DigsMagazine.com | lounge: SIMPLY SPEAKING page2

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a home + living guide for the post-college, pre-parenthood, quasi-adult generation

04.01.2002

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big decorating dreams. tiny little budget. don't be a wallflower! jump on over to the discussion boards and get decorating help.

other recent LOUNGE articles:
o Office Space
o Album-cover CD Box
o A Room of My Own
o Fight the Chaos
o Gallery-style Picture Hanging Tracks
o After School
o Sew What?
o Curtain Time
o Lazy Decorator's Bag of Tricks
o Home sweet homes
o Minor Makeover Miracles: Kitchen
o CD decor
o Home/work
o Say it with Spraypaint
o Painting 101
o Make it Mosaic!
o Estate Sales
o Open House

simply speaking
by Joe Snyder | 1 2 3
continued from page 1

step two: create a coherent style
Once you’ve taken the time to make plans, it’s a lot a easier to see which furnishings will be most essential to helping you create that home of your dreams. Now you’re ready to move on to the next step – shopping. Nothing can ruin a room faster than to have too many styles in a close proximity – an ornate antique next to an ultra-modern coffee table, or an expensive cherry bookshelf with maple picture frames on it. If you move into a new flat and insist on filling it with furniture for the sake of coziness, the least you can do for yourself is maintain similarity within each room. Regardless of the size of your budget, it’s a good idea to keep the items you do buy of similar styles, colors, and appearance. Choose a style, then stick with it.

step three: add small personal touches
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t advocate a completely dull, sparse existence. Objects such as books, CDs, and photographs – items that all of us already have – these items carry with them the ability to add life and personality to a room. The fact is that our books, CDs, and picture frames will inevitably end up somewhere in our home; and it’s the personal objects we own and display that speak volumes about who we are. We’re all interested in what our friends read, what music they listen to, and what they find memorable enough to warrant framed photographs in their homes. This is why it’s so essential to display these objects with thought and care.

Keeping the entirety of your CD collection on the same rack or shelf, arranged either all horizontally or all vertically, may well be the easiest way to keep track of them and note their quantity at a glance. But by no means is this the most visually interesting way to display them to guests. Similarly, lining up your books in a neat vertical line on a shelf serves no aesthetic purpose and will certainly annoy your guest, who’ll have to turn his or her head sideways to read the titles of your books. Books are a treasure, and we do them no justice when we cram them so tightly into our bookcases that we feel no desire whatsoever to dig out a tome from the unsightly mess.

keep wandering this way!

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