Your home is your castle

19th-century designer's philosophy on having space for only beautiful and meaningful objectsthat are well and ethically crafted still ringstrue today.

The way we furnish our spaces says a lot about the way we live our lives, and I have always loved the quote by 19th-century English designer William Morris:

"Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

Although I am far from achieving such a lofty goal, I see it as an aspirational reminder
to surround ourselves with the things (and people) we love; those that have true value,
meaning and beauty for us as individuals.

It is also a timeless statement about the benefits of ridding our homes of clutter.

There is liberation in shedding unwanted stuff because too much stuff is not only a literal burden, it is a psychological one, crowding our thoughts in the same way as it crowds our walls.

At the same time, limiting our homes to the useful and the beautiful is arguably impossible - after all, we get given things we do not like, we live with others whose tastes are different, and we battle a modern plague of plastic.

But by being more selective about what we allow through our doors, we avoid succumbing to mindless consumerism - a goal Morris, an ardent socialist, also extolled when he said, "Nothing should be made by man's labour which is not worth making, or which must be made by labour degrading to the makers."

Mostly, though, I love his evoking of the universal human desire to make our homes our castles.

"And if I were asked to say what is at once the most important production of art and the thing most to be longed for, I should answer, a beautiful house."

Juliet Rowan is a Bay of Plenty Times Weekend reporter writing about lifestyle and family for indulge.