Investment Pieces

I once read in one of my shelter magazines that style-conscious parents were beginning to develop a new aesthetic for their children's rooms. Clunky, indestructible furniture, bunk and captain's beds, and any sort of childish whimsy were, let's be honest, totally revolting. Anyone with a nano-particle of design sense understood that a child's room is another canvas in your home on which to paint taste and harmony. Children's furniture should consist of investment pieces that appreciate with time. Children deserve to have their undeveloped little style receptors nurtured by being surrounded with fine accoutrements and original art.

The article continued by suggesting that parents consider purchasing high quality antiques for their youngster's style edification. The room shown in the two-page spread featured a bookcase made of some sort of extinct burled hardwood with beveled glass doors priced at $35,000.

Clearly, the article implied, if your child grows up to be the kind of adult who owns a brown plaid couch and hangs a neon beer sign over it, you have no one to blame but yourself. Had you made some marginal effort to purchase collectible furniture and a few nice watercolor studies for his room, he might be living in well-appointed surroundings today and be able to chat about his Empire silver-service and the origins of his many Persian carpets.

Despite this excellent advice, I did not scour Sotheby's to provide my daughter with heirloom armoires or Baroque settees. I bought some clunky pine stuff made from thick, unfinished lumber and thought she could enjoy herself by taking a couple of decades to reduce it to saw dust. I based this purchasing decision on my previous experience with two of the most destructive forces on the planet: kids and pets.

My ideal child's sanctuary would have a trampoline in the middle of the room (for sleeping, art projects, nausea-inducing jumping) and a drain in the poured concrete floor. All that storage space under the trampoline could be used to hold large plastic tubs. The plastic tubs could be filled with everything from the child's clothing to the dog's chewy toys and kibble. A parent with a snow-shovel and a high pressure hose should be able to keep this room in a reasonable state of order with minimal effort.

My dream of more self-maintaining interior design extends beyond my daughter's room. Many is the time I have wondered why I bother with a glass - it would be so much more efficient to just pour the half-gallon of cranberry juice directly onto the living room carpet, since that's where it's going anyway. Ditto, I should start squeezing the Pomeranian over the hall rug and give up thinking that I'll ever synchronize her full raisin-sized bladder with a trip outdoors.

Surely if every room could be cleaned with a sprinkler system and good drainage, we'd all be a lot happier. But, like Buckminster Fuller's, my vision of better living through better design may be ahead of its time. I'm trapped in a nightmare of surfaces that need constant attention, and I don't see any relief in sight.

To be fair, no one has ever accused me of being a fastidious housekeeper. I could never see the point since I'm bound to be dead within a hundred and fifty years and I have the strongly held view that our homes and furnishings should serve us, and not the other way around. I did not promise to maintain my environment with such meticulous care that my stuff would still be lovely after I'm gone.

I do not suffer a lot of stress from my level of, shall we say, "comfortable" homemaking. Not to give you the impression that we live in a dank hovel encrusted with filth and animal feces. You can come over, eat and use the bathroom and you will not leave with any sort of gastrointestinal disorder. But you know how the Himalayas were formed by tectonic plates crashing into the continent of present day India? We have a range of laundry that we call the Clothes Mountains that are located in the spare bedroom.

Essentially, the Clothes Mountains are a seismic phenomena caused by the constant pressure of new clean clothing forcing the foothills of existing clean clothing to rise ever higher. Clothing never returns to closets or drawers; it just moves in an eternal cycle between guest bed, washing machine, dryer, guest bed. (If we ever have guests, we encourage them to tunnel their way into the center of the highest peak and remain very still.)

And, no, I wasn't brought up that way. To the contrary. My mother, in voluntary bondage as a domestic slave, tried to conscript me early on by warning me that if I didn't learn to clean properly, my future husband would be displeased.

Noting my father's complete absence of gratitude for the ironed handkerchiefs and spit-polished work boots, I reckoned even then that attempting to please a husband with starched bureau runners was a fool's errand.

Fortunately, I had a childhood mentor who was able to show me a way out of the Good Housekeeping trap. When I knew Thelma, she must have been about the age I am now. She had three sons in high school and a daughter in middle school. Thelma was married to Harry, who had some kind of business that involved repossession of real estate.

The biggest perk (to my mind) of Harry's livelihood was that, more often than not, the owners and renters of his properties fled their premises without doing a lot of packing. This yielded an ever-flowing stream of delightful, if not especially desirable, treasures into Thelma's house and garage.

