like I cannot think or accomplish anything. I also have this weird thing with cleaning. I love to clean. Nothing makes me happier than spending a Sunday doing laundry and deep cleaning everything to get it ready for the busy week ahead. The week always brings mess and disorder, always. I've learned (kind of) to let it go throughout the week. Life is hard enough, some days there just isn't time.  I think like everything in life, you have to find a balance. 

How does your home reflect wabi-sabi?

We have a 13 year old, two dogs that love to play in the dirt and roll in. . . god knows what and my husband works from home so our house is very lived in even after the little time we have been there. There is never a perfectly put together moment or a day where the house is as clean as I want because we are human, we are family. We are messy and chaotic. We are not perfect in any way but that's what makes us who we are and we love who we are and the home we live in. 

What do you find beautiful? 

I find the way a home is ever changing to be beautiful. Each family brings with it their own mark on a home. Over a home's lifetime it can have so many different looks, so many layers of paint, wallpaper and flooring. Homes are in a constant evolution and I think that's absolutely gorgeous. 

Nicole, thank you again, for this and for your kindmess and your support. I like you enough to not be too jealous about all that light and all those windows. 

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Wabi-Sabi// Reflecting

"Wabi-sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.

It is a beauty of things modest and humble.

It is a beauty of things unconventional."

Leonard Koren, Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets, and Philosophers. 

Sometimes ideas overtake me. Everything important to me feels like it circles back to this single idea, from the most profound to the most trivial. Our pine floors and my attempts at minimalism. My children growing and my grandmother dying. It's all a part of this imperfect, incomplete, impermanent life. A beautiful life better enjoyed humbly and simply. 

The idea seems to creep into every thought, every desire.

I look out at the brackish landscape, the dirty, sandy shifting shoreline where we spend so much time. It is not the landscape of post cards. It is not the place people dream of, but it holds a quiet, murky beauty. And it feels completely mine. And it, too, is wabi-sabi.

The start of spring. Wabi-sabi.

Our old house filled with old things. Wabi-sabi.

A desire for simplicity and less. Wabi-sabi.

The need for time alone, for space and solitude. Wabi-sabi.

It is a reminder to slow down and to pay attention. 

It is an acceptance of the inevitable.

There is beauty in everything, even sadness and pain. Even death.

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Wabi-Sabi / 05

Heather exudes joy and positivity. Even her messes are playful and bright.

Tell us about your home.

In a word: BOOKS. In more words:We live in a shoddy, rambleshack mid-century house with poor insulation and broken cabinets. It’s at the top of a hill and it’s sliding, a fact you can really feel when you’re sitting on the toilet. Or laying in bed. But we have a wonderful large backyard and lots of space for our many, many, MANY books. “Sparse” is not in our vocabulary, though I often really wish it was. Darin and I both love thrifting, art, vintage stuff, and, of course, books, so there is something to look at everywhere. I love to rearrange and change things, and decorate for the seasons and holidays, so it might look different each time you visit. We only own one item of new furniture: our couch which we bought at IKEA just before Lucy was born. We love to have slumber parties in our living room, make fires in the woodstove in the winter, and keep all the doors and windows open from spring to fall. It’s colorful, nothing matches; there are batiks from Africa and vintage linens from the Caribbean and antique embroidery from my great great grandmother.  It’s a lot of stuff but every item has a story. Our home has a very lived-in, welcoming feel, which I love. But it is very hard to keep tidy, which I don’t love.

What is your relationship to mess, to disorder?

