“It doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful.” That’s my favorite quote from Myquillin Smith’s book The Nesting Place. Her book is all about this idea that when you decorate your home, it doesn’t have to be perfect in order to still be beautiful.
For anyone else who struggles with OCD around their home, this can be a hard concept for me to grasp. The idea that my home can be beautiful when I know the baseboards need replacing and my ceilings are all dinged up just doesn’t make sense to me.
It’s hard to see the beauty of my master bathroom when the shoe molding needs caulking and the vanity needs another coat of paint. Behind each of my picture frames you will find no less than three extra holes from where I did my best to hang the pictures while my husband was at work, and had a few practice runs before I got it right.
What I love is that Myquillin talks about this gently in her book, reminding readers that it’s JUST an extra nail hole in the wall. So what? Who knows it’s there, besides me? Should the fear of nailing in one too many nails keep us from decorating our home? Doesn’t decorating make your home feel…like home?
I’ve tried to adopt this mindset when I start feeling overwhelmed by all the imperfection. Currently, I have furballs rolling around the floor from either my two cats or my dog, yet…my house is still beautiful. The stairwell is decorated with fingerprints and the carpet could use a good scrubbing…but it’s still pretty. Regardless of all the imperfection I see when I look around, at its bones – the house is beautiful.
I think it’s important to be able to see past those “little things” and continue to be grateful for the homes we have. I do believe that our home is a blessing, but a lot of the time…I don’t treat it as such. I treat it like it’s a sore on my backside. Like it’s the worst thing in the world I have to deal with. But I know for a fact that if I didn’t have this house…if I was in a situation where I found myself homeless or in a worse-off situation…I’d be bursting at the seams to have what I have now.
Fads will come and go. One style will trend until the masses are no longer in love with it, and then it’ll be tossed aside. I encourage you (and myself) to think outside the box – and outside of the trends – and create a home for your family that you all love. You aren’t choosing things based on what will look best on Instagram, or based on what you think your Pinterest followers will think of it. YOU are the one who will be living with these decisions – so your opinion matters the most!
Little holes behind a picture frame shouldn’t hold you back. I think those are worth the risk if it helps you to love your home more.
I encourage you to check out Myquillin’s book, and to give her a follow on Instagram for her day-to-day tips and tricks.
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