Tuesday, 23rd of March 2010 at 10:47:23 PM 
From the actual entry of the owner of Trouvais design blog. Very inspiring. Note the lack of knotty pine.
But First! Regarding Knotty Pine:
Knotty pine is pine with many knots. This is thought by some to be very charming and warm. The dots on the walls are a pattern, and interesting. To some. Not to me.
To be fair, our knotty pine isn’t some cheap crap slapped up in the ’50s or ’70s, but was actually installed by the builder in 1940. So that’s very nice. But it doesn’t change the fact that the downstairs room is very BROWN and DOTTED and CAVE-LIKE and could use some lightening up. However, mine is not the only name on the mortgage, and that Other Person thinks that the pine of knots ought to stay just as it is. I don’t quite care enough to take a stand on this, so the brown with knots that makes up the tongue-in-groove walls, wainscoting, cabinets, windows and molding will remain as is.
So in the this knotty pine room are knotty pine cabinets tucked under the knotty pine windows. In these cabinets are lots of items. When we first moved into this house eleven years ago, I saw the cabinets and thought with delight, “Oh! We can put games and books and Barbie crap in them and there will be no clutter!” But the cabinets are only ten inches deep. They’re really more like bookshelves with knotty pine doors. No games fit in there, and anything Barbie just tumbles out when you open a door.
But that’s okay because there are too many things in front of the doors for them to be open-able, and my daughters are in college and don’t get the Barbies out any more.
In this room are two actual non-cabinet gigantic bookshelves groaning with books that we never read but are important references for history, motorcycles, and hand-loading. I admit that the vintage bee-keeping one is mine, and I plan to keep IT, if not actually to ever keep BEES. I want to say goodbye to one of the bookshelves, the gray metal filing cabinet (nothing says House Beautiful like one of those in your house!) and maybe some other stuff. We’ll see what I can get away with. About half the things in this room should go, really.
How the downstairs room appears in my mind, but with all of the numbers jumbled about.
This room is a giant wooden sliding-block puzzle. To get rid of one of the bookshelves we have to move stack of CDs and put a few of the books in the cabinets. Everything I want to do to declutter starts with the cabinets, even though NOTHING IN THE CABINETS SHOWS. When I opened the first door of the cabinet on the left, this is what I saw at first glance on the top shelf: an abalone shell, petrified wood, archival library glue, a partial package of fresh unrecorded CDs, the creamer from a child’s Majolica tea set, Science Study Series Crystals and Crystal Growing (1960), The Railway Children (1898), three World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King sets, American Girl Doll accoutrement, and piles more that I am too tired to list. The shelf is packed. When I reached for the glue I started a cascade that landed on the floor.
Eight doors, two shelves per door. And this is just to make room for the other stuff no one will let go of.
Which brings me to the the archeology of memory.
My father worked in the aerospace industry. He followed the government-funded projects and was always reaching higher up the pay scale. So we moved and moved, year after year. I remember when we moved from the Mojave desert to the Inland Empire, my mother threw a medium-sized cardboard box into my room. “That’s what you can take with you this time. That’s all you get.” I learned early on to take only the most significant things, and to let my memory suffice for reminding me of people and places past.
How the downstairs room looms before my eyes. THE HORROR, THE HORROR. Also, note KNOTS on the walls. KNOTTY!
Not so with the husband and children, who hoard things like they are repositories of all human history. See, they touch things, and the memories play out. It’s a kind of love; it’s magic. I worked in archeology for years. I understand. I respect the members of my household and their attachments too much to be the sort of wife/mother who would toss things away when they aren’t looking (not to say the odd holey t-shirt hasnt gone mysteriously missing once or twice) and so enlisted them (sans the absent elder daughter, whose things are saved in her room for later perusal) to go through all of this mess with me.
I must have caught them in just the right mood, because we jettisoned easily 75% of this stuff. Yay! And now six shelves are ready to receive books of great importance that are never opened!
Now, here are some things I learned while cleaning my downstairs room:
Do get inspired by finding a design website like Trouvais. Trouvais belongs to some woman who lives in my area who finds items and pics and uploads them as inspiration. I love her blog with the fiery passion of many fires. As soon as I get a freaking minute I’m going to make an awesome tableau on my mantel, SEE IF I DON’T. The one from Christmas is nice, but somewhat unseasonal.
Don’t carry heavy books when your fingers split open at the slightest provocation.
Do show your hands to your when this happens. Look stricken, if possible. It’s easier than you might imagine.
Don’t ever use the phrase “get rid of.” This will cause turmoil in many hearts. Ask me how I know.
Do say “recycle, donate,” and “give to the neighbor children.”
Don’t make your cleaning project have to do with other people’s stuff. They WILL thwart you.
Do get dressed in case you have to take the kid somewhere and leave the spouse on the job. I made a tactical error in attacking this job in my pajamas. The purging spell was broken when the husband got into the car.
