Domestic Cleaning in a Shabby Chic Environment

Dust – The Enemy Of Shabby Chic

One of the glorious things about shabby chic style and its many offshoots, such as beach cottage style and cottage style, is that it is so laid back. There’s none of your pared-back minimalism, which is a relief for most of us who like to kick back and relax in a room. There’s no worry about getting fingerprints on the wooden furniture or metal or glass furnishings you get with sleekly polished modern stuff. It’s a family-friendly, pet-friendly and life-friendly style, which is why it’s stood the test of time so well.

However, a big temptation comes with a shabby chic style, and that’s the temptation to relax far too much and ignore the housework. Yes, you can get away with a bit of neglect, and you don’t have to go neurotic making sure that everything gleams yes, the idea is to look relaxed and lived in, but there’s a difference between shabby chic and just plain shabby. Boring, I know – you and I would probably much rather be scouring Camden Market or the local Sallies for a great new find, crafting, or whatever you love to do.

Your biggest enemy is dust. While dust isn’t quite as blatantly obvious as it would be in a minimalist style (honestly, living in a minimalist place would drive me mental), and you can get away with not dusting every day like a Victorian housemaid (I much prefer the modern-day term domestic cleaning lady), it’s still an issue that needs to be addressed. One thing with the doilies, the gnarly natural wood, and the ornately carved old mirror frames is that they provide lots of places for dust to settle.

Why Bother?

What’s the big deal with dust? Why do you need to bother? All the times I’ve mentioned this to some of my friends. When I’ve been doing shabby chic workshops, somebody usually trots out that old quote by Quentin Crisp about dust not getting any worse after seven years. This usually leads to a discussion about what the shabby chic ethos is all about. However, as I’ve always said, shabby chic isn’t about clutter or laziness. It’s about old-fashioned comfort and charm, with a celebration of imperfection.

For a start, if you’ve got an asthma sufferer in your house or among your friends, dust is highly likely to set off his or her reactions, which doesn’t exactly make for comfort and relaxation. Double this if you’ve got a cat or a dog in the house. Few things are as cosy and fitting with the shabby chic vibe as a cat curled up on a cushion (and if your cat is anything like mine, it will try its best to add to the distressed look of your furniture by scratching. I love my cat anyway!). However, the nasty asthma triggers come from skin particles from cats and dogs, making up a lot of the dust in your home. What’s more, pet hair, if it collects along with the dust bunnies in corners, inevitably blows about the place when you open the window and will land in your coffee cup – yummy (not)!

The next issue with dust is that if you do a Quentin Crisp and ignore it is that it does get worse. If you’re in one of the damper bits of London and your house is on the older side (which is perfect for the antique look, of course). Dust starts to grow mould and mildew, and that’s one quick way to ruin vintage or even vintage-look linens, cotton and other natural materials, as it’s hard to wash the marks out of fabric once mildew gets in. I lost a lovely old table runner learning this the hard way, and I’d hate this to happen to you.

Even if you don’t have a damp old home that tends to mildew (hooray for central heating!), dust can still wreck your décor. An aged patina of verdigris on copper or brass is sweet; a patina of dust on the coffee table isn’t. If dust is left for too long, it’s the right beast to get off, and it can permanently discolour paintwork, so it’s time to get out the sandpaper and start again. I guess that’s something you can’t get away with minimalism and may explain how the distressed finish thing got started in the first place.

Tricks And Tips To Cut Down On The Dust

OK, so the shabby chic vibe is supposed to emulate days gone by and that retro country cottage feels. However, we don’t live in days gone by when every woman is expected to be a full-time housewife with a maid or two on hand to help dust, sweep, and clean the whole house in a day. I ride the Tube to work every morning, Monday to Friday, and probably you’ve got to go out to work, too. We don’t have the time to dust everything all the time, but we want to make sure that we put the chic in shabby chic. So how do we ensure that we don’t go bonkers trying not to get cat hair in your spag bol, etc.?

