Living With Dogs

For Christmas, I got some lovely design books (yay!)! I haven't had time to finish going through all of them yet, but I did get a chance to look at A Perfectly Kept House is the Sign of a Misspent Life. It goes through the ways different people live with all their stuff (some, I think, with hoarding issues), and I could identify with almost every one of them! Especially the lady who lives with 4 dogs.

Basically, the book said to just go with it. Dogs need crates and beds and toys and bones, so just live with that stuff and stop trying to make the house look perfect.

It feels silly that I needed a book to tell me this. Duh! Design your house around the way you use it.

Not that I don't try to do that, but sometimes I feel like, "This is why I can't have nice things." You know?

So I'm going to try to start doing away with excessive things that I worry the dogs might break or just not worry so much.

It's just stuff, and it clutters up my brain a little bit too. I'll never be the kind of person who can have one of those designer homes with everything perfectly in place. But I think lived in homes are the most comfortable and welcoming.

It will be a never ending process for me (EmmyLou likes to eat the starfish), but I life is so much better with dogs!

all images via GiGi Interior Design