So, are you a “keeper of all things” or a “release this from my lifer”? And do you live with a match or an opposite? (Also, what is your stance on knotty pine? And don’t you really want to write it as NAUGHTY PINE?”)
P. S. Are there any design websites that make your heart beat a little faster?
Heh. We had one random room in the house I grew up in with walls covered with knotty pine. My parents turned it into a library – no one wanted to sleep in it. That room was DARK. No matter how many lights we put in there, it was perpetually creepy and vaguely menacing. I am not a fan of knotty pine.
But moving on to cleaning… last year my husband and I moved to a new apartment which is MUCH lovelier and more wonderful than the old one, but also has significantly less storage space. So we had to go through every single thing we owned and decide whether it should be kept, sold, given away or thrown away. I was ok with it, and actually in my secret heart-of-hearts was glad to have a reason to get rid of a lot of junk. I found boxes in the closets that had stuff I hadn’t laid eyes on since packing up my dorm room upon graduation in 1999.
My husband, not so much. Oh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth!
Finally, I figured something out: some things that one or the other of us had strong sentimental attachments to but no deep desire to have on display in our home could be given away if we took photographs of them first. The crystal unicorn I’d been given by my parents when I was 11 or so? Is happily buried somewhere on my hard drive, should I ever feel the need to visit it. Same with many other things. Yay!
Hate, hate, hate knotty pine. When I first saw the kitchen in my current house I almost gagged at the floor to ceiling knotty pine cabinets. But the boyfriend who owns the mortgage LOVES it.
Hate the notty pine with a vengence. I have wormwood cedar on one wall in my living room that I am terrified to tear off as the house is over 100 years old and I am not sure what we will find behind that wood. Then we have the lovely 70′s tongue and groove pine in the stairwells going up and going to the basement. I would love to paint the stuff going to the basement white as there is minimal lighting but the husband says he likes the wood. He does leave town several weekends this summer and is not all that observant so the color could change and it probably would be weeks before he even noticed.
I tend to be a hoarder of memories (stuff). But I have started to part with things slowly, only took 42 years to learn how to do that. The husband is a tosser, which has lead to some tears when he tossed my stuff. Now after 6 years of marriage he has learned to not touch any of my stuff and I will eventually part with it, or hide it in one of the many cabinets we have at our house.
We live in a 2 BR condo. No basement, a teeny closet’s worth of outside storage, but really, quite a decent number of closets inside. One of which is entirely taken up by my husband’s comic book collection (which I am fine with, but wish to organize better) and the other of which is entirely taken up by my husband’s old CDs and his empty box collection – which I am NOT fine with. We argue about it approximately once every 6 months. He has had an iPod for ages. Most of those CDs have been downloaded into the computer and are stored there, on his iPod AND on a backup hard drive. I want them out of my house where they take up too much precious closet space. I also want to throw out his precious precious empty boxes, which he swears we will want to pack up the DVD player/computer/computer monitor/game system/whatever came in the box the next time we move. I say WE’LL GET NEW BOXES AND PROBABLY MOVE THAT STUFF CAREFULLY BY HAND ANYWAY. Not that I’m a saint. He certainly doesn’t understand why my shoes take up a third of our walk-in closet.
Knotty pine is really one of those things that is a love it or hate it, nothing in-between. If your hubby truly loves it, how about putting up a bunch of artwork? If you pick things that are matted in light colors and use metallic or light wood frames, it will help the walls visually move to the background.
I’m a genetic packrat. It’s taken a three-year series of moves from a 1500 sq foot house to a 586 sq foot apartment for me to really understand the difference between keeping because it’s important for a real reason and keeping because it’s easier than making a decision.
I sort of like knotty pine, because it reminds me of my grandparents “rec room” (does anybody have a rec room anymore?) which was a happy place with cookies and toys and stuff.
Design website…well, it’s not all design, it’s sort of a way of life, but please go to alabamachanin.com and see if you don’t FALL IN LOVE with her clothes and decor and all that stuff. They are super pricey, but if I had a jillion dollars I would buy a ton of it because 1. It’s GORGEOUS and just my style and 2. It’s all as sustainable and crunchy as it can possibly get, which is where I am, in my mind, while my body’s going to Target and buying cheap decor and t-shirts. I have both books, which are also pretty even if you don’t ever make anything out of them (no comment).
Hi Gray! Did you know that under that lovely creamy entry wall there was originally wide pine planks? 18 yrs ago I convinced my husband to let me plaster it over (had a professional do the last skim coat). Then a mere 15 years later I convinced him to let me have 1/4 ” Sheetrock installed over the living room walls (“to protect the wood in case you don’t like it”). The biggest design coup I’ve ever staged. He grudgingly admitted it looked great almost immediately. That said, and if you’re still stuck with it…the latest House Beautiful lavishes much praise on wood walls (I ain’t going back!). Love your humor. Hits home. Miles of clutter to go before I sleep….Trish
OH HAI TRISH!
