A Bachelor's Guide to Home Decorating

Friends,

It has been so long.  I have only my busyness and laziness to blame.  But for the next 7 weeks, you can expect 7-14 blog entries.  If we were in a fantasy novel, this would be the beginning of the Silver Age of Tangentland.  Thankfully we aren't in a fantasy novel, and even more thankfully, it's only on semi-rare occasions that I make comments like that.

When it's time to break a blogging hiatus, the natural question for me to ask is, "What do I have to offer the world?"  I then take the thing that least answers that question, and give you my take on it in an attempt to be funny and subtly make fun of the many blogs that inevitably are devoted to that subject.  Hence I give you...



My top 3 tips for bachelor home decorating
If I haven't made this clear enough above, don't follow any of this


1. Less is More

Look, as a bachelor, you probably don't know how to decorate.  Chances are, if you put too many decorations up, you're going to seriously fail on one or two of them.  So I say find one or two things that work (or don't) and stick with that.  For instance, I have contributed two decorations to my apartment.  One in the living room and one in my bedroom.  (Pictures below.)  Some may call this style "sparse", "bare", "parsimonious" (some people use big words), or "meager", but... um.. what do they know?


2. Throwbacks to childhood = WIN

If you're reading this blog, you either grew up in the 90s, or you're my parent.  Either way, your basement is probably rife with awesome memorabilia from 1988-1995.  This was basically the Golden Age (had to return to our fantasy novel) of awesome characters, shows, cartoons, movies, and action figures.  So by rummaging through a few old cardboard boxes, you can find a **free** nostalgic decoration.  Here's what's on my bedroom dresser:

Alf, an alien from Melmac (left), and Donatello, a
bow-wielding mutant ninja turtle

3. You can make Bizarre work

The main failure in decorating, I would imagine, is wanting something to look really good when it in fact looks terrible.  You can completely eliminate the risk of this by decorating with things that aren't meant to look good in the first place.  How is this possible?  With a piece that is purely thought-provoking or that makes no sense at all.  Here's the wall above our living room TV:

A tiny sweatshirt featuring my birthname and a dinosaur. My grandma
gave it to me again last year, after a two-decade hiatus.

You can take this stuff to the bank
Note: the bank will be decorated better than my apartment.

What are your favorite decorations that you use?

Any fun tips for anyone out there who might not be as awesomely gifted as I?


Jon