I’ve learned a few things the hard way over the years, so here are some ways that you can avoid making the same mistakes I did:

• Pick your interior décor with care. There’s a fine line between the true shabby chic look and the plain old cluttered. You want your place to look like a home, not a jumble sale. Not everything has to have peeling paint (which will make it dust over time), and you don’t have to fill every flat surface with quaint knick-knacks and found objects. Pick your items with care. After all, being selective will allow you and your visitors to appreciate the beauty and charm of the things you love. To quote American clutter guru Kathy Lipp, cute gets lost in the clutter.
  
• Make friends with your iron and the hot wash cycle. Do you know why old-style farm cottages had tablecloths and those frilly runners and doilies everywhere? They catch dust for you, and they go into the wash. These days, doing the laundry doesn’t mean boiling everything for hours, so make the most of the ease of tossing everything into the washing machine. The great thing about linens and cotton is that they can handle a hot wash and are forgiving. So go with the flow and use those checked tablecloths and the runners and the throws – there’s a reason why they were part of the old country cottage look. The only thing is that they will wrinkle up, so you’ll have to haul the iron out. Fortunately, ironing is one of those chores that has a soothing quality to it, kind of like colouring books or handcrafting. And if you pop a bit of lavender essential oil in the steam iron (and you’ll need a steam iron for getting wrinkles out of old-fashioned cotton and linen), it becomes an aromatherapy session. And the other bonus about washing tablecloths, etc.? You get the perfect excuse to stock up on a collection, plus the chance to change up the look of your rooms.
  
• Use your stuff. A rolling stone gathers no moss, and something that’s used frequently won’t collect dust. So actually use those copper saucepans in the kitchen for cooking rather than display, use those gorgeous blue and white china pots for keeping your keys or pens or coins, and use the Mason jars you found at a church jumble sale for storing laundry powder or for dry goods in your pantry or your crafting gear. It won’t collect dust if handled daily or at least weekly.

Sure, you’ll also have to do some housework at some point. It’s good that old-fashioned tools like brooms and feather dusters work well with the retro look, and you can bring the shabby chic vibe to your cleaning cupboard.

Your Shabby Chic Home Office

I have to say that as much as I love scouring the internet for great new shabby chic ideas to inspire me (and pass them on to you), I always get a little disappointed by some of the ideas for home offices. They leave me wondering if anybody does any serious work in them. Surely not everybody who works from home and loves shabby chic is a designer or someone who does craftwork to sell on Etsy. Sometimes, there’s not a computer to be seen, and all that the artistic photo – which, admittedly, looks gorgeous – shows is a pretty notebook and an equally pretty pen on a desk that has about a tray-sized bit of clear space on it. I suspect that the photographers have hidden the Wifi router, the printer, the speakers and the computer away somewhere… You also see lovely old-school telephones with dials and big handpieces, but never a smartphone. I tend to be left with the impression that nobody does any work at that “home office”, and all the actual work involving spreadsheets, word processing, analysis, etc., is done on a laptop on the sofa.

I must admit that those who design the electronics we all need to work from home, do the household accounts and run small businesses (and do homework assignments and play games) don’t exactly have shabby chic in mind when they design their machines. It’s all sleek, smooth black and silver-grey, with no colours or textures in sight (except phone cases and laptop cases). So how can you create a real working home office and incorporate shabby chic elements?

Getting Started Setting Up A Shabby Chic Home Office

The first things you need when you set up your home office are a good desk and a decent cupboard or set of drawers to store paperwork in. Yes, there will still be paperwork, even today! You’ll need somewhere to put receipts, notices, bills, invoice books and documents. For the shabby chic enthusiast, this is the easy bit. Down to the local Sally Army or other second-hand shop and hunt for a nice big old desk or table and a set of drawers. Then you can play around with distressed finishes to your heart’s content. Be especially careful to ensure that the finish is properly smoothed and sanded so you can easily operate your mouse on the top without getting bits into the works. Alternatively, get a custom-printed mouse mat with a print you love that fits your shabby chic vibe.

