Merriam Webster Please Stop Making Fun of My Life!

Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day September 3 bibelot \BEE-buh-loh\ noun Meaning : a small household ornament or decorative object : trinket Example Sentence Donna's children often tease her about her hobby of collecting quaint bibelots, which can be found everywhere throughout her house.

I've shared here before a bit about how much I love to hit a secondhand or thrift store to find discarded treasures. Some items I repurpose, others need a little cleaning or repair to be restored to their former glory. A few items I covet outright, just for what they are and because I do not "need" them technically, I rationalize their purchase because they are priced so well it would be a crime to leave them there in the store, underappreciated and potentially abandoned for all time.

Recently I was having a conversation with a family member who rather gently reinforced the idea that their taste and my taste take somewhat divergent paths when it comes to what gets displayed on surfaces.

Although we share a common admiration of particular color schemes and agree as to the benefit of live plants indoors, their sensibility when it comes to tabletops, bookshelves, mantles, etc. is more like the Hub's than mine. That is to say they lean towards the sparsely populated more minimalist approach, a "less is more" feeling and I, well I tend to not put any more objects on a space than will actually fit. Mostly.

I don't know where this little altars everywhere impulse comes from in me, but I have to fight the urge constantly not to take every wall, tabletop, bookshelf nook or mantle niche and pack that space with some grouping or the other.

Hub on the other hand, visibly relaxes whenever we check into a hotel. That sparse, nothing on top of anything that isn't absolutely necessary to provide information about the site, light, media access, communications with the outside world or beverage service approach soothes his soul. Past that, the only way to make him happier is to align everything so it all stays equidistant from edges and other objects.

In deference to our design extremes a couple of times a year I painfully clear several of the rooms we spend the most time in of as much of the surface clutter as I can stand to move out of sight. This takes several go rounds because what I see as sparse and what is effective in terms of changing the overall effect typically has two layers of stuff sitting in between.

I'll illustrate. To me, a table with a fabric runner and a pottery bowl with fruit in it sitting on top of that is NAKED. To Hub, there is no real reason for the runner or the fruit bowl either one if you aren't planning to sit there and eat fruit. Right this minute.

So I do my best to clear the decks and to his credit the Hub gives me credit for trying, and that is all swell until Christmas (or maybe Thanksgiving....or......Halloween) when I start to layer back in the seasonal decorations. I do this a little bit at a time, inoculating Hub in a way, to the fully viral aftermath of living in the shadow of So Much Wonderful Stuff Everywhere.

In the meantime I will thank the Word of the Day folks to stop poking fun of me from afar with their thinly veiled references to "Donna" and her house filled with "quaint bibelots". I'm doing the best I can.