Although you could easily call our home “cluttered,” there is actually some (some….) method to our madness. For example, the many many books are arranged alphabetically within their genre. Everything has its place, although many are often out of place! My husband is kind of a mad scientist (of the sci fi and mystical persuasion) but I do prefer things to be clean underneath, and I do housework constantly in between wrangling my two babies. I cannot leave the house without leaving the dishes done, kitchen clean. I love to do laundry, especially in the warmer months when I can hang it out to dry. My relationship to mess is maddening, it literally can put me in a big grumpy funk if I come home and things are very disorderly. When I clean up after Lucy, (our 20 month old) I put the puzzle pieces in place, find all the fairies and put them in the treehouse, place the books on the shelf in accordance to shape and size. Darin likes to pile things around the edges and call it clean.  My relationship to mess is not one I’m proud of, as it is an area of my life where I am most likely to lose my patience. Because I do want to have a clean home, and yet I don’t want to get in a bad mood about it. I want to be the kind of mom who dances around with her kids, music blasting, making housework fun. Not slamming the cupboard doors in a funk because it isn’t my turn to put the dishes away. Especially because the fun that made the mess is what makes life happy! Playing with the fairies and the treehouse, tracking in sand from the sandbox, making my own baby’s scrapbook of memories, cooking strawberry French toast for breakfast. All the things that make a family fun are also what make us messy. I remind myself to just deal, to take a few minutes to tidy up when I can, and to just enjoy this crazy, energetic, creative family of mine. 

How does your home reflect wabi-sabi ?

We go so beyond wabi-sabi it isn’t even funny. I remember studying Victorian British literature in college and coming across writings by Ruskin and Browning about the beauty in imperfection, in the very human vitality of messiness, disorder, a little bit of chaos, a touch of madness. How therein lies the divine, the living heart of the thing that can never be matched, the thing that draws us to each other, the life of the art. I was so relieved to hear that great philosophers and writers believed such a thing, when all my life I felt a little ashamed of being unkempt. I remember in high school figuring out that the other girls had hair that looked a certain way, eyebrows and bodies and lips that looked a certain way, clothes that were tidy and unwrinkled, and I knew I was just a little off-kilter and messy, no matter how hard I tried. No one seemed to get sweaty! No matter how dressed up I try to get, no matter how neat I try to keep my clothing, or my home, I’m a little bit disheveled, always. It is my own personal wabi-sabi. And I think my home reflects that. It is clean, underneath the surface, but it is rumpled. Comfy. Quirky. Loveable. A little bit wild. Our home will never exhibit a certain elegance, never be austere or serene or modern. And although I love the idea of simplicity, you’d laugh at that if you saw our house. But down to earth, yes. Charming, in its own way. It is home. It is dynamic. It is a place to be real, to feel full of life, and that is wabi-sabi to me. It brings out the spirit of a place, a liveliness, and allows the inhabitants to feel truly home. That still means I have to keep up with the laundry, keep surfaces clean, wash the dishes.

What do you find beautiful?

My one year old daughter in a pile of books, poring over details on every page, saying little sounds to herself pretending to read.  Swinging high into the sky on a spring day, with little blossoms floating down landing in our hair.  Poetry. The river, in all its twisting, spinning, whirling power. Seasons. Changes. Babies. Skin wise with years. Women with messy hair, strong and solid and confident in their bodies. Men with messy hair, confident and strong in their bodies.  Friends laughing together. Doing stuff, real stuff, hiking, chopping wood, building fires, fording creeks, slicing vegetables, eating. Mountains rising out of landscapes like the universe’s belly laugh. The ocean. Waking up outdoors. Waking up indoors to babies’ smiles. Cats lazy; cats playful. Animals living their graceful lives, naturally.  Cuddling up with blankets and books next to the fire on a rainy day. Life, love. All the things that make messes. 

If you aren't already reading Heather's blog, Moonshine Junkyard, you should start. It will just make you feel good. Thank you so much Heather for sharing your home, and for perfectly describing the disheveled aesthetic. 

It is one I wholeheartedly endorse. 

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Wabi-Sabi / 04

This week's contribution to the Wabi Sabi Series comes from Morgan of Panda Head, which documents all sorts of creative things she has her hands in, including some very  events at her shared studio, Wild Hand Workspace. Since Morgan is practically a neighbor, located just an hour away in Washington, DC, I'm hoping that life slows down enough this spring so I can attend one of those workshops and actually meet her IRL.

Exploring the real, authentic, imperfect homes of others.

Tell us about your home. 

It's occupied by myself, my husband, and our thirteen year old Border Collie. It's currently in a state of total chaos – we're midway through a (seemingly endless) kitchen renovation, which spurred what the most intense bout of Spring cleaning our place has ever seen. We've been upending closets/junk drawers/bookshelves – everything! – for the last few weeks, and we're looking forward to the dust settling. 

