Yes, yes. I am aware that Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan’s book, Apartment Therapy: The Eight-Step Home Cure, is not new. It came out a few years ago.
But I thought about it again this weekend, as I pulled a muscle shoving a vacuum into the far reaches of under-the-bed land. The clutter in our bedroom had reached an unacceptable level.
There were bags of clothing rejects gathering dust behind a door. Children’s artwork had piled up. And the chair on which my husband throws his clothes…well, let’s just say that it didn’t smell springtime fresh.
In a nutshell, Mr. Gillingham-Ryan’s philosophy is that “The Home is a Living Place.” It deserves to be to-the-core clean, well organized, selectively furnished, and free of clutter.*
It also deserves to have you in it: cooking, reflecting, entertaining and living. Your home should be more than a place to sleep and dump take-out cartons.
So Mr. Gillingham-Ryan was on my mind as I tackled our room. I’m proud to say that now the room is once again worthy of the soothing, beautiful blue I painted it a few years ago, Benjamin Moore’s 1646 Lookout Point. (Unlike the ongoing challenge that is our living room wall color, I love that bedroom blue every single day.)
I do take issue with a few of Mr. Gillingham-Ryan’s suggestions, most notably to keep the colors in a room all cool or all warm. But his concept of purity from the core out is right on.
After all, cleanliness is next to bossiness. Isn’t that what they say?
*It also deserves to be free of pillows made from the same fabric – gorgeous though it may be – as the headboard. Let me assure you that those pillows were there for about 15 minutes.
Annie Elliott – aka bossy color – is an interior decorator and design blogger in Washington, D.C. She has been quoted in publications from The Washington Post to The Seattle Times and is considered an expert on color, residential space planning, and telling people what to do in the nicest way possible.