My Seven Very Best Styling Tips For Your Home

In particular, surfaces and how to create focal points. And why a misleading newspaper caption still riles me SEVEN years later. Godammit.

One of the things I have always enjoyed the most about working on social media is the preparing of a room in order to take a photograph. The tidying, the styling, the getting the shot right. I once wrote a blog about the immense satisfaction that I felt when I had tidied and styled a space ready to go, knowing that in normal circumstances my house looked as if it had been the victim of a ransacking (or ‘home invasion’ as I now refer to it after watching way, WAY too many episodes of the Real Housewives Of Beverley Hills. I’m currently on Season 13 and have started to consider the prospect of having an on call Glam Squad and a private plane as normal day to day living.).

The point of the piece was that though my house may have looked as though it was tidy and styled at all times, the reality was that this was but a (very) small moment in time and not indicative of the home of a harassed mother with three children and two badly behaved animals. Half an hour post photo, my children would arrive home from school, throw their bags and shoes on the floor and throw open the kitchen cupboard like they’d been starved for months; the dog would remove every toy from his bed and spit them out on to the living room rug and the cat would jump on to the sofa, leaving a layer of moult thick enough to make a small jumper from. But what that posted photo showed was that, at least for a few moments, it had looked perfect. And that made me feel GOOD because the real fact was that we lived in carnage for 95% of the time. It wasn’t feasible to keep it like that daily but the knowledge that it COULD look that way was the key.

Side note: Rather unfortunately, the Daily Mail got hold of this blog and reposted it on their website with a grossly misleading caption in the way that ONLY the Daily Mail could. On the positive side, it has taught me to a) never trust a Daily Mail journalist again and b) never read the comments section of ANY media publication if they’re talking about you.

Second side note: my mother STILL reads this bloody paper, allegedly for the crossword. Godammit.