Why I Hate (Sometimes) HGTV, Real Simple, and Pinterest

I am in the middle of one of those simple (or at least it seemed like) home changes that snowball quickly.  We, and by that I mean Thomas, decided to purchase a vintage hi-fi console.  It's actually beautiful and I love it, but it's large and meant that some re-arranging had to take place.  Furthermore, I needed to do a little freshening up in my office for the Apartment Therapy home tour. 

Anyway, after moving the furniture around, I was ready to really settle into the modified spaces, but here's the problem---with all the "little" rearranging I've done, books are in places they're not usable, my sewing patterns and supplies are downstairs while me sewing machine is upstairs, and I've crammed too many things into too many storage nooks "temporarily."  With the dreary weather we have had, I decided to get started adjusting.  Well, here's the problem---there's no place to adjust things, so my first item of business to empty one of the few closets I have to better organize.,  The problem:  I wouldn't have had this stuff in the closet if I had had a good home for them in the first place!  And, I swear, we're not hoarders---I don't have stacks of old magazines, boxes and boxes of holiday décor, a gigantic stash of crafting supplies, I (like most people), just have more stuff than places to put them.

Okay, you can relate to that dilemma, but why the HGTV, Real Simple, etc. hate?   Because they offer such unrealistic "solutions" to storage. Look at that closet above from Real Simple;  whose wardrobe consists of only items that co-ordinate with their storage.  Plus, if I only had two coats and a scarf, I wouldn't need storage inspiration in the first place!  They don't run that many design shows anymore (it's all 24/7 real estate), but I can still remember the show that caused me to stop my relationship with HGTV, once my favorite channel of all time.  The show is long since cancelled, so no need to name names, but it involved the "designer" redoing the extremely large great room of a physical therapist who occasionally saw clients at home.  At the beginning of the show, the room had a seating area, a physical therapy area with massage table, a home office area separate from that of the therapist's husband who had an office in another room and a treadmill.  Anyway, at the end, the room was only a living room with a small writing desk.  The rest of the items vanished without even the briefest of explanations as to why now they had other homes.  I mean, wow, designing rooms would be so easy if I could just throw 75% of the regularly used items into the street without addressing to live without them.  It's the same with pinterest....a stuffed closet will be transformed into a stunning space without any real mention of where the rest of the crap went.  Don't get me wrong, I know a lot of the debris of most closets are just that, debris that should be disposed of, but not all. 

Oh well, rant over.  Now I'm back off to decide where to stash the rest of my books.  I tried just stacking them in front of a fireplace for a touch of relaxed BoHo chic, but it just looked like I had recently moved in and hadn't bought a bookcase yet.