When you pick your desk and the chair to go with it, you must keep your comfort and ergonomics in mind. Make sure that the desk is at a good height for you and that the chair gives you decent back support. OK, I admit that it’s hard to find a good office chair that is kind to your body that isn’t boring, bland industrial style (now there’s an idea for a niche market!). You have to get a bit hands-on to make your office furniture fit into your style. Slipcover your office chair – you may need to do the back and the seat separately – using a fabric you adore, whether it’s faded denim, lace-trimmed linen, checked cotton or a nice chintz. And toss in a cushion to give yourself some extra lumbar support.

If you spend long hours at the keyboard typing, you need to provide some support for your wrists. Once again, the offerings in your nearest Staples or Rymans outlet probably don’t come from the shop with the shabby chic look, and you aren’t going to have much luck in the charity shops, as “vintage” and “electronics” don’t go together all that well. Again, being handy with a sewing machine will be necessary. Make your wrist support or put a new cover on a shop-bought one. You can easily make your own shabby chic wrist support by folding and rolling up a tablecloth – choose something pretty and secure it where you want with ribbons or hand-sewing it in place. You may need to experiment as you fold and roll the tablecloth into wrist support until you find what’s right for you.

Lighting is another important consideration for your shabby chic home office. This is where you can bring out romantic-looking lampshades. Or put up a few quirky fairy lights in strategic places – they provide a surprising amount of light. To make the most of natural lighting, those big mirrors with ornate frames (with or without a distressed finish) come in handy for bouncing light from windows around the room. The bigger, the better if you want a mirror to increase the natural lighting in your home office, and antique mirrors with classic, shabby chic style frames tend to be on the grand scale! Just make sure that direct sunlight doesn’t fall directly onto your computer screen because of the glare issue, and it’s probably best to locate your computer, so it’s not straight in front of a south-facing window either.

Little Details

Little things count, and often, you can add a shabby chic vibe to any home office – or possibly even a cubicle at a commercial office – with the right details and little bits and pieces. You have possibly tried doing this sort of thing already, but if you want some inspiration or some fresh ideas to try, here are a few to help get you started:

• Use wickerwork baskets as in-trays or to hold “good on one side” paper.
• Put up a pinboard where you can glance at it easily while taking your eyes off the screen (good for avoiding eyestrain), and put up photos, scraps of fabric, found objects…
• Use rustic-looking string and miniature pegs instead of sticky notes for all those notes to self – or to hang up the bills that need to be paid, so they look like old-school washing hung out to dry.
• Flower arrangements – fresh or dried – instantly soften an office and transform its look. Try dried herbs (lavender or rosemary) for the French farmhouse look or natural sponges, dried grasses and driftwood for a beach cottage feel.
• Glass jars make great pen holders! Add an accent out of thin rope, raffia or ribbon if you like.
• Have fun with washi tape. There are so many things that you can do with washi tape in the home office, from using it as a colour-coded marker to prettying up a clipboard – or even your laptop. Give boring old ballpoint pens a new look by wrapping them in washi tape. Maybe you could even run a strip around your monitor’s frame or down the side of the Wi-Fi router.
• Diaries and planners do not have to be boring black. Search for something with the cover you love. If you can’t, then apply your cover. You can use anything from fabric to wrapping paper to scraps of textured wallpaper to cover a diary.
• Papercraft stickers don’t have to go on paper! You can use them to add a bit of charm or bling to your electronics. As long as you don’t block any working parts (including covering speakers, webcams and ventilation spaces), you can stick anything you like onto the side of your printer or CPU or the cover of your laptop.
• Go wireless as much as possible to reduce the amount of ugly “spaghetti” on and around your desk. If you can’t, bundle the cords together and tie them with ribbon or raffia. It can also be handy to label the different cords, so you know what’s what and pull the right thing out if you have to try the rebooting trick of turning something off at the wall, waiting ten seconds, and then plugging it in again. Use gift tags tied tightly around the end nearest the wall plug, or have fun with washi tape.

Cleaning Your Home Office

Now that you have set up your awesome shabby home office, you may wonder how to keep it clean and well-maintained without losing its unique character.

