Home… I hear that word and I swear, my blood pressure instantly drops to a much calmer and doctor-approving level. I love being home. There. I said it. Maybe you asked me out to do something and I said I couldn’t because I was busy. I lied. I like being home. While many people in the country are being forced to work from home, I am not one of those people. My office is fully open and functioning as usual (kinda). But sometimes, I work from home because I’ve made my workroom so incredibly personal, it’s one of my favorite spaces. And isn’t that the whole point of home? Making it comfortable? Making it your most favorite place to be?
So many of us are always trying to define our own spaces and put a personal stamp on the places we live. I always laugh a little when Sherwin Williams comes out with the “color of the year” because the color of the year is never in any room of my house. And yet, I love my colors. Shades of yellow and gold- they make me happy and they make me feel cozy warm. Since I started in real estate four years ago, I have seen nothing but gray. Coming home to yellow makes me feel like the sun came out after the rain.
Back before I became a Realtor, I helped people choose colors and design their spaces. Often they would ask me “what’s in?” I would tell them what the latest trends were, but I would always follow it up with, “unless you’re planning to sell soon, you can make your own design and there really are no rules- not if it’s yours and it makes you happy.” I’ve never really understood home trends. But that’s just me. I prefer to surround myself with things that bring back great memories of the people and places I love. I don’t worry too much about what others think of my place. I invite them over to spend time with us, not to gawk at my latest purchases. Sometimes I look at designer home magazines and I think, “but how do they live? Where is the laundry basket? Where is the dog hair and the toast crumbs on the counter and in the butter? And where are the children, wrestling on the floor, knocking over that $700 lamp?”
My biggest annoyance over the last several years, though, is perhaps the “Farmhouse” trend. Not because I take issue with farmhouses, but because I think the description of what they think a farmhouse looks like is so ridiculous. And you know the style gurus in New York that created this have probably never spent a day in a farmhouse.
I saw an article a couple of weeks ago that someone posted from Realtor.com that was written by Jennifer Kelly Geddes. It said the famous Chip and Joanna Gaines Modern Farmhouse look has finally taken a backseat to a new one. Who do I personally thank for that?! I thought that trend would never leave. On a sad note, it was replaced by the new “Industrial Farmhouse” decor trend. First, who names these trends? And who on earth is deciding what a trend is? And what the hell is Industrial Farmhouse? Want to know what makes up the Industrial Farmhouse look according to Jennifer? Dark mixed metals and my favorite, “live-edge wooden pieces (a style where the edges aren’t straight, but show the shape that the tree would naturally take)”. Sigh.
Now don’t go getting your Wranglers all in a bunch if you have applied the various farmhouse trends to your own home. That’s great! It’s your home! You. Do. You. I just want to set the record straight on all this “farmhouse” nonsense.
Now, I’m not trying to pass myself off as a genuine farm kid. I was surrounded by corn, but we didn’t own the farm we lived on. I did, however, grow up around enough farms to know that they weren’t decked out in white cabinets and stainless steel and mixed metals. And that “live edge wooden” stuff you speak of? Well, that’s the kind of wood you run your hand along in a barn or a fence and get a palm full of splinters.
No, the inside of an actual and legitimate farmhouse is quite different. Depending on the farm, it certainly doesn’t smell like Bath and Body Works’ latest candle scent. Nope, it smells like the animals on the farm. And in my oh so very humble opinion, that smell isn’t always bad. It isn’t always good either. My favorite animal smell in the whole world is horses. Even horse manure has a very comforting scent to me. I know that sounds a little off, but there are some people out there who will wholeheartedly agree. I can tolerate the smell of cow manure, but I draw the line at hogs. I dated a hog farmer once. It didn’t last long. And it only lasted as long as it did because I used him so I could ride the horses on his farm. That’s right. Don’t judge me.
