Comfort In Chaos

I’m curious. How do these photos make you feel? Does the unstyled clutter and chaos make you uncomfortable or does it make you feel a teensy bit good? Are you itching to tidy these rooms or are you thinking about your own less than perfect homes (the stuff you don’t share on social media), and maybe you’re feeling a bit comforted? If you’ve followed this blog for long enough you’ll know how I feel about showing the more natural and real side of our homes. When I started this blog in 2010 I didn’t call it Life Unstyled for nothing. I’m a big fan of a spice rack that isn’t alphabetised and a bookshelf where the books can easily be picked up and read, rather than styled to death and totally untouchable.

I think that finally the world might be catching up. Finally there might be a backlash to the over-styled, unattainably perfect images we are constantly bombarded with on Instagram and in interiors magazines (and yeah ok, blogs as well). But let’s be completely honest about this. We still want to see stylish homes, interiors that are creative and inspiring and that give us ideas for our own homes. I’m still an interiors fanatic so I’m not interested in seeing pictures of dishevelled and tasteless homes. And it’s not about seeing someone’s dirty laundry spilling from their bedroom hamper either, but I do want to feel better about myself when I look at interiors blogs and magazines. (Kind of like when you see a photo of a celebrity without makeup or with a hint of – shock horror – cellulite. It’s not about shaming them, it’s more of a revelation, like “Huh, they’re human after all”).

And I guess that’s why images of homes like these appeal to me. The homes themselves are still great – stylish with personality and interesting features – but they happen to have been photographed in a more natural state, showing things the way they really are rather than the way we often (me especially, as a stylist by profession) fake them for a photo. Bookshelves with all life’s clutter scattered on them; kitchens with open shelving where everything doesn’t match and things are a bit haphazard; sitting rooms with toys and kids’ art thrown in the mix. In my eternal quest for a Life Unstyled, homes like these inspire and comfort me. How about you?

Image sources: one, two, three.