One of the first things to remember is to dust it regularly. With a ton of decorative elements, such as vintage frames, books, and knick-knacks, dust will accumulate over time, so it’s important to dust them regularly to keep your home office looking fresh and clean. Use a soft, microfiber cloth or a feather duster to remove dust from surfaces and crevices gently.

Here is another big one – protect your furniture. Consider using protective covers or wax to keep your carefully selected furniture items looking their best. Be sure to use a wax or cover appropriate for your specific type of furniture and finish.

Clean all surfaces with a soft, damp cloth. Remove dirt and grime from desks, shelves, and tables. Avoid harsh cleaning products, as they can strip the paint or finish from your furniture and damage its shabby chic appearance. Instead, use a mild detergent or a mixture of water and vinegar to clean surfaces gently.

Now you are all set to get all these futuristic start-up ideas going. No excuses!

The Essence of Beach Cottage Style

We all love a trip to the seaside, whether this means a day trip east, west or south to one of the coastal resorts not far from London or whether you cross the Channel and head over to the south coast of France. Beach cottage style – one of the main offshoots of shabby chic style – is a way to bring the relaxed vibe of the seaside and seaside holidays into your everyday life. And, unlike a real rough-and-ready beach cottage where roughing it a little is part of the fun, you still get to keep all your everyday creature comforts, like dishwashers.

So how do you pull off the beach cottage look if this style presses your buttons?

The Basics

If you are in a position to start from scratch and do the beach cottage thing 100%, then the basics – the materials, design and structure of your home. Ideally, a beach cottage should have lots of wood panelling and a wooden floor, and plenty of windows to let in the seaside air and summer sunshine (or at least hint at the possibility of doing so, even if you live in the middle of Golders Green or Clapton and it’s the middle of winter). This isn’t practical for those of us who are renting or who are limited by existing mortgages, so you’ll have to work with what you’ve got.

If you can’t do natural wooden floors and wood panelling on the walls, then the best way to introduce beach cottage style to your interior is to look at the colour. Think white – the white of sea foam, shells, vanilla ice cream, cirrus clouds and the Dover cliffs. Most landlords are OK with white interiors, and you may be lucky enough to have white of some sort on the walls when you first move in, as white is a great neutral colour that works equally well with a range of décor styles, be it shabby chic, Scandi, retro or minimalist. Landlords may get a bit snippy about trying out the distressed finish on the walls or fixtures (e.g. doors and windowsills), so you might have to hold back here and save this shabby chic, classic finish for your furniture. However, if you own the place, then go for it!

Of course, having just white everywhere, even the distressed and faded off-whites of beach cottage style, would drive anybody bonkers, especially if you have children or pets in the home. That would be a cleaning nightmare, and you’d probably have to hire a maid to come in daily. Fortunately, white isn’t the only basic colour you can play with if you want to create a beach cottage style. You can pick the tans and light browns of sand, natural hemp rope, driftwood and jute at the warmer end of the spectrum. At the cooler end, you’ve got all those gorgeous seaside blues to play around with – from delicate sky blue and robins’ egg blue through turquoise and eau-de-nil through to classic navy (although navy is a very strong colour, and it may be best to keep it off the walls except in the form of a feature wall opposite a south-facing window or the bathroom and/or toilet).

Carpets aren’t part of beach cottage style, but you have to admit that it’s nice to have something soft underfoot, especially in the middle of winter or if you’ve got small children at the crawling stage or who like to play on the floor. Rugs and mats are your friends here, particularly jute, sisal, and other natural materials. Admittedly, jute and sisal are a nightmare to clean, especially if you spill drinks on them or if the cat has a little accident (those natural materials are super-absorbent), so perhaps you can compromise by looking for rugs and mats that are easier to clean and are in nice natural colours.

The Details

Once you’ve done what you can in the way of your basic colour and permanent décor (paint, flooring material, etc.), it’s time to look at the details you can add to give your home the beach cottage vibe.

