Accessorize Your Home

How to balance functionality and decoration

by Joan Gaither 

An accessory (any piece of home furnishing or décor that isn’t essential) can be either decorative or functional.  Two of my favorite ways to accessorize are by color and interest.  Look around your room.  Does it need an extra color to bring the existing color scheme to life?  You can make-out like a bandit at the discount stores gathering vases, plates, baskets or pillows in the color you need.  The beauty of this is that you aren’t buying these things to last forever, just to pull a room together.   

Accessorizing by interest is a perfect match for all military families given our tradition of absorbing other cultures in our change of stations.  This is how all collections are started and, by the way, anything you have more than three of is a collection.  Joanie’s rule:  Keep your collections together in a single room.  When you put whatever it is you collect all over the house, it dilutes the impact.  Your options as to where to place these things are limited only by your imagination.

You might put one of your collections next to a functional accessory, maybe a lamp or an end table.  Try using two as bookends.  Think of putting a shelf directly above your doors and windows especially for displaying objects.  If some of your pieces are small, put them on a stand.  You can get the stand at any craft store.  If you have someone handy with a saw, take some scraps of 2x4 lumber and some scrap plywood and make your own stand.

Think out-of-the-box when choosing a cabinet for displaying collections.  Using your china cabinet is particularly effective.  No one says you have to keep Aunt Agnes’ service-for-12 displayed.  Place the largest pieces in the center of the shelf with the smaller pieces (in graduating sizes) on either side.  (Tip:  If you collect things with handles, always keep the handles pointing in the same direction.)

When it comes to collections, don’t over-do.  Limit yourself to one or two collections max per room, and try to keep them complimentary to the room in which they are displayed.