“Nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

This is quite likely the one and only wise thing that man ever said. And nowhere is the principle more clearly evidenced than in my laundry pile.

The surest and speediest way for me to get radically behind on the laundry is for me to say smugly to myself, “There now. All caught up on the laundry. How lovely.” The instant I do that is the instant the trouble sets in. It only takes about 36 minutes of laurel-resting for my dirty clothes hamper to look like this. You’d think that one of these days I’d learn that the point of doing the laundry is not in order to “be done.” You’d think that one of these days I’d stop sitting on the stupid laurels.

I’d love to really delve into this question and analyze themes from Ecclesiastes and thresh out the possible incipient Platonic assumptions in my approach to life . . . but I obviously have some laundry to do.

My son points out quite nicely in Tilt-a-Whirl that God wastes all kinds of glory and beauty on us all the time. We miss the stunning artistry He displays in each and every little snowflake. We glance at the rainbow and move on. We pass by the flowers and clouds and icicles nonchalantly when we ought to be thunderstruck in amazement all the time. And many of the outrageous views He has made are not even seen or appreciated by anyone at all. Take all the sunsets that only the birds and insects see. Why does God waste so much of His artwork on us? He must love us very much, and He must enjoy bestowing His good gifts even on a deaf and blind and bored audience.

And yet we imitate Him in this in very small ways. Think of parents moving the new baby into his room. Does the newborn appreciate the new crib with the matching quilt and bumper pads? Or the freshly painted walls in the nursery? Is the baby impressed with the handmade blanket from Aunt Susie or the quilt that has been lovingly passed down for generations? Of course not. But the giver is blessed. This is one of the ways Mom expresses her love for her new baby, though baby knows nothing of it. This is a concrete way of giving, loving, bestowing, welcoming. We obviously get this impulse from our wise Creator who made heaven and earth and then lavished loving kindness into every nook and cranny, ladling it out and sloshing it all over the place.

We ought to rouse ourselves from our stupor from time to time and take in some of the glories we find ourselves knee-deep in. Then with thankfulness, we can turn to our own homes and bestow some of this reflected glory in expected and unexpected places. Tiny ladles to be sure, but sloshing over nonetheless.

Woman must be a cook, but not a competitive cook; a school-mistress, but not a competitive school-mistress; a house decorator, but not a competitive house-decorator; a dressmaker, but not a competitive dressmaker. She should have not one trade but twenty hobbies; she, unlike the man, may develop all her second bests. This is what has been really aimed at from the first in what is called the seclusion, or even the oppression, of women. Women were not kept at home in order to keep them narrow; on the contrary, they were kept at home in order to keep them broad. The world outside the home was one mass of narrowness, a maze of cramped paths, a madhouse of monomaniacs. It was only by partly limiting and protecting the woman that she was enabled to play at five or six professions and so come almost as near to God as the child when he plays at a hundred trades. But the woman’s professions, unlike the child’s, were all truly and almost terribly fruitful.

You really must read the whole essay “The Emancipation of Domesticity” which originally appeared in What’s Wrong With the World and is included in the book Brave New Family.

A couple of weeks before the Merkles left us for the UK,  Bekah made this beautiful dessert for our Sabbath dinner. Under the whipped cream is a chocolate pot de creme, and the big, fat blackberries were from a friend’s back yard. The espresso cups seemed just the way to serve it. Delish!

I had a dear friend who was a decorator (who is now with the Lord) who gave me lots of help and teaching on decorating a home. I remember how she would call a bucket of paint “instant beauty,” and she was a very good painter and re-finisher. I agree with the end result (the beauty part), but it is never instant with me. Painting takes me ages and ages. But it is amazing what a bucket or two of paint can do, and compared to other things, it really is inexpensive.

Plants are what she called “cheap decorating” and it’s true. Put a plant in a corner and it can fill an otherwise bare room, or add interest to those empty spaces on a counter or table. When the college students start pouring into our community, the local grocery stores have bargains on house plants. And if you don’t destroy them, they can make a home beautiful for years.

My mother-in-law insists that flowers should be part of the weekly food budget since they add so much to the table. And it doesn’t take much to get a big impact. She prefers the Japanese arrangements, so that means one, three, or five stems. Americans tend to think more is better and sometimes shove way too much into a bouquet. Either way you like it, flowers can be cheap decorating as well. If you can’t manage fresh ones each week, a blooming plant can perform for quite a while.

A friend gave me a long, narrow, white dish with relief sea shells on each end for my birthday. I bought a couple of bags of seashells and filled it up, and it is blessing me each time I see it on my coffee table, reminding me of the Oregon beach. And another friend gave me a darling striped jug which is sitting on my blue buffet quite cheerfully. It needs nothing.

So share a few of your cheap decorating tips with us. We are all ears.