I still can’t decide what to do with these chairs. It’s driving me out of my mind but I just can’t commit to a fabric! I thought I’d finally decided on Treillage by Sister Parish, but lately I’ve been thinking about Colefax & Fowler’s Tree Poppy. Tree Poppy has been a longtime favorite of mine–I have a duffle bag in this print from my grandmother–and I just think this would be perfect. But then there are other things I’d like to address–our bedlinens (I’m not thrilled with the duvet cover I chose several years ago, and it doesn’t really go with our room. Leontine is the dream, of course, but I can’t justify the plunge right now), curtains, and our carpet. Plus, and this is the smallest and yet somehow the most crucial thing–a laundry hamper. Of course I have a hamper, but it doesn’t appeal to me, and I’d really like one with a lid. But then of course the only ones that I can find out there are hugely expensive or just huge, both of which are impractical as well.

So what do you do? Do you order a ton of swatches and the Farrow & Ball color cards? Do you create enormous amounts of secret Pinterest boards for “research”? Do you carefully curate all your saved Instagram images and scroll through them if you’re up in the middle of the night?

…no, of course not.

So what do you do? I miss being able to safely peruse our local antique shops, and hope that this is in the future soon. But I also miss being able to call my mother and ask her opinion on something.

In the meantime, I think I’m going to do a little digging around in the boxes from my parents’ house and see what I can find. I know that I have a fair amount of fabric from my grandmother somewhere… perhaps shopping my own belongings will help me find that what I’m looking for is something I’ve had all along.