The Point of Stuff

We decided to finally decorate. 

Our front room looked like a student digs, bright pink and royal blue walls with miss-matched furniture. Odds & sods we'd found along the years.

WE decided to decorate but to get S to sit and go through colour schemes, or textures or anything remotely 'homely/shoppingy' was an uphill struggle to say the least.

In the end, after a week of trying to get him to give his opinion, (alternatives rather than one word negatives) he ranted, "it's all just sh!t!  It's just fcuking STUFF...none of it is IMPORTANT"!!!

I decided from that day on to just buy what I liked and the room looks so different now, so homely and grown up!  It still has quirks like a giant clay toadstool and a black & white photo of S looking startled, with his hair like Alfalfa from The Little Rascals...but, it all works.  It's a proper nest now.

Today, me and Marie (my good friend and fellow Mum) were talking in my new homely, grown up, quirky nest and she was saying how she sometimes thinks her life wasn't meant to turn out the way it has.  That she feels like she's just a mum and has lost her identity.  You know, that invisible feeling we all, men and women, feel from time to time.  And I was telling her about S's rant about 'stuff', when it dawned on me that although I have never really been materialistic and am quite rubbish and nonchalant about financial matters and so I do get that the stuff we purchase is non essential to the bigger picture, it is our stuff. 

When we chose to be parents, something changed.  We didn't choose to be explorers, inventors or scientists.  We have chosen to be mum's and dads and so, we are going to spend a lot of time in our homes.  A lot of time not doing anything exciting.  Just routine drudgery.  So, I now figure that if we are to be sat in our nests, we might as well accumulate stuff and if we can get nice stuff, surely that's better than not bothering.  Maybe, we, the Mum's and Dad's, who hate the boredom and consumerism, need to just embrace what's on offer and nest.

I painted this to add to our stuff...S loves it.