Shopping for Perfection

These are the ramblings of a shopper on the road. I am writing tonight from New York City. I arrived yesterday afternoon, and have set today and tomorrow aside to shop for specific projects. How many times have I heard from friends or clients (before they know better) how much fun these expeditions must be?

Immediately they envision…..well, I’m not certain what they envision, but I gather from the glimmer in their eye and the wistful tone in their voice that they are reading from a very different script than the one in front of me. Not that I would trade places or give my job away, for I love what I do far too much, but I wonder how many would care to keep up with this designer on a mission.

First the broad parameters: I am shopping for four projects on this trip. I have furniture plans with design concepts in my briefcase and lists of needed items filed in my memory. Antique furniture (the backbone of most rooms) fill these lists, along with lighting (new or old), accessories and art.

I know the size and scale of the pieces I’m hoping to find (the plans are my backup in case of a brain freeze) and I’ve got two days (14 hours as most dealers open at 10 and close at 5) to locate two or three options (I always give clients choices) for just over 40 pieces.

The numbers breakdown, today, like this: 4 shops in Tribeca (were I am staying on this trip) and then to the Upper East Side where I visit over 25 dealers. I had power bars for lunch (and a Diet Coke or two) walked and cab’d (Lexington and 43nd up to 3rd and 62nd) and ended my day with images of about 30 interesting pieces in my shoulder bag or emailed to the office.

The dealers I saw are wonderful people, many of whom I could spend hours with, but there isn’t enough time so we chat while I shop, then I dash. We know we will see each other again, soon.

Tomorrow is another day.

Write and tell me about your favorite shopping expedition or ideas for shopping trip success?

Try to think green when it comes to cleaning your house and particularly when washing your fine fabrics (much easier on the environment than dry cleaning). Here are some quick laundry saving tips for your clothes:

-Small Loads. Keep the number of items in your washer and dryer to a minimum. Your linens will get cleaner and have fewer wrinkles this way.

-Sort Everything. I recommend laundering two shades of the same color in the same load. The more diligent you are at sorting your colors, the fewer unwanted surprises will await you when the spin cycle is done.

-Spot Clean. By pressing a damp towel with a bit of delicate detergent on a spot and then blotting with the towel’s clean corner you can save yourself a trip to the dry cleaners. Minimizing these heavy blasts of chemicals makes your suits and coats last longer and helps preserve the environment.

-Cool it off. Use a cool or gentle cycle on your dryer and remove items as soon as they dry. This will prevent dryer damage.

-Half and half. Dress shirts last longer if you wash them at home. Then have them ironed professionally. Some cleaners will try and charge full price, but negotiate and get the most from your purchases.

-Clean it all. Washers collect lint just like dryers. Once a month run your washing machine on “hot” with a cup of white vinegar to clean out unwanted fibers.

A recipe to celebrate the end of summer.

Growing up, my summers were memory-making times. Swimming in the lake at Clearwater. Failing to learn to sail in the same lake. Family picnics each day. Grandpa making coffee for everyone early in the morning. Chocolate and dessert recipes. Memories full of sun-drenched moments captured forever in our heads and hearts.

Today, I’d like to share a memory from my Grandmother’s kitchen with you. It’s my favorite “End of Summer” treat. Opal (and her mother before her; Mary) Ruskofsky’s Chocolate Potato Cake:

1 Cup Mashed Potatoes (best when kept from the evening before)
I Cup Shortening
2 Cup Sugar
4 Eggs
½ Cup Milk
½ Cup Nuts
½ Cup Raisens
1 Cup Chocolate (not cocoa)
2 ½ Flour
2 Teaspoon Baking Power
1 Teaspoon Salt
1 Teaspoon cinnamon
1 Teaspoon nutmeg
1 Teaspoon cloves

Mix all ingredients completely.

Bake in a greased and powdered bunt pan for 1 hour at 350 degrees or until a knife is clean when entered and removed from the center of the cake.

Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Enjoy this little memory of my happy days in my Grandmother’s kitchen.

Let’s take a walk through your home and see if there may be an item or two worth changing in favor of something more beautiful; because at the end of the day that’s what we all want for our homes. We want a series of beautiful moments which allow our family and friends to enjoy their time under our roof.

Beauty in the home does not just happen. It takes great effort to create specific beauty throughout your home. Few are truly gifted with an eye for scale, proportion and balance in such a way as to guarantee an effortless, lovely home.

Others work diligently, reading and learning and asking questions, always searching for an adjustment that will make their home just a bit lovelier. It is this latter group I speak with today.

Let’s begin at the beginning. Walk out your front door, and as you do, switch hats and become a guest seeing your home for the first time. Approach the door with new eyes that have not seen any of this before. What do you see?

