Research

Back well before we owned a home, when owning a home was just a far off dream, I started compiling notebooks.  I got the idea from Sarah Ban Breathnach's book Simple Abundance, which I love.

I cut pictures out of magazines that struck my fancy and then glued them into the notebook.  I didn't care so much about organizing them and I didn't analyze what it was I liked about them, I just glued them in.

Over several years, I amassed quite a collection of glued on images.  And guess what filled those pages?  Stuff I liked.  If you had asked me before I started what my favorite color was, I would have said blue.  If you had asked me what kind of furniture I liked, I would have shrugged.  After looking at the pages I absentmindedly clipped out of magazines, there was red.  Red!  Everywhere red.

(I guess I like red.)

There was yellow.  Yellow?  I don't like yellow.  (Well I do it turns out.)

After I had curated this kind of a collection in my notebook:

I knew that these things would make my heart sing:

And they do.

When it was time to paint my laundry room, I looked at these collected pictures:

And painted my room a shade of sunshine:

Now, of course, there is Pinterest and it couldn't be easier to collect what you like.  You may not know immediately what kind of things you want in your house and what kind of colors you love.  Just pick--without analysis--pictures you like.  Everything else will take care of itself.  Eventually.