The first thing to consider is the big items of furniture: tables, beds, couches and the like. The classic style of furniture for beach cottage chic is wickerwork and basketwork, closely followed by natural wood, either with a light stain to bring out the natural tones of the wood or with the classic distressed look applied to white, cream or light blue. Of course, nobody wants to sit on straight wickerwork unless you want your bum and legs to semi-permanently have weird red marks that get you funny looks at the office, so ensure that you’ve got good cushions and upholstery on your chairs and couches. Pinterest seems to be packed with photos that show pretty white upholstery, but even if you don’t have pets or children, a white couch is practically asking for trouble in the form of stains. If you’re handy with a sewing machine, you could whip down to your nearest Hobbycraft or other fabric supplies store (or comb through a thrift shop for suitable finds) and make your throws or slipcovers in fabric with a print that suits the beach cottage look. The rest of us can see what we can do with throws to cover up white cushions.

And a nice big old chest or trunk makes a great coffee table and (a) adds instant nautical style and (b) provides a bit of extra storage!

Once you’ve got the big items of furniture sorted, it’s time to go for the little accents that create the beach-cum-nautical look. Of course, when choosing accents and decorative details, you need to remember two important rules: (1) only pick things that you love and follow your heart, (2) make sure that whatever it is can fit in your home without making it cluttered. However, here are a few hints about accents that give your home the beach cottage feel:

• Driftwood, shells and similar found objects: If you love the beach, you’ve probably enjoyed strolling along the seashore and spotting items that catch your fancy strewn by the sea across the high tide line. The easiest way to pick these up is (obviously!) to take a trip to the seaside and go beachcombing. If you can’t, look out at your local park for interesting sticks that have come down with the wind and spray-paint them white or sky blue – then give them the distressed finish if you like. Shells can also be picked up at craft shops – or treat yourself to some shellfish from the seafood counter at your local supermarket and save the shells! Don’t forget feathers, dried sponges, and interesting smooth rocks fit into this category.
• Nautical accents: Think model yachts, pictures of yachts and sailing boats, anchors, or ropes of the sort that could be used to rig a sail, preferably with complicated knots in them. Bonus if you score some old scrimshaw in an antique shop!
• Fishing village vibe: Use an old fishing net hung on a wall to peg children’s artwork, bills to be paid, photos, etc. Photos, prints or other artwork of fishing boats at the quay will help create the beach cottage look, even on the fourth-floor block of flats.
• Shells: So many things come with shell motifs, including classic scallops through to nautilus. Soaps, prints on bed linen and towels, curtains, cushions… there’s a world of things to choose from!
• Marine life: From cute and cuddly seals to quirky seahorses, from edgy anglerfish to sleek seagulls, there are so many marine animals that you can use to add a seaside or nautical feel to your décor. Whether you add them as prints on the wall, decorator fabric on cushions and curtains, or as figurines.
• Old British Navy: Add antique or antique-look accents in the form of globes, maps and charts of the type that the explorers of the 1700s or the days of sail would have used.
• Seaside storybook elements: Great for kids’ rooms or for giving you the excuse to add an extra pop of colour in bright red or shell pink; add some whimsy that fits with the seaside vibe in the form of mermaid and pirate elements.

The beauty of beach cottage chic, as is the case with all shabby chic, is that the whole idea is to be relaxed and casual. So if you want to break the rules and add something that doesn’t include shells and sailing boats, but you love it, go ahead!

Top Tips For Having A Clean, Green Home

We’re all aware of the importance of living sustainably and looking after the environment, where the “environment” means the wider planet and your immediate surroundings. It’s not just the preserve of a few kooks anymore like it was back in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, in the 2010s, everybody’s doing their bit to help the environment… and if they aren’t, they probably feel guilty about it.

One of the golden rules of sustainability and being environmentally friendly (usually called green) is to “think globally; act locally”. And you can’t get more local than in your own home.

Hallmarks Of A Clean, Green Home

A greenhouse (not a greenhouse!) is healthy for you and is good for the wider environment. It goes without saying that it should be clean. A filthy home may be low in toxins and not have much carbon footprint, but it’s pretty bad for you and the others in your home (including plants and animals). However, a greenhouse manages to be clean without adding to pollution. And this involves what we do with our waste, as well!