How does what you see make you feel? What can you do today to improve the view and the experience? It was Theodore Roosevelt who said, “Do what you can…with what you have…where you are.”

This is my suggestion for you today. On a note pad, jot down two small projects that will enhance the experience of approaching your front door. They may be as basic as sweeping the porch, touching up the paint, or putting up the new house numbers that have been collecting dust in the trunk of your car.

The point is to do something. Create an experience where you are guaranteed to succeed, and then succeed. You will feel great and take the first step towards a more beautiful home.

Design Beginnings

Like mammals everywhere, we learn from our environment. We experience the world through our five senses. We gather information. We store, sort and select for use the information which seems best-suited for our survival. Our experiences, however monumental or mundane, are the fuel which feeds the learning process. Much as “we are what we eat,” we are, to a great extent, what we experience.

When we have the luxury of time to give consideration to our living environment, a phenomenon which appears to be growing in our culture as evidenced by the proliferation of shelter magazines and reality lifestyle and design television shows, we draw on what we have experienced. Our experiences shape the range of responses that we are able to produce when faced with a question, challenge or wish to set in motion a series of actions leading to a new goal.

Something as simple as “I need new pillows for my sofa” offers us an opportunity to draw on our life experience (travel, reading, movies, art, conversation, etc.) and form an idea about these pillows.

As a boy growing up in Sacramento, California I made a discovery one day which would affect my life to this day. I picked up a copy of a beautifully colored, glossy shelter magazine that opened the doors of my mind and imagination.

Through the consistent eyes of the publication’s photographers, my experience of what a home might look like underwent a quantum shift. My boundaries of experience expanded and I wanted more. Each month my appetite was fed and I learned.

Photo-by-photo, word-by-word, page-by-page I was taken into a world I did not know existed. And I absorbed what these pages had to offer. Today, whether in book or periodical form, I continue to absorb and learn. As an adult, I have added travel to my favorite tools in the learning process.

The process continues, and will, as long as I’m drawing breath on this planet. Where is this process leading me? I do not know. But if the trip is any indication, it will be a beautiful place.

A challenge to you today is to be an active participant in your environment. Experience something new today (pick up a book or a magazine; walk or drive somewhere new). Learn a lesson from your new experience. Act on what you have learned and, together, let’s make our world more beautiful.

Write and share with me a lesson you have learned and how it has made your home a more beautiful place.

How to Choose Cleaning Products

Who knew a Google search could stop you dead in your tracks? It’s a quiet Sunday afternoon. At brunch, a friend mentioned a new cleaning product that he had just purchased. He described it as “green” and I didn’t hear much beyond that.

Was the packaging green? Was the liquid itself green? Or was this just ‘buzz’ emanating from Al Gore’s brilliant documentary? I wasn’t sure, but I did know that a Google search of “green cleaning products” might provide some answers.

Suddenly, I’m reading from a 1999 “New Scientist” study that found when aerosol sprays and air fresheners were used regularly in a home: women experienced 25% more headaches; men and women were 19% more likely to experience depression; infants under the age of 6 months had 30% more ear infections and 22% more cases of diarrhea.

Where have I been since 1999? The article listed item after item of typical cleaning products and the health challenges that they can aggravate, check the list here.

I could not let my Sunday afternoon slip past without checking under my kitchen counter to see what possible can or canister of eco-devastation was hiding in the shadows. I was shocked to learn that it wasn’t one or two.

I cleared out two plastic trash bags full of very scary cleaning products (see my picture of shame above). Over 25 containers of products that could harm my health, my friends and family’s health and the health of our environment, all from two cabinets in my kitchen.

Take a look under your kitchen counter and see what’s staring back at you. Hopefully you have more eco-friendly cleaning products at work and/or around your family, friends and pets. If not, then join me over the next few weeks as I explore how to choose cleaning products that are safe, effective and will leave your home sparkling clean and non-toxic.

Last Friday I did something that I’ve not done in a long time. Shame on me for letting time slip by like this, but nonetheless the clock had ticked and I’d clearly missed out. It was nothing huge; just the simple pleasure of kicking my shoes off and walking across a beautiful expanse of lawn.

In that moment, the thought occurred to me that this is what summers are about. Toes set free. Cool blue/green Bermuda grass and a warm summer breeze. At that moment, the only thing missing was a group of friends and it would have been perfect. My resolution from that experience was to not allow another week to pass without gathering those friends and celebrating.

Too often I fall into the trap of thinking that entertaining has to be on a monumental scale; as if it’s not a party if there are not horse drawn carriages and live circus acts tumbling through my living room. That way of thinking is simply wrong.

