Maybe now that it is Fall, we can get back to this again. I am glad I am not the only one! I have major medical issues (that involve flare-up & times that are fairly OK), but I was messy before that. The thing about the garden is that when I am feeling pretty good, I just do the garden. That way, it can grow on its own while I am down. One year, I tried to do both, and when "down" came along, the house got messier anyway, and there wasn't much food because I split my time trying to do both. I have kids that do what I ask pretty much (great kids!), but I have to do more fussing with my son to get there. However, he is mildly autistic--Asperger's--so just the transition of going from what he is doing to doing something else is where the struggle lies. Once his mind is on track, he gets the job done. I threatened to buy a roto-tiller, so my husband said he would dig. It took a bit to get him to dig before, but I guess he doesn't want to deal with a machine not used that often. I have always hand-dug--myself, my whole life--but with the med issues, I am not always able. As far as the house goes, I am merssy, not dirty (usually). I am a bit of a pack-rat, but it is good stuff. In the winter, sitting idle is NOT something I can do. I knit hats for babies in the hospital, pack seeds for the needy, all kinds of things to keep hands busy--even while the TV is going. So, I have bins/totes full of yarn (from hitting the sales when they are there), an entire wall shelf that goes withing a foot of the ceiling full of various beads, lots of gardening books...and here is what makes it all look so bad: we have an 850sq ft 2-bedroom house, and there are 4 of us. My husband is a carpenter, so half the one-car garage is full of extra building materials. Really, who could pass up several sheet of plywood? They were used to block stairways so that prople wouldn't use them during construction, and then unnecessary after (headed for the dumpster). We gat a bay window free and sliding glass doors. You get the picture. I do not Spring clean. I Fall clean. I makes more sense for me. I host Thanksgiving for my family, and I do a big thing on Christmas Eve. So, I Fall clean & have the holidays. During the winter, in a clean house, I do my charitable activities, read about gardening, peruse the gardening catalogs, and get ready. Then I bring out the dirt for staring seeds. The windows fill up with plants over the next few months. That can get messy. When it is time to harden off. Plants go in and out. That gets messy. Of course, I clean meanwhile. Then the muddy shoes, then the soil amendments (aka manure), then the filthy clothes. Then losing 5 pounds in the tub at night--hey, if you don't you haven't gardened! When the weather warms, I have kids in and out, as well as myself, and I cannot imagine hollering every time a dirty shoe comes inside. So my Fall clean starts the "cleanliness", and it goes downhill form there. Maybe this is TMI, but it is so great to find others who will focus more on the garden than the house. As long as my health hold up, I garden constantly. I had Lyme Disease in '06 & '08. It is rampant here (doctor's words). I am ready to go to Maine or something. They have a bit of Lyme up there. Well, it may be good for the house too. It would be a longer winter (clean house time) and a shorter summer (poop & dirt time). I do keep the meals, dishes, laundry, bathroom caught up. After that, DIY, or it will stay there. Poop on that too! Mom's need to have fun! The food is plentiful, nutricious, and delicious! Robin

Actually, the quintessential steampunk piece is a modern computer decked out to look like a 19th century device. I met a guy profiled in the Boston Globe who has a steampunk house, and whose kitchen was featured here once. He was selling a cast iron Victorian stove that had been outfitted with a barely-discernable electric cooktop. It's not so much working Rube Goldberg contraptions as it is window dressing on modern technology. I think of it as a stage set in search of a story. Let's say Steampunk is a definite one month from now, as the project that follows the next one. For the very next one to start this weekend, I'm thinking Hollywood Regency, based on an unscientific review of the preference lists people have posted so far. I would sort of like to do the setup for Steampunk, so if you'd rather I not do two in a row, I can happily defer to pal on the HR project. Thoughts?

I would say that *most of the stuff has to have a certain amount of quality to it, yes. I am not sure the architecture has to be great: a couple of the examples look like NYC apartments that have a decent proportion to the rooms but not a lot of detailing. I think, though, that the room itself has to be a container. I don't see this in an open plan surburban house where rooms spill into other rooms and upper floors look down on lowers. I think the room itself has to be the first "box" into which the contents go. I think the furniture that the collections are displayed upon are important for their surface. If you notice, most of these collections are not lined up in curio cabinets or shallow book cases. There is an intimacy with the collection in that it is right there. I *don't think that everything needs to be high quality or have provenance: Among my mother's collection of artisan signed and made, Tiffany, and "collectible" paperweights are a couple real cheapies, including one that my sister bought at GC Murphy when she was a teenager. For a while there was a plate displayed next to her ginger jars. I won that at the carnival in the ring toss. (the colors looked good together). Among the stuff that I sometimes display I have a tape measure with a boy"s picture on it, a plastic figurine of a girl with a ski pole, a big bisque doll's leg that I found on the sidewalk, a headless doll also from sidewalk. A Howdie Doodie nightlight with a hole burnt through it, a Darth Vader carrying case, deers hooves made into hooks, obviously plastic "coral" and various and sundry other pieces of real junk. None of these things get the place of honor like the candlestick collection or the bronze pieces or the Keanes, but they sometimes end up on bookshelves or on piles of piles of books where they create dialogs (or something) with each other.

My theory in the Analysis thread is that a lot of the merchandise is the same as before, it is the presentation that is so dramatically different. I like a certain amount of it, just not the presentation, but of course they can't mix it in with other things that they don't make--its a catalog, not a magazine. Pottery Barn always has accessories that I find interesting, only to also find that they are not offered in the catalog, they are unique vintage items. (They have started selling them off on the website) I read the bio of Mr.Friedman Restoration Rewired and something about it really depressed me. His father died when he was young, he was a D student in Community College and he worked as a stockperson at GAP, and was 'discovered' because he had a talent for merchandising. I think it is obvious that he is an intelligent business person. There have been complaints that he has turned the merchandise into a very personal vision. I think that deep down this is Gary Friedman's vision of how "rich people" live--overscaled and over the top, and too busy to track down the genuine article. Now that he is rich, he is creating his vision of what it is to live rich. This reminds me of the pre-Martha Stewart days of K-mart when it was determined why an odd assortment of items --particularly waterbed sheets and king sized bed sheets--may not be readily available in their stores in white, but they were available in deep blue, burgundy and hunter green. The reasoning behind this is that these three colors were the most popular colors for certain luxury cars of the day including Jaguar. Sampling of the demographic who shopped at K-mart at the time revealed that they thought these colors "looked rich" and also that while they could not afford a Jaguar, they could afford things in Jaguar colors.