My friends had an abandoned dental chair, an instrument tray and a spit sink in their den (each of the kids took to examining their own teeth), parts for a glider in the living room, an enormous mounted swordfish hanging over the couch, musical instruments of every kind and era and a basement full of clothing and accessories from the previous 50 years of fashion.

Neither parent seemed to have the least concern that one son had painted his room like an American flag. Another son was making his own violin and trailed saw dust and glue everywhere. One kid had a bat named Igor hanging upside down from the rod in the cellar closet that flew in and out of an open window at will. One kid was going through a Jackson Pollack phase with a spray gun and large canvases. For huge entertainment, the family sprinkled a trail of peanuts throughout the house, and then opened the doors for the neighborhood squirrels to run through. In short, Thelma's house was kid friendly.

It wasn't actually dirty. Thelma kept a kosher kitchen, so utensils, food and counters were carefully tended. But every other aspect of her home was a glorious jumble without too much attention to order or hygiene. They were such a happy and creative family, and I envied them their ease.

My own home was a pony of a different color entirely. By every account, my grandmother was not a domestic goddess. She was an easy-going and affectionate soul, but was partial to spending her days napping. Care of the home held no interest for her. Yet, somehow, my mother inherited the recessive hausfrau gene and it drove her like a religious fever.

My mother had a word for slovenly housekeeping - "schlumpish." I don't know if this is a genuine German word, but it was her assessment of the pure bone-idle-laziness she witnessed in everyone else's home. It applied to housewives with three young children who didn't iron their sheets; busy women who left dishes in the sink; ladies who did not wear aprons or keep an arsenal of rubber gloves stockpiled in case of foreign invasion.

It applied to our pastor's wife who was not home one afternoon when my mother decided to pay her a social visit. Her absence did not deter my mother from walking right into the kitchen where she found that the parsonage stove was not up to her standard. Ever helpful, my mother left her a little note encouraging her to be more attentive to her housework lest she be judged and found...wait for it...schlumpish.

The sad thing about martyrdom is that you can only be martyred if someone else has a similar passion for your cause. Your cause doesn't have to be reasonable (remind me to tell you some time about the militia fighting for the Texas Republic's secession from the United States), but you do need a few followers if you're going to realize any satisfaction from your struggle.

My mother's martyrdom went unrecognized. Even though she would meet me at the door each day to review what she had laundered, ironed and folded on my behalf, what she had dusted for my benefit, and how much time she had spent on her hands and knees scrubbing so that I might enjoy a pristine floor, I remained unappreciative. I had already experienced housekeeping enlightenment, and I was prematurely destined to never please a husband.

Still at the age where I hadn't quite mastered the art of the compliment, I once said to Thelma, "I wish my house was a mess just like yours." She laughed and said, "I decided that I would have plenty of time to make the house perfect after the kids have grown up. Right now, there are more important things." I knew, then, that she kept her home on the schlumpish side not out of apathy, but so that her family could really live in it. I never forgot that conversation.

About twenty-five years passed and I had my own child. I acquired a house and a job and an ancient Scottish Terrier who was both deaf and blind when I got him. Whatever small attraction housekeeping had held for me before disappeared under the grinding effort it took to keep a baby, a decrepit dog and myself fed, washed and healthy. Well do I remember the moment when I pulled a frozen dinner from the microwave at 11:00 PM and sent it sailing, upside down (always upside down) across the kitchen floor. I stood, staring at the swath of eggplant parmesan and asked myself in all seriousness, "I wonder when I'll get around to cleaning that up." Knowing, already, that the answer was "not soon."

When the baby was around 18 months old and I had survived the complete collapse of an orderly home, I went in search of Thelma. I wanted her to know how much she had influenced me and given me a balanced view of family life.

Harry had passed on by then and Thelma had retired to Florida. I thanked her for giving me the benefit of her wisdom. She chuckled and said that her house is now, finally, immaculate and that she is amazed that her kids and grandchildren live like such slobs in their own homes.

Three of her children became surgeons and one went into publishing despite having grown up in a home devoid of fine antiques. I'd say that she invested wisely.

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Ingrid divides her life between the San Juan Islands (where her heart lives) and Austin, Texas (where her paycheck is generated). While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra ..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane."

Ingrid is an old-school Libra and believes that the Revolution should be a catered event.

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

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