by Alice Rush
WHEN visiting the Netherlands, one of the things that I notice is how neat and tidy everything is. I know that much of the housing is compact which would necessitate cleanliness and order, but it doesn’t always work that way in the United States.
My own home is small, and it is in the woods. Keeping things clean and keeping the yard orderly is a constant battle. A battle that I forfeit for periods of time. The exterior is blanketed with falling pine needles, or in stormy weather there are falling branches and pinecones, plus all types of lichen coming loose from the trees.
All of this gets tracked in by our feet no matter how many kinds of shoe brush mats or regular door mats we have. We can take our shoes off at the door, but the cats still manage to scatter whatever we might track in our shoes. Then there is wintertime, when we come in with wet, snowy boots, also left at the door on a mat! There is no vestibule area in our house for coats and shoes. Ultimately, we would like a screened in porch, and this would solve some of this issue, but that is a future plan.
THE HOUSES in Holland don’t seem as cluttered as mine, but maybe I haven’t been in the right houses. I think my house is somewhere between an organized Dutch home and an English country cottage. I like cozy, with everything in its place, and of course clean. Also in Holland, it seems there are always flowers. Sadly, I can’t bring flowers in the house with our cats or I will have yet more to clean up. I can’t even have plants. These cats seem to want to chew on anything green, and they wouldn’t know their greens from my plants. I guess I love our indoor cats more than having flowers inside though.
I’m in the process of changing colors in the house. One of the “features” of being in the woods is a lack of full sunlight. I feel like the house is dark, so I’m working on lightening up the paint on the walls and coordinating the colors. A work in progress. One of my Dutch friends who sadly passed away a few years back stayed very up to date with the color scheme in her house and the new trends. Her house was always lovely, like magazine quality. I can’t be too concerned about trends in color, and my house will never make a magazine.
THAT’S OKAY by me. I’m more concerned with what I like and making it brighter. We currently have shades of green. I like green, but these shades are darker than I would like, and we have so much green around us outside that I’m looking for something else inside. I’ve been drawn to taupes or greys but they are not brightening.
I may have to simply pick some shades of white or brighter ivory colors. In wintertime the inside of the house will practically glow, and that will look clean.
* Alice is a Maine realtor and a licensed helicopter and fixed wing pilot. She first met her Dutch husband in Maryland in 2005, and married him four years later.