A green home should also be low in toxins. It comes as a surprise to many that often, our homes are the places where we are most exposed to toxins, especially in the air. Sometimes, these toxins in the air may come from the things we have and use in our homes; at other times, they have come in from outside and become trapped in your home.

Naturally, a clean, green home should be pleasant to live in and at a comfortable temperature. However, it should do this without putting too much stress on the environment.

So how do you do it?

Tip #1: Use Green Home Cleaning Products

Many of our homes’ toxins come from our cleaning products. These are bad news from start to finish. Artificial toxic chemicals used for cleaning are nasty to the environment to manufacture (and often use fossil fuels as a raw material). When you use them, they expose you and the others in your home to a barrage of harsh toxins that irritate your skin, eyes, throat and probably the rest of your body. Lastly, when you dispose of them (which includes anything that goes down your drain and gets rid of the container), even more, nasty stuff gets into the soil, air and water.

Switching to green home cleaning products is super easy. Many online and local library resources tell you what to use and how to use them. Describing and discussing all the different possibilities would make a post in itself, so I’m going to do no more there than to say that if you have baking soda, ordinary soap, vinegar and water, you can get most things around your home clean.

Tip #2: Start A Compost Heap

Even if you live in a tiny upstairs flat, you can cut down on what goes into the landfill by composting food scraps. Those in suburban homes with a garden can dedicate a small corner to compost to be used as fertiliser for your roses and petunias – or your vegetable garden! The other option in a typical garden is a worm farm. If you’re in that little upstairs flat in the middle of London, you can look into a bokashi bucket, which doesn’t take up much space and will turn your food scraps into plant food.

And if you don’t grow plants, then it’s high time you did (see the next tip).

Tip #3: Improve The Air Quality In Your Home

Having good air quality in our homes is important for our health as well as for the health of the world as a whole. Unfortunately, good air quality isn’t just a matter of eliminating pongs. The truth is that although those scented air fresheners smell a lot nicer (at least according to some people) than boiled cabbage and farts, it’s the cabbage and the farts that are less toxic. You don’t want to know what’s in those air fresheners! However, a clean, green home shouldn’t reek. Regular cleaning will eliminate a lot of general pongs (this includes cleaning the toilet and keeping the drains flowing freely). Other ways to improve the air quality in your home include:

• Open the windows to let the fresh air blow through the house. This also allows any toxic gases emitted by your furniture or other items in your home to escape.
• Grow house plants. Several plants can remove toxins from the air and improve air quality. Top of the list are chrysanthemums, peace lilies, spider plants, snake plants and aloe vera. The good news is that many clean-air plants are easy to grow. They also do their bit to slurp carbon dioxide out of the air – it’s not just big trees growing in the Amazon rainforest that help keep the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere down and the oxygen up. If it’s a plant, it uses CO2. And they’ll love any compost you give them!
• Use natural air fresheners or air scents. Home baking, fresh coffee, potpourri and fresh flowers all add a gentle perfume to the air that’s good for you.

Tip #4: Think Before You Throw

All too often, we’ve got into the habit of throwing things into the rubbish without another thought. While it’s true that getting rid of old, broken things and stuff we don’t need is necessary to keep your home clean, orderly and clutter-free, we should think before we throw. Perhaps some things can be donated to charity (as long as it’s in good condition). Perhaps the item can be recycled – most councils have a scheme that takes way more than just paper, glass bottles and metal cans these days. Or perhaps you can find a new use for whatever you’re about to throw out (beware of the might-come-in-handy-one-day syndrome that leads to hoarding).

Tip #5: Be Smart With Your Energy

Much of the energy we use here in the UK comes from not-so-green sources. Sure, there are wind farms in Wales, and you’re not considered a weirdo for installing a solar panel or solar hot water heater these days, but we’ve still got a long way to go. So everything that you can do to cut down on your energy use will make your home greener. Again, listing the ways that you can do this would be a post in itself, so I’ll give three tips here: (1) make the most of the heat and light provided for free by the sun, (2) wash your laundry in cold water and (3) salads are healthy and don’t require energy to cook.

And don’t forget – every little change helps in the long run!