Amanda Spohr used to have green décor dreams for her home. Now the only green she sees is the swimming pool, but her home remains her castle. She explains.
Not long after I met my husband, and a good ten years before we were wed, we started collecting things for our future home.
These included a green paisley duvet set, two blue and white coffee mugs, a green earthenware crockery set, an ethnic green wooden statuette and a rustic-looking green wooden candleholder. I was 19 years old at the time and my ideas of what a young couple needed were both romantic and rudimentary. Also, I appear to have liked green.
Sanity prevailed. We focused on our studies and continued living with our parents until we had found gainful employment and could sort-of afford to set up house together. (Here’s my first bit of unsolicited advice to the 19-year-olds and even the 25-year-olds out there: stay with your folks as long as you can! Try to push it to age 30 at least. I realise when my own children are 30 years old and still living at home I’ll be singing a different tune.)
And how different our home is from what I’d dreamt of back then. Firstly, green is not a central décor theme. Not a hint of it anywhere, really.
Secondly, there is no décor theme. We have three dogs and three children. No Scandinavian Minimalism or French Country Home for us – we are happy to settle for Fairly Tidy. I lie. We aspire to Fairly Tidy. Our current interior design concept is closer to Barely Contained Chaos – it’s cheap, comfortable and child proof.
The lack of green is as applicable to our garden as to our home, thanks to the concerted efforts of our three dogs and three children. The dogs dig up whatever the children haven’t picked to pieces already.
The only exception to this lack of greenery is our swimming pool, whose pump packed up about two months ago. It is a nauseating shade of murk. See Sam Wilson-Späth’s article on Chore Chicken for an explanation of how we could allow this to happen.
When we win the lottery (we’re in it to win it, so it’s just a matter of time, really), we will hire in a landscape artist to transform our arid lawn into a French Country garden, to go with our upmarket Scandinavian Minimalist furnishings – or vice versa. Not to mention the sparkling blue pool, which will be lovingly attended by our full-time live-in handyman.
Anyway, to get to the point of my ramblings … As a home-owner of ten years and counting, I can offer this sage advice to young just-starting-out couples who are dreaming of home ownership:
– Be prepared: It’s a good idea to start saving early on for your home and collecting what you need for it as early as you can;
– Be prepared to change: No matter how prepared you are, things won’t go to plan. It will probably cost more than you expect. You won’t necessarily be able to afford everything you want from day one. And you will have to compromise on certain things you thought were non-negotiable, so you need to be in touch with your priorities;
– Be prepared for your home to change you: My mom always said of her home “be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home”. I’ve found it to be true of mine. When it’s your own, when you’ve worked hard for it and waited so long for it, your home is your castle – even if its moat is a sickly green.
If you fill it with the things and people you love, your home will grow on you, a mossy layer of comfort and belonging that’s as much part of you as you are of it.
(Amanda Spohr is a Reputation Management Executive at BrightRock)
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