The style of the styleless...

I love fashionable home decor.  I love looking at a picture of a living room, all beautifully laid out and immaculately decorated.  My Youtube feed is full of vlogs on the topic, I can happily wallow in a home decorating magazine for an entire afternoon, and I've been left behind before in homeware stores because I was too busy inappropriately fondling the throw cushions.

I think, if I'm completely honest, the reason I love it all so much is because I have absolutely no chance of ever recreating it.

I am, I must confess, completely without style.  I know which colours are supposed to go together thanks to art class and that ever accursed colour wheel ... did anyone else hate that bloody colour wheel as much as I did ... but when I look at them I just can't seem to see which colours clash!  Does tan go with chocolate?  I'm pretty sure it does, but does THIS tan go with THIS chocolate?  It's all a mystery to me.

It's the same with furniture layout.  I know there are more ways of situating your furniture than "whack the couch against the wall opposite the TV", but I still seem to revert to it every time.  Occasionally I'll move the divider from one side of the couch to the other, but that's about it for my decorating style abilities.

Occasionally I'll give it a shot, buy something that's supposed to add a sense of personality or flair to my place, but every time, without fail, I'll pick the worst thing possible.  It'll be tacky, or clashing, or even worse, just plain odd.  What seemed like such a good idea when I was gazing covetishly in in the shop turns out to look ridiculous once it's in the harsh light of day ... or at least the harsh light of my living room.

The other day I was actually seriously considering buying plastic fruit to put in my kitchen.  Plastic fruit!  No, I have no idea why either.  The only thing I can put it down to is the fact that it was there, right in front of me in the homeware shop and something in my brain said, "Yes, genius idea!  Fake fruit!  You'll never need to worry about rotting bananas and fruit flies again!"

Of course, the fact that the fake fruit in question was in no way convincing in its evil charade didn't seem to click with me.  Instead it took a friend, bless her little cotton socks, to talk me out of what would undoubtedly have ended up being yet another home decorating disaster in a string of catastrophes.

Perhaps I just need to accept that, unless I start earning so much that I can afford to hire a decorator, I'm just not one of those people who are going to have a classy looking house.  It's always going to look slightly rumpled, not quite laid out right, and more than a little lairy to the eye.

I need to realise that my place is always going to be one of those houses that's respectable, but not aesthetically delightful.

But hey, at least the couch is comfy and the TV works.  Could be worse.