Hobbity Home

I get a lot of inspiration in life from the Hobbits of Tolkien's writing. I find the lifestyle and overall feeling of the hobbit culture draws me in. It also helped me find an answer to a question I had spent a long time thinking about, how to decorate my home.

The way we view decorations, pretty things only to be used for make the look nice, directly goes
against many of the values me and my husband hold. However I can’t stand the minimalist decor
styles like modern. I think they have no comfort to them and no warmth. I would never like to live
in a house like that. I also like decorating with the changing seasons, this adds another level to the friction with our values. The idea of having four sets of items with minimal use that we only use each a quart of the year really rubbed me wrong and my husband even more so. With these two things headbutting in my mind, how would I be able to have a warm, cozy home, that was full of useless pretty things.

I started researching lots and lots of decorating ideas. First I was interested in the vintage styles, but it didn’t quite fit. Then I found the primitive style. I really liked that for awhile, but it had two things I didn’t like. One, was that it always looked like an abandoned home, not one is use. Two, when I looked closely at the pictures, they were full of useless decorations they would look nice, but in the end just take up space.

Just when I was ready to give up, we decide to look to the Hobbit movies for inspiration. Bag End always seemed like the most comfortable place to live. Something surprised us as we watched the scene in Bag End over and over. There weren’t any “decorations”. The set was full of beautiful mugs, candles, vases, books and other everyday things. Nothing was there just for show. That’s when I realized how we could combine my need for a pretty home and our desire to not be wasteful. Everything in the house would need to have to purposes. One was a job, like dishes to eat off. The other was to be beautiful and add that comfortable feeling that comes from pretty things.

When you think back to things you use in your house, it’s easy to see things that could add beauty to your home. A throw blanket that sits on the back of my couch keeps me warm on cold days, but it also adds beauty. A pitcher I use to hold juice may sit on my table to easy use, but it’s a pretty color and has flowers on it. Or a tablecloth, it protects the table, but makes my dining room look great.

This concept can of course work with any style. For us we are planning on focusing on natural materials, because they often last long, work better, and to me look much better. We look for items made from glass, stoneware, wood and natural fibers like cotton and linen. Here are some things we have looked at adding to our home:

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With this new idea everything we buy for our home not only makes it look nicer, but adds to functionality
of it.