I coasted into your blog when I was looking for a pic of 18th cen. shoes to use in the footer image of my new personal blog I’m designing this week.
I lost several hours looking at all of the lovely images you’ve uploaded, omg. I was BESIDE myself. Your own home is lovely, too. I suddenly looked at my de-cluttering project with a new eye.
I’ve been ignoring this part of the house as if it were the garage for a the past few years. House beautiful likes wood, heh? Might have to go look. I might get some IDEAS and things.
Hi again Gray. Thank you. What is it about those 18th century shoes! I have much clutter that scuttles away when the camera comes out. My entry always has a couple dozen shoes (the menfolk have size 13 shoes…and my shoe- aholic daughter throws hers into the mix when visiting from college).Yikes. Enjoying you blog. Good brass tacks suggestions, Merci. Trish
I am a keeper and although I hate this about myself, its true regardless of my best intentions. 2 of my kids are now the same – the youngest its too soon to tell. I am married to a purger and the clutter and detritus of 3 elem school and younger kids drives him over the edge constantly. I take the kids on my own for a vacation the start of each summer and he uses the alone time to do a project but this also inevitably turns into a “throw out all the crap while they are gone” which then turns into the kids crying to me for weeks on end because he threw out something very very precious (and honestly a couple of times from me on something that truly WAS precious and he chucked out). So we go away now making him promise not to touch anything. and there is always a huge blowout about this. I really should join you in decluttering and avoid that whole disaster this summer! But, I’m like you – where the heck do I start! And who has the time and energy? I’m still smarting over donating this huge stuffed bear that my daughter 6 years later STILL is upset about. Go figure – that was a bad choice to purge for sure. So I remain paralyzed. And knotty pine? I have wonderful memories of my grandparents cottage and their knotty pine cabinets, along with these cute (read gaudy if they were in my kitchen) little plastic teapots and other little items (almost like magnets?) stuck into the wood haphazardly…but I do not like knotty pine for my own house. If it was downstairs in my basement though, I wouldn’t rip it up, I’d just think of it as “quaint” especially when I would think of the person who lovingly installed it.
As a child of two keepers who come closer to hoarders the deeper into their seventies they fall, I purge with a vengeance and am married to a purger. If it doesn’t fit, work, or have an off season home, it’s gone. And as the babes age, we consign or donate regularly. Which doesn’t mean I don’t fight clutter. It’s just well fitting, working, in season clutter.
My grandparents are extreme keepers, and my dad was a keeper. My mom is a get-rid-of-anything-that-doesn’t-have-a-purpose-or-can’t-be-displayed-er. I’m the best (err… worst?) of both. I’m messy, but I hate clutter so most of my cleaning jobs in this challenge are organizing or actual “clean”ing because I don’t have much “extra stuff”. I do, however, have a treasure chest. My great grandmother had a chest full of clothes she sent over from Germany when she immigrated to the States, and my mom WANTED TO THROW IT OUT. I saved it and use it to hold all of my special things that have no purpose but are very special to me. What doesn’t fit in the trunk (except photos and scrapbook items – those have separate storage) goes.
Knotty Pine: Thumbs down.
I get easily overwhelmed with purging, but I like to do it much more. Now, the things I hate to get rid of are things with attachments to my children. Anything else — I can let it go easily. It took me a long time to get to that point however. When I was a child, I felt really overwhelmed with things, and had no perpective on keeping anything. I now recall a few things I probably tossed in a desperate attempt to clean my house — things like letter my grandfather wrote to me.
I have tried to help my children with this, but as the only grandchildren on either side of the family, they have even more “stuff” than I do. And, for a while, the junk that they would bring home from birthday and school parties drove me nuts. To make it worse, every item they had had equal value. They are pretty good now, but the “recycle and donate” phrasing is SO TRUE.
I married someone who tended to downsize by moving — but not in the way you would think. When we went to Europe during our first year of marriage, we kept meeting people who would say “I have your guitar” (Spain), “Do you want your chess set back?” (Germany), “My mother still has a box of your items back in her house in England….”
1. I am not a hoarder. My things are in five boxes in the attic save a small smattering of stuff in my room that is, for the most part, disposable.
2. The Barbies are long gone. Unless there’s 1 or 2 in the toy chest. Which I want for if I have babies so please don’t get rid of it.
3. Knotty Pine – The Dirty Projectors & David Byrne
OH HAI SUGAR.
1. You may be underestimating the amount of crap you have.
2. Do you mean the chest under the TV in the downstairs room? I was just wondering what’s in there. I think it’s the wooden blocks.
3. Naughty pine is unattractive, no matter who sings about it.