Men

Robert Redford and Paul Newman, from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid"

The Subject is Decorating (sorry ladies)

In my humble experience, straight men can't decorate. And they don't care. But if they do, it involves leather, heavy wood beams, electronic things, cigar humidors (and/or wine fridges), hockey jerseys, Wild West paraphernalia, beer coasters and plenty of dark colours.

This look might work in a TV room, but isn't so appealing in, say, the bedroom. Or anywhere else really. What baffles me is that men can be genuises - launching space ships to the moon, deciphering tax laws, removing brain tumors- but they can't understand taupe. Words like pinch-pleat, faux bois, and finial will never enter their vocabulary. If you're lucky, your man understands words like wainscot and beadboard, as a minimum. Carpentry somehow makes vague sense to them.

Good Enough

You'd think this lack of male decorating savvy would make life easier for us decorating goddesses. Well, it doesn't. What I've learned is that even if they don't have taste, men are destined to thwart any suggestion that you do. My darling partner has excellent taste (praise the Lord). He appreciates craftsmanship. He likes historical and old-fashioned things. Luckily, these qualities can be leveraged to my advantage in our home. He also isn't about waste and excess, and these values coincide with mine too. However, what he does suffer from is Good Enough syndrome.

Me: What do you think about replacing the mouldings and trim with something nicer?
Him: Why?
Me: Because they're ugly. They look, um, cheap.
Him: They're Good Enough.
Me: But that's what people do - they UPGRADE their homes. They make them beautiful!
Him (staring at me like I have two heads): You are so vain.

My partner, really, is very supportive of my decorating dramas, but I secretly think that occasionally he sees me as a horrible materialist simply because I want to replace the ugly, cheap, generic baseboards in our house. Or get rid of his itchy old sofa.

Many things in our home are deemed Good Enough. And since I am a proud and modest woman with good taste but an aversion to wanton consumerism, I kind of sometimes agree with him. Gradually, the longer I look at it, everything in the house is becoming Good Enough. This is foiling many big decorating plans...

Ugly

Men always have ugly stuff they like to leave sitting around. Stuff that doesn't match the decor. Now, I do not believe in hiding all evidence of human life from my house, but I do find the following things offensive/ugly/best hidden:

1). Antlers. Even if you found them lying on the forest floor.
2). 300 year old shoes that simply MUST sit at the front door.
3). Bar towels and coasters. Oh, and shot glasses.
4). Spare vehicles (crumbling, rusted). Especially when parked out front.
5). Sporting equipment left hanging to dry around the house.
6). Black furniture from bachelor days. Includes leather sofas.

Still Good

I think this one is self-explanatory. It involves things that are quite likely Ugly and possibly broken but Still Good.

1). Furniture your buddy gave you back in 1985.
2). Electronics that came over on the Ark (this VCR is Still Good).
3). Tennis rackets with holes in the strings, board games with pieces missing, and Readers Digest collections from 1983 and 84 are Still Good.

You get the picture.

Will Do It

I know some women who suffer with men who promise they Will Do It, something, but never do. Many women are fortunate to have a handy man who takes direction, has great ideas, and works diligently to make his home beautiful. These are Blessed Women who should procreate readily with these men to increase their dominance in the gene pool.

However, for every one man who is handy and ambitious, there are 400 who promise they Will Do It when they have time. The reality is, these men don't enjoy shoveling, cleaning the eavestroughs, moving that pile of rusty junk, or fixing that creaky step any more than we do. But we expect them to because, well, they are men. I think this one is our problem. But don't tell me you Will Do It if, in all honesty, you Never Plan To.

Exceptions

Of course there are exceptions. I love my partner and wouldn't trade him for the world. He is a phenomenal cook, ambitious and reliable, takes great care of the yard, does laundry, does many chores and is learning how to do fixer-upper stuff around the house. He is almost perfect except for that nagging bit about everything being Good Enough that I want to change. He is practical and sane. But he just doesn't get my Posh Country Estate decorating tastes.

I'm sure your guy is perfect too, except for that nagging bit about....