We’ve been back in Australia for a week now, and are in the throes of putting together a household.
Hubby has been delegated the job of driving around to local shops and hardware places and finding and buying all that we need – iron, vacuum cleaner, spice rack, plugs, bathroom mats, clothes hangers etc. – but when it came time to purchase furniture, he broached the subject with me very tentatively.
You see, I’m a aesthete (meaning: a person with a great sensitivity to beauty), and I’m obsessed with beautiful furniture, architecture, paintings, design and household attire.
Perhaps it is my ascendant in the decadent Taurus that is to blame for this, or my past life connections and ancient love affair with Europe, but I am, undoubtedly, deeply in love with beauty.
And this streak in me is so strong that if I’m in environment that is chaotic, dirty, cluttered, unkept, and in disarray, I feel unwell and want to leave immediately.
I’m not proud of my oversensitivity to “not-beautiful” environments, and my innate need for order, cleanliness and beauty, and have worked very diligently to be more accepting, but the fact is, it affects me.
So when Hubby was reluctant to ask me about acquiring furniture, it was because he intended to get cheap, second hand stuff. We will only be back in Australia for 12 months, so he was being practical.
When he told me what he thought we should do, I was surprised to hear myself agreeing with him.
Although I wasn’t overjoyed at the prospect of having “ugly” furniture, I knew I could help out planet earth by using something that was pre-loved.
(Don’t get me wrong; I have owned a lot of second hand, pre-loved furniture but the type of furniture we decided to acquire was very cheap, old and from the dump).
Last year in our travels I was disgusted by the amount of “stuff” – plastic furniture, toys, clothes, knick-knacks, jewellery etc. -that we humans, are madly producing and buying.
In Hong Kong it was extreme and there was excess of products everywhere I looked, and when we landed back in Australia and I went to Target for the first time in a long time, there just seemed to be so much stuff; new, cheap, plastic stuff. It seems we are maddened by the need to get new and better, but at what cost to the environment?
So when Hubby started to bring in the furniture he had found at the dump, I reminded myself that I was helping out mother nature. I also reminded myself that I can use this as a way to practice detachment and to accept what is.
But when Hubby brought in a khaki coloured tressle table, splattered with rust stains and old paint, my Taurean streak kicked back in, and I told him that needs to go in his office, far, far away from me!
In White Light + Love,
Belinda