When you walk in the back door of a farmhouse, you better get your behind in quicker than not, because that creaky screen door is going to spring shut and smack you in the ass when you bend over to take off your boots. And you take off your boots because there is a myriad of farm residue on the bottom of them. There will be a place to hang the Carhartts because it gets really cold doing chores in the winter, but there aren’t hooks with wreaths and a bench with a decorative pillow and a throw. There is, however, a rug on the floor made of old rags that was stitched together by the Lutheran Church ladies after they tirelessly cut all those old rags up into pieces. They did it in a group around the table in the church basement, telling funny stories and drinking really good Lutheran coffee. No self-respecting farmhouse has a rug from Pier 1 inside the back door.
Side-note. While I was in Theisen’s Farm Store last week, I actually saw a rack of rag rugs for $2.99 each. Might want to snag some of those in case “Real Farmhouse” ever makes a comeback, because I can promise you, Chip and Joanna are going to mark up the hell out of those things when they sell them at Magnolia.
Also…there’s a reason why the room inside a back door is called a mudroom. It has mud.
The woman running that farmhouse… she is not wearing designer jeans tucked into her cowboy boots. She might be wearing the boots but they’ll be under the legs of the jeans she bought at Farm King. The other boot of choice is the rubber boot. Farms require a lot of shoveling because there’s bull shit on a farm, although perhaps not more than you’ll find in an article about home design trends. There’s a lot of chores to be done and often those chores get started and some are finished long before most Americans are out of bed.
The farmhouse kitchen defines its own decor. That vase with sprigs of cotton decorating the kitchen counter in the urban or modern or whatever farmhouse get-up is new this week, is replaced in the real farmhouse with medicine for the animals and the syringes to administer it. There are freshly gathered eggs on the counter and the towels are mismatched and sometimes have knitted edges and buttons so you can hang them on cabinet handles. You can get those at any church bizarre. And when you see the little old lady who makes them, you’re gonna want to pick up a dozen because she is so old, you worry she might not make it back next year. She’s adorable though. And she’s really sweet. And I’m positive she makes an incredible zucchini bread from the fresh zucchini she grew in her garden. Keep walking along her booth and there it is- the bread. She also made pumpkin and banana and she sells it for $2 a mini-loaf.
There’s pile of clothing in the corner of the kitchen that needs mending- buttons that have busted off, the crotch ripped out of a pair of jeans, a flannel with a notch of fiber missing because of the barbed-wire fence. The pile isn’t tucked away in a some swanky grass-woven basket from HomeGoods. It’s in the corner, sitting on a chair, that doesn’t match the other chairs and has some paint peeling off it.
One of my favorite farmhouses always had the smell of smoke- like a campfire. That’s because the living room had a wood-burning stove and everyone gathered around it in the evening to stay warm. Then when it was time for bed, everyone, including myself sometimes, went upstairs where it was freezing cold, bundled up and climbed into bed under a stack of homemade quilts. I loved that house. But I also really loved the people that lived there…not just their horses.
I never liked going to the basement or the cellar in any farmhouse because they’re icky. Our house in the country had neither a basement nor a cellar, which was a real disappointment when we had a very close encounter with a tornado. Basements back then weren’t finished for living- they were used for storage and there is nothing more impressive than shelves full of canned items from the garden. It’s really a beautiful sight to behold- so colorful-peaches, tomatoes, carrots, apples and even meat. My mom always canned green beans, wax beans, peas and pickled beets. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.
Well there it is. A very brief peek into the real farmhouse. Not Modern Farmhouse. Not Industrial Farmhouse. But Real Farmhouse. It’s not a new trend and Chip and Joanna certainly didn’t invent it. Can you imagine being one of those people that had their house designed by the one and only couple that redesigned every home in Waco, Texas to look alike? Now those poor homeowners will replace all their white accents with mixed metals and their wood furniture with stuff that gives them splinters and looks like an actual tree. The moral of the story is, just because Chip and Joanna call it a farmhouse, doesn’t mean it’s a farmhouse and trends and colors of the year are as worthless as hen shit on a pump handle. But that’s ok. Go ahead and buy the things you love. Buy them from Pier 1 or buy them from the Lutheran Ladies at the next church basement sale. Doesn’t matter what or where you buy, as long as you’re buying it because you love it and not because someone told you it was in style. Don’t be afraid to make your home yours. In the end, all that counts is that home is the place where you love to be the most, with the people you love the most.
And that, my friends, will never go out of style.
