this week's photos and thoughts on the home

There are tons of secrets to the good life I wish I'd known sooner.

Like how if you're pressed for time before company comes, only tidy up the visible parts and don't even think about the just-discovered mountain of popcorn underneath the couch downstairs (obvious).

How there is not one person who can tell just by looking at you that you've gained 2.5 pounds since yesterday.

Or how if you're not sure about the conversation, the most polite thing you can do is listen, admit ignorance, and ask honest questions that show you're interested. You see, everyone likes to play the expert.

And definitely how you don't need to Define Your Style, as magazines are always exhorting us to do. (Have you noticed that? It's there on the news stand - every. single. month.)

It sounds like a wonderful challenge, this nailing down of who we are. A wardrobe that only ever pleases! A home that tells the world exactly who you are (or what you aspire to be).

At various moments, I've longed to be called: classic, preppy, bohemian, eclectic.

It's easy to choose the "right" answers, much harder to choose the honest ones. I did my best once, and the quiz said, "If you've circled an even number of As, Bs, and Cs...you are Undefined."

It was disappointing. It was cold - as in "man, that was cold."

Without a label I couldn't have a goal, and without that there'd be nothing left to aim for, just me and my undefinable mess, me as an undefinable mass. You wouldn't be able to tell who I was by what I consistently wore or read or listened to (or watched or liked or disdained).

Then my friend Grace, whom I've mentioned before, gave me a piece of advice that changed everything: "I've found that if you just pick what you like it all comes together." That was almost a year ago.

I took her advice seriously and found a new gratitude for everything already there. Things that couldn't be categorized except under the heading of "What I Like".

If pressed, I could say that what I like tends toward cozy and simple old-fashioned.

And yet I have pieces in my closet and on display that are decidedly modern. And a couple that are certifiably ugly but mean something to one or the other of us inhabiting this little house we call home.

Here's the thing. There are homes that people live in and homes that are staged - for photos shoots, for selling, to impress the Joneses next door. You can label them with all sorts of glossy-shelter magazine-type adjectives, but oftentimes their inhabitants are gone most of the year anyway. Sometimes, the adults are neurotic and don't know how nervous they're making their kids.

An interesting home where you want to be - like an interesting person in whose company you delight - defies categorization. It won't abide most labels - it's too lively and evolving for that.

It won't be cluttered, but it won't be pristine, and things won't be where they "should", but rather where they "are". Where your partner/husband puts his wallet might defy all your wifely logic, but if he'll only reach for it on top of the microwave, then let it sit there. Leave it alone. Don't go putting it on his dresser even if everyone knows that's where a wallet belongs.

As the weather turns, the Home That Won't Be Labeled will have throw blankets piled haphazardly on the couch, inviting rather towering as folded blankets will.

Even harried moms still trying to figure out the homework schedule will work to make the ordinary slightly extraordinary, remembering that children are never as hard to impress as we think. That perfection is overrated, that everyone's imagination works best on the cheap.

{The only thing "extra" these chicken-salad sandwich boats required were toothpicks to connect the apple sail to the celery mast.}

A home and a haven, not a showpiece.