In its usual state, we try to live by the code of "a place for everything and everything in its place," but in practice it's usually more like Highly Organized Disorder. We use every inch of our apartment, and between my work and my husband's hobbies, there's an endless flow of things coming and going.

What is your relationship to the mess, to disorder?

I'd be lying if I said I DIDN'T thrive on a little chaos, but I'm a total psychotic when it comes to visuals. There's an invisible and ever-moving line between what I consider lived-in and wildly out of control. I will say I'd probably benefit from spending a little less time merchandising and devoting more time to tackling actual cleaning projects. You may never find fault in my book stack, but man alive, my baseboards need cleaning.

How does your home reflect wabi sabi?

I'm proud to have our place be a real reflection of who we are. Those details are absolutely in the wabi sabi: piled up branches by the front door, mismatched glassware, slightly off-kilter picture frames, and the million-and-a-half nail and tack-marks in the walls. We get that the apartment looks "exactly like I thought it would" from a lot of our first time guests, and I think it's 100% due to its wild streak of imperfection. It's the highest of compliments.

What do you find beautiful?

The short answer is everything and the long answer is, well, everything. I'm secretly a massive cheeseball.

Morgan, thank you so much. I love that you truly appreciate the chaos and the imperfection, rather than just tolerate it. I find myself constantly vacillating between the two realms, frequently worried too much about the floor boards and not concerned enough with the bookshelves. 

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Wabi-Sabi / 03

The third installation of the wabi sabi series is from Rachel of Little Miss Black Bean. Rachel doesn't fit neatly into any boxes, and that's just one of the many reasons I enjoy visiting her digital world. I've been thinking about her answers to these questions all week, trying to address some of the issues she brings up in my own life.

Exploring the real, authentic, imperfect homes of others. 

Tell us about your home. 

I think our home is a pretty accurate depiction of where we are in our lives right now: two people in their mid-twenties, trying to figure out their place in the world. Our townhome has limited space, but we have come to appreciate that as it also limits the amount of STUFF we can own. Like typical newlyweds, we have college Craigslist furniture juxtaposed with a kitchen stocked with wedding gifts that we wouldn't have been able to afford on our own. While it's a bit more put together compared to when we first moved in a year ago, our home is still bits and pieces and ideas of what we'd like it to be -- an apt metaphor for all the other areas of our lives.

What is your relationship to the mess, to disorder?

It's no secret to anyone that knows me that mess gives me great anxiety. I feel like mess in our homes is one of the many items on the list of double standards women are expected to deal with: it should bother us enough to deal with it so no one has to see it, but we shouldn't admit that it is a stress or a struggle for us. As a feminist I wish I could say that I've found this zen acceptance and peace with mess, that I don't let it affect me. But that's simply not true in the slightest. Other people's mess makes me anxious from lack of control, and my mess makes me anxious from the guilt and shame of its existence. I'm working on it though; I'm in a better place now than before.

How does your home reflect wabi sabi?

The main goal of our home, primary to being pretty, is to be a welcoming space. Growing up, our friends always felt welcome in my parents' home and I want that to be true for our home and our kids one day. There's a balance to be struck in this, because while a filthy space doesn't feel inviting, neither does a sterile one. I want my family and friends to feel like they can curl up on the couch with a blanket without fear of disrupting the perfectly neat folds. I want to not worry about dishes when there's conversation to be had. Balance is a common theme for me, and I think (despite the things that I perceive to be flaws) our home reflects that balance. Above all, I want to always value people over things.

What do you find beautiful? 

I find beautiful the way mess can tell a story of the person that left it behind. Every morning Andrew leaves at least one drawer pulled out from getting dressed, and every afternoon I slide them back into place. I can't help but smile and know that I'll be doing that for the rest of our life together. He does the same for me when he finds fresh clothes spilling from the dryer onto the floor because I just needed one item from the pile. It becomes easier to turn an exasperated sigh into a chuckle when I realize there's a chance that one day I'll miss wiping up his crumbs and pushing in his drawers. Messes are temporary because we are temporary; I never want to not appreciate that I have a person to clean up after.

Thank you so much for sharing, Rachel. Since you sent me these answers last week, I have been trying to replace exasperated sighs with chuckles, and trying to work on the even more difficult task of replacing guilt with acceptance. 

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