“Would a soap dish be too much to ask?” My husband is standing at his sink in our master bath fishing a slippery bar of soap out of the basin. It lands there often because, lacking a soap dish, he has to park it on the sink ledge. “Or a drinking glass?” he adds. Now he’s on a roll.
It’s not often Dan asks for a home improvement, even a minor one, so I seize the opportunity.
“They’re against the rule,” I say.
“What rule?”
“The rule that says you shouldn’t buy accessories for a room until you’ve finished the major decorating.”
“What decorating?”
I sweep my arms around the bathroom: “We need drapes, wall coverings and new mirrors in here before we get accessories.”
“Look, all I want is a drinking cup and a soap dish. You’re telling me I have to pay for drapes first?”
“That’s the rule.”
“Is that why every time I bring a kitchen glass in here, it disappears?”
“That’s the other rule: If it doesn’t go with the décor, it goes away.”
“So we do without basics until you find just the right basics, which you can’t find until we wallpaper?”
“Or paint. We could paint.”
“Have you lost your reason?”
“No. I have a reason: Buying accessories before you decorate is like buying the shoes before the outfit, or eating dessert before your vegetables.”
“Oh, like you’ve never bought a pair of shoes that didn’t go with anything.
Dan 1. Marni 0.
The problem with my self-imposed accessory diet is that sometimes it takes years to decorate a room. At least at our house, just as we’ve put a little decorating money aside, someone needs braces, or tires or bail money – and, well, there goes the budget again. Meanwhile, you don’t enjoy the space.
Because I don’t like ugly stuff – including anything in a commercial package – where I can see it, I’d kept the bathroom counters bare. It had that just-moved-in look – for two years. When I needed a tissue, I opened the cabinet and rummaged for the box. The lotion I used daily was also inconveniently beneath the sink. When rinsing my mouth after brushing my teeth, I inelegantly stuck my mouth under the faucet.
Dan was right. We shouldn’t have to live like this.
Then I recalled another rule to live by. This pearl came from Barbara Barry, a leading interior designer I once interviewed. Honor the acts of daily living, she said. It took me a while to get what she meant, longer to put the advice into practice. What Barry meant was this: There’s an art to interior design, but there’s also an art to living. What a space looks like matters, but how you live in that space matters more.
Designers often talk about designing with clients’ needs in mind, but often that’s just hooey, and people wind up with homes that don’t accommodate daily life. Like the time I went along with a designer I’d hired (single male, no kids) and bought three white sofas while I was pregnant with my first child. When was the last time you looked at a home in a shelter magazine and saw the mail, the kids and the dog? That’s real life, and it’s missing.
Persuaded by my own arguments, I trot off to the bed-and-bath store. I buy two drinking cups, two soap dishes, two lotion or soft-soap dispensers, and one tissue-box cover. The accessories – a bronze ceramic collection with antique metal detailing – were a splurge, like dessert, but worth it. The day after I set them out, I drew my tissue and lotion from handsome dispensers that were easy to reach, and took my vitamins with water from my own lovely cup. I felt like a princess.
If my new accessories don’t look right when I finally do decorate the bath, I’ll get new ones. By then I’ll probably need a denture cup. And while buying accessories twice may seem wasteful, life is too short to drink water with your mouth under the faucet. I raise my new water glass to Dan’s, and we toast.
“To breaking the rules,” I say.
“To reason,” he says.
Marni Jameson is a nationally syndicated columnist who lives in the Denver area. You may reach her at marnij@comcast.net.
