Have Nothing in Your Home You Do Not Love- Lessons From My Grandmother

My Grandmother, (our inspiration for the shop) is moving and I have been going over to her house to help her sort through and pack up her belongings. This has been so meaningful to me because I love hearing her stories about where everything came from.

Listening to her stories about each item in her house, whether it's the lamps that my Granddad shipped back from when he was in the Navy from Japan to the cake dish and glasses that belonged to my great grandparents or the quilt that my great grandmother hand-stitched. I've learned that she loves Violets and has a whole collection of teacups with violets on them, I've learned that she mends all of her sheets and has even embroidered flowers onto the plain white ones to make them a little fancy. I've learned she loves fragrance and perfume and since my Grandad passed away in February she has been spraying his cologne in her dresser so she can be reminded of him. 

The way that she cherishes each item and has kept them in such great condition is such a great lesson that I think a lot of us have forgotten. I love learning about why she loves these things.  As things get cheaper and we buy lesser quality items to instead be more trendy our culture has definitely shifted. 

There is this quote by William Morris 

" Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or to be believed to be beautiful"

 and I keep thinking about it when it comes to my Grandmother. 

If you drive through campus right now in the alleys and on the curbs, the whole area is littered with mattresses and shelves, chairs and SO MANY garbage bags of trash. 

To know that my Grandmother still uses her wedding dishes for the last 67 years to see the waste on campus is wild. 

The juxtaposition of these two mentalities really shows just the broad spectrum of how we buy and use "Stuff". 

I know that college is a time of huge transition and a lot of people don't have space, money to keep and store their belongings, and don't have trucks to take things to the thrift store. I also know that being born to a family of 14 in 1931 in Kansas is also going to give you a very different frame of mind about keeping things and mending them. 

So I have been challenging myself to really think about how I buy things and how to dispose of things. Do I truly love all that is in my apartment that I would take with me if I moved and If I wouldn't what was the reason I bought it in the first place?