Brenda Lee says," either be useful or look good"

My house is highly accessorized. My husband says there isn't a horizontal or vertical surface that doesn't have something on it. He was wrong. The basement stairwell was looking sad. It needed some love.

The design genius, William Morris, said over a hundred years ago, "Have nothing in your house which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful". I worship him and live by his motto. His motto covers it all.  You either like the way it looks, or you use it. I love when something is both, like a beautiful crystal bowl.

I have kept some things so long that they have switched teams on me. They used to be useful, but now I just think they are beautiful: take old records, for example.  After the 78,  before the ipod, CD, cassette tape,  & 8 track was the vinyl record: the LP. When I was a kid they were about the price of one itunes download.  We played them on the turn table on our parents' hi fi.

My parents had a hi fi in the livingroom that as I remember was bigger than the sofa. The cabinet was walnut. The speakers were covered in metallic gold fabric. The turn table, radio and LP storage were in the middle. Those were the good old days. We sat around the livingroom and someone was in charge of flipping the vinyl record over to play the other side. We listened to music as well as comedy albums like Bill Cosby and George Carlin. I can't believe my parents let us listen to "the 7 words you can't say on television"

Now-a-days our favorite music has been digitally remastered and is conveniently located on a cloud somewhere. It's magic, really. I don't understand it. So why have so many of us kept our LPs? They are no longer useful. I think we kept them because they are beautiful. I still have my parents' original "Meet the Beatles" and "The Fabulous Johnny Cash".They bring back memories. I remember when my cousin Liisa came to visit from Michigan & bought me Cher's "Half Breed" album. I was in like 4th grade. I still have that album.

Since we believe our albums to be beautiful, we need to have them in our house. Display them proudly. Reminisce about when we got them. Cover a vertical surface in our home, like your basement stairwell.  I did. And when the teenagers head downstairs to shoot