A Cure For Beige

White. Beige. Sand. Natural. Cream. Plain vanilla.

No, this is not a post about Richie Benaud's choice of jacket colour over the last 70 years but rather my husband and my taste and/or house interior pallet over the past 10 years....and perhaps people's first impression of our personalities if they took a peek inside our house.

For some funny reason, (the rare times) when the house is clean and tidy, I seem to feel super relaxed and happy as previously discussed here and here and so for many years I think I mistakenly believed that incorporating colour and displaying treasures around the house would make things feel (and my thoughts more) busy and cluttered. Consequently, our walls are burlap beige and the skirting boards are white. Our sofa is “sand” and the cushions and pendant lamps are “natural”… with teal highlights (this was a major first step in the beige recovery process).

I grew up in a busy house of 5 children with well travelled and “souvenir happy” parents. When I was young, my parent’s worked in the area of aid for developing countries which led Dad to frequently travel to neighboring pacific islands and a posting to Indonesia for a few years. As a result, my memories of our family home is an eclectic mix of collected souvenirs of batik table cloths, Wayang puppet dolls, pacific island woven baskets and my parent’s personal treasured items of Persian rugs, Van Gough prints, Danish dinner settings and furniture.

Amazingly, my parents even found ways of incorporating all of these aspects all together - in one spot - to be enjoyed all at once. For instance, a typical celebratory dinner (for a birthday or Christmas) would involve the use of the very best batik tablecloth, cork placemats with Van Gough prints on them, Danish dinner setting and pacific islander hand woven serviette rings to hold matching batik serviettes. Totally random and perhaps an uber cool interior stylist/designer’s worst nightmare - but we all loved it.

I scoured through numerous batik covered photo albums at my parent's house and couldn't find a single photo of one of these events to share with you but had to smile when I saw all of Dad's 'life admin' laid out on the dinning table on top of what was once the best batik table cloth once reserved only for said special dinners.

My husband on the other hand, grew up on the Gold Coast circa 1980 -1993’s. As a result, when we go shopping, I still occasionally have to steer him away from life size porcelain black panthers, zebra rugs, gargantuan marble chess tables and very shinny black topack furniture.

My husband has a natural urge to rush to the closest home centre full of mass produced items to buy things that are big and bold, expensive, fashionable and OTT. I have an inherent desire to slowly build a collection of personally selected items from our travels that tell a story or invoke a special memory and welcome gifts from people we love of items that become precious heirloom treasures. Can you imagine these two worlds colliding?! Scary, no? Can you then blame us for implementing the safe display home-esque approach to interior decorating in our own home?

So you see, both having survived a childhood raised by parents with hoarding tendencies and a special and unique flair for nic nac displaying, it once felt so nice to come home to a house that felt more like a tidy and minimalist looking holiday apartment. But more recently we feel more at ease to acknowledge and embrace the influences of our upbringing and live in a house that feels more like a home where real people live.

So despite the significant challenge, we are somehow managing to successfully (and tastefully) incorporate both of our inherited tastes and influences in our new home. In one corner of our house, we have a display cabinet which boasts my husband’s small (and oh so garish…but tolerable… just) collection of Rosenthal - Versace Medusa items and in another corner …well more accurately, outside (on my husband’s insistence)on our deck sits 40 year old Tasmanian oak Danish style lounge chairs that once belonged to my parents.

What made me ponder of all of this was seeing my family house up for sale…and looking nothing like I remember….the orange and brown kitchen (it was the 70s and 80s) is now white. The brown lyno floors in the family room are now replaced with a grey marble look tile. My sister’s green room is now white. My pink room is now white. My brother’s yellow room is now white. There is no hillshoist or strawberry patch in the backyard – just big patches of frost bitten grass. As you may be able to tell, it made me feel nostalgic and a little sad because there was nothing beige or white about the home I grew up in… or the people in it….fortunately my parents keep everything so I still have plenty of mementos of the home I remember.

In the midsts of my spring cleaning this week I have come to realise that clutter can be good and that I am totally grateful for a busy, mostly messy, always interesting family home that encouraged an interest and openness to other cultures, art, books and expressions of individualisim. A house filled with things that opened my mind and my heart and made me ask questions, think creatively, showed me that it is ok to be an individual and to share the things you love with others…

Amelie has been enjoying what was one of my favourite toys at the same age - a little fabric Indonesian house that carries a little fabric Indonesian family inside. They now live next door to Amelie's dolls house. 

So thanks Mum and Dad (and thanks to my in-laws too) for helping us to seek out a cure for being beige and to embrace our upbringing so Amelie can learn from her surroundings and be encouraged to develop very non-beige interests all of her own...and if she chooses to like beige or white or cream etc etc...well that's ok too.

Linking up with other wonderful grateful stories with Maxabella Loves.

What sort of home did you grow up in? How has it influenced you?