Enjoying time with friends doesn’t have to be held off for the seasonal party. Instead, the fact that we are close brings a level of ease and comfort that can allow for great relaxed entertaining.

With this thought in mind, I’ve begun something new. I call it “Meatloaf Thursdays.” Thursday evenings I make meatloaf (interesting how many recipes there are) and extend invitations to friends both new and old to bring a favorite dish and a bottle of wine.

Dinner is at 7:00 p.m. and we’re wrapped up by 9:00pm. We can kick off our shoes, curl our feet up on the sofa and enjoy a very easy meal while celebrating those we care about the most.

Share with me interesting ways you entertain and nurture those closest to your heart.

101 Things I Hate About Your House

Have you ever tripped on the sidewalk? You know, caught your toe on a barely visible crack in the concrete then stumbled and fumbled like an errant acrobat? I have. It’s usually accompanied by a roar of laughter from my friends who, for a split second, have to decide if they will admit to knowing the klutz.

The world of design can be just like strolling down a lovely lane or boulevard. You smile at no one in particular while you take in the understated beauty and then, like a smack to the back of the head, you are staring at the sand in the concrete, fearing your face may know the touch of a surgeon’s blade long before it’s demanded by vanity.

Yikes! The things people do to their homes. It’s shocking. Not shocking in the way that genocide or war are shocking, but shocking in the sense that some things can easily be avoided by adults in today’s world. And yet, there you stand shocked.

I know that not everyone will hire an interior designer to help guide them through the maze of tastefully articulated living environments. Nor will everyone pick up one of the dozens of helpful, informative, beautifully-stylized shelter magazines offered for sale at every checkout stand, book store and news kiosk in the country.

So I’ve decided to create some CliffsNotes for the designing and decorating-challenged. Every Tuesday, I will share one or two thoughts about what not to do in your home, and some easy ideas on what you should do. Someday you will thank me for this.

Book Review

As an avid book collector I find the prospect of talking about books a wonderful excuse to add to my small, but steadily growing stacks of printed wonders. Whether it is a stunningly bound, exquisitely printed Turkish volume on The Silk Road (found in a dusty stall at the Sultans Bizarre in Istanbul) or a tenderly worn copy of Russell Page’s The Education of a Gardener picked up at a Western Massachusetts tag sale, books intrigue casual readers and vintage book collectors.

Books carry us to wonderful places through words, pictures and illustrations. They educate, illuminate, inspire and outrage. At their worst, they can leave us feeling that time has been wasted. At their best, they cause time to evaporate leaving only the sound of turning pages as a link to our daily life.

It would be futile to promise you scholarly erudition as I share with you the books that I find of note. What I will commit to this suggested reading list is only from my experience. You may agree or disagree or not care at all. I will only share with you the things which cause me to, once again, commit to the idea that I can make this world a bit more beautiful.

So where to start on this suggested reading list? The possibilities are vast and reach back through centuries of hardcover classic book collections. Wanting to keep this introduction to “books on design” fresh and useful, my hand reaches for Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman Jr.’s The Decoration of Houses. First printed at the beginning of the 20th century, this guidebook to creating a beautiful home always challenges and inspires.

With its feet unapologetically planted in the classical tradition, it raises the bar for thoughtful design while always encouraging personal style. “Most of the features of architecture that have persisted through various fluctuations of taste owe their preservation to the fact that they have been proved by experience to be necessary,” sums up for me the authors’ very direct observations on the design of a home.

At times the language can be thick to our ear (remember the opening monologue of The Age of Innocence, beautiful, but not your typical water cooler chatter), however, for anyone really interested in understanding the power of an empty room (“much of the sense of restfulness and comfort produced by certain rooms depends on the due adjustment of their fundamental parts.” P 19), they will find the reward well worth the labor.

Thinking big intrigues me. It always has. I’ve always been fascinated with a wide stretch of ocean; a sweeping expanse of mountain range; the sharp edges of a coral reef. So when presented with the idea of establishing a consistent voice that would explore the world of design; sharing opinions, ideas, resources, and particulars that make a beautiful home all I saw was the vast enterprise. And it overwhelmed me.

Much like the time tested question “How do you eat an elephant?” and its thought provoking response, “One bite at a time.” Initially I saw just the giant task. It wasn’t until I broke down the challenge into more manageable increments that I felt more optimistic about my chance for success.

So each day I will share with you thoughts and ideas. These will focus on our on going learning and education: decorating tips, entertaining ideas, cleaning suggestions and random thoughts about beauty in our world.

Like any young life this one may stumble as it finds its place in the world, but we will not stumble aimlessly. Our reason for being is to explore how we can make the world a more beautiful place. I look forward to this new adventure.

And that’s something beautiful!