Towels, Lamps, and other Meaningless Stuff

If you are expecting a linear, logical flow to these blogs, I’m so sorry. Number one, I have always tended to be random in what I think about and/or obsess over. Number two, multiply that by about a thousand since January 1.

So today’s focus was — shopping for towels, lamps, rugs, and various other home decor items. Target, Kohls, TJ Maxx. Ross…all my go-to places.

It was refreshing to take a detour from my obsession and spend some time celebrating my friend’s daughter who is headed off to Navy Boot Camp in about three weeks. THANK YOU, Caran, for your service!

Settling into easy, honest conversation with people you’ve known forever and others you just met but feel a kindred spirit with is always fortifying for the soul.

Now back to what really matters. I realize there are only so many colors and patterns out there for bathroom towels, and I do believe I’ve looked at all of them. There is a huge difference between a warm grey and a cool grey. I need warm grey. And cream. Not white. Cream. By the way, I’m really excited about a particular design feature in my little bathroom makeover. Can’t wait to share a picture, but it will be a couple of weeks in the making.

Can we talk about lamps? I have brought home four different bedside lamp sets. What is so hard about finding a lamp that matches a cream, teal, and grey color scheme?

My poor friends receive texts from me out of the blue — “What do you think of this? Which one looks better—the cream or the teal pillow?” This week, one of my friends texted back, “Just trust your gut.”

I responded, ”My gut LIES all the time! I can’t trust it!” I wish I had a dime for the countless pieces of furniture, pillows, rugs, etc., I have brought home through the years only to find out they were absolutely the wrong size, color, shape, or style.

And don’t get me started on faux versus live plants.

I would like to blame all this on Chandler — “Ever since Chandler passed, I find myself shopping for decorations to keep me busy.” But obsessing over stuff is just what I do, have always done…and do it well. This is why I have not redecorated any portion of our home for about 15 years. I know what it leads to. Mind you, I’m thrifty, so it’s not so much a money thing. It’s a crazy thing, and I own it. No human being should ruminate this incessantly about whether the sofa throw blanket should be textured or smooth.

A couple of decades ago when I read Organizing from the Inside Out, I stayed up most of the night for a couple of weeks making sure every square inch of the house and garage was perfectly organized. The evidence of that obsessive frenzy is still demonstrated by the handful of nuts and bolts that have remained grouped by size and function.

Here’s where Chandler comes in. None of it matters. It just doesn’t. The towel color, the rug size, the lamp style. Yes, I will continue to shop and obsess and text my friends with pictures and surveys because that’s just how I’m wired. But none of it carries real weight. And that is a welcome reality. Nothing of significance weighs in the balance if I pick the wrong towel color. It’s, in a sense, freeing to be able to obsess over something that is of little real consequence.

Do me a favor though. Three months from now, if I’m still writing about trying to find the perfect towel color for my bathroom, please coordinate an intervention. OR just find me the right freaking towels!