Part 2

Furnishing Forward: A Practical Guide to Furnishing for a Lifetime
by Sheila Bridges

(Page 2 of 2)

Thirteen years of working in the interior design profession has taught me a great deal about what it takes to successfully furnish people's homes. While much of my experience has come from working with clients, a lot of it has also come from working on my own homes. During the past decade I have begun to understand the importance of having a design philosophy that you are willing to adhere to throughout the furnishing process. My own philosophy revolves around what I call the art and psychology of Furnishing Forward - a concept that suggests furnishing or buying furniture with the future in mind. Furnishing Forward has to do with furnishing for the long haul. Though I have too much of an appreciation for history to ever suggest that you completely turn your back on the past, I do suggest that you look at your past with a critical eye. Learn from both your mistakes and your triumphs as they pertain to the way you have approached furnishing your home. Be willing to interrogate yourself a little bit. Administer a polygraph if you have to. While it can be challenging to be completely honest with yourself about what has and hasn't worked in the past, it is an essential component of Furnishing Forward to identify the potential mistakes before they become decorating disasters of Titanic proportions.

Whenever I'm in the process of helping someone furnish his or her home, friends always ask me when the project will be finished. The answer is always pretty much the same: never. Good design is an ongoing and ever-evolving process. Well-decorated homes are never completely finished, simply because the people living in them are never finished dreaming about the future. As our lives change, so do the spaces we live in. We all know that life is a series of both expected and unanticipated events. You get a new job instead of that promotion you were counting on. You have triplets instead of twins. You elope to Vegas instead of getting married in your local church. We continuously move forward, bringing new experiences and attitudes with us along the way. We need to design and decorate our homes so that they are completely in sync with these life changes, no matter how difficult or provocative they may be. By the time we reach adulthood, we should know that most things in life are beyond our control. What we choose to put in our homes is not. One of the goals of Furnishing Forward is to motivate you to become an active participant in the furnishing process rather than a spectator watching from the sidelines. The reason for this is simple. The more involved you are in the process, the greater the likelihood that you will be happy with the results.

The most common excuse that I hear from people about why they can't focus on decorating their homes has to do with money. Although this excuse sounds good on paper, in reality it doesn't fly. I know plenty of people who do not have a lot of money but who live stylishly yet within their specific financial boundaries. You do not have to be a Wall Street banker, music mogul, or movie star in order to live comfortably, elegantly, and smartly. Whether you live in Tennessee or Timbuktu, we can all live in homes and with furniture that is long-lasting and low maintenance even if our lives are changeable and high maintenance.

I am continually amazed that people approach the design and decoration of their homes in ways that are completely contradictory to how they manage the other aspects of their lives. Whether you choose to live in a tepee or a Tuscan villa, you have to think a little before you bulldoze into the design and decoration process. Like every other challenge that we face in our lives, we make better decisions when they are reality-based, educated, and well informed. This doesn't mean that there isn't room for fantasy. In fact, fantasy and curiosity should be encouraged. Design without these components is about as exciting as doing your income tax return. All of us want to live better and in ways that are more gracious and flattering to us and to our loved ones. The key is in the balance. Creating living spaces that are as beautiful as they are comfortable. Defining spaces and home environments that are as stylish as they are functional. Our homes should be as much about celebrating where we came from as they are about where we are going.

We should think about creating personal refuges that shelter us from the harsh realities we sometimes experience. As we get older, most of us come to realize that life is not always easy. On a daily basis, we face personal crises that come in many different colors, shapes, and sizes. Our children get sick, our company goes bankrupt, we get divorced, our parents pass away. Challenges arise in the forms of terrorism, sexism, racism, cancer, AIDS, etc. The list goes on, ad infinitum. We begin to realize that none of us, no matter how successful we are, are immune. While I am hardly suggesting that these things can be avoided or prevented because we have lovely homes, I am suggesting that our homes become places for self-contemplation, reflection, and healing, places where we can comfortably shed the armor that is necessary for the daily battle called life. Our homes should be places where we can truly relax and be ourselves. Finding comfort and humor in the physical walls surrounding us might help dismantle some of the emotional ones that we have built over the years. Our homes are where we should feel grounded and most centered. If this is so, then our hearts and souls have a place to retreat when things are truly difficult.

It is not uncommon for people to have love affairs with their furniture. Even the most unromantic of men have been known to fall in love with a La-Z-Boy chair now and again. Maybe we think we love our dining-room table. Is it because it is made of beautifully weathered pine and looks great in the space? Yes. But we also love it because of what it symbolizes. What we associate with it is part of what gives it such great significance. Maybe your dining table reminds you of Christmas dinner or your daughter's 1 first birthday celebration. Whether we serve sushi or salami, getting together with friends and family to break bread is important to our overall well-being. Sitting down together at your dining table is as much about ritual and tradition as it is quite simply a place to sit and eat. Whatever the memory or recollection attached to the rituals and routines that take place in our homes, we subconsciously keep them in our inner framework, always reaffirming what is most important in our lives.

There is a certain authenticity to our homes that can't be disguised in the same way that we do other aspects of our existence. We can hide that extra five pounds we gained during the holidays with a pair of control tops. We can disguise that premature gray hair with the help of a little Grecian Formula. We can paint the most flattering self-portrait for the rest of the world to see, but no matter how hard we try, we can't hide how we live. Our homes are honest in ways that we can't necessarily be. I find it truly discouraging that people so often become complacent when it comes time to decorate their homes. It's as if the cheesy particleboard table disguised as mahogany simply knocked on your door and invited itself into your living room. We make conscious choices about the way we choose to live and furnish our homes, whether we want to admit it or not.

Home. Dorothy and Toto wanted desperately to get there, and E.T. wanted to phone there. We all have dreams about what our homes can and should be. Having a nice home is part of the American Dream. And the last time I checked, even Barbie had a dream house. For the three little pigs, home meant safety from the big, bad wolf. For me, home is shelter, sanctity, and sanity with a roof overhead. Whatever your home is to you, take great care in surrounding yourself with things and people you love.

Copyright © 2002 by Sheila Bridges

About the Author

Sheila Bridges, president of Sheila Bridges Design Inc. is an interior designer whose goal is to create high-end, residential spaces that are thought-evoking and visually interesting while also comfortable and livable. Her understated style is culturally classic, as she creates visually provocative and rich interiors with an elegant simplicity.