Beautify your spaces
Dwellings if beautiful, make us mentally strong, healthy and our days spent in ornamental spaces, become workable.
There are more such pictures to share but I think each will open up an untold story of someone who always wanted to live good and decorated. Someone who wanted to beautify her living.
I know what my readers think…………it doesn’t come with lots of money, it happens with hard work, good aesthetic sense and commitment to make our spaces attractive, spacious and clean to indulge in. Currently I stay in an apartment allotted by the medical college I work in. Its comfortable and large. Its not furnished, especially the living room, and that is OK. Because this is my work home, but it is accentuated with some crafted copper musicians, a traditional side stand that keeps them. And certainly works of art, the embroidery and diamond paintings that pass my time mostly during weekends. This home is a friend of mine where I have a room where there is an altar with caricatures and pictures of Gods placed in a wooden temple. My prayers and offerings has brass diya which I light up with ghee or oil and cotton, and cups made of cow-dung where I burn gums, like guggal and lobaan from Afghanistan. I call it a temple of success. My walls are bare, but I have crafts and paintings on my to-do list that will make someday a home, may be some other home to own, like Picture 1- Desirous!! I love the traditional Victorian woodwork with thick carpet flooring, the browns and the reds and amber. The purely glass chandeliers, the beautiful wall-papers and the exotic furniture from Africa, everything timber and luber. We have to cut trees ultimately, and may be not so environmentally friendly like bamboo chairs and iron beds. But the Victorian cum African seems desirable. The 3 musicians are from Rajasthan and the side-stand too. This is my best to display in the living room, very less furnished with the brown plastic chairs, a mattress covered with kanta work sheets lying on the floor, where I modestly invite friends over lunch. For obvious reasons I do not want to furnish my living room further, its like that because this abode is not permanent, and I don’t want to hoard stuff so that it does not become difficult to transport too much of things if I get back to my own home. But its neat. It is clean and worth looking at aesthetically.
The second picture is economical, but agreeable. It does not please eyes that much, but is good enough for the show. I do not have a sofa but I love the leathery stuff if I am to choose from. Or it should be teak, South-Indian style with cushions all over. As an enthusiast who explores home décor, my Sundays were spent in Ikea, in Moscow, where I bought stuff, gained knowledge about utilities that would make my hostel room look better. Whenever I was bored, I changed my room settings, without buying or hoarding stuff unnecessarily. I was a fanatic who cared less about my face but more importance back then was given to how my komnata (room) looked.
Picture 3 is my agony mate, whenever I find time, I do needle-work or diamond paintings. The stencil was ordered from Amazon. And when I was making it, my fears reduced, my attention got diverted, and there was oxytocin release that helped me become secure and enjoy the Sundays I spent in Jaipur at my work home.
Picture 4 became a gift. But it has a very long story. I bought this woman with a horse stencil from a very remotely located metro station kiosk in Moscow. Its 17 years ago, very old indeed and I got the time to complete it here in Jaipur. The cross-stitch was time-consuming but worth it. This became a gift for my senior’s farewell as a token of gratefulness for our time spent together and our learnings, discussions and warmth of friendship shared.
There are more such stuff to come, already piled up and I am eagerly waiting to complete it.
By sharing this post with my readers, I want them to diversify their time into boring stuff, like making your bed, dusting, cleaning toilets over the weekend, do gardening and so on. You think positive this way, by making aesthetic changes to your home environment frequently, it brings you out of depression. It clarifies your goals for the week ahead and you simply want to think and prepare everyday for a new adventure and aim to live better, smug. When you beautify your dwellings, I feel that you will increase your own attractiveness, with clear thinking and expressions, beauty then becomes skin deep. Remember, money is not the only factor that beautifies. Any small desk and table space also if clean and well arranged gives that aesthetic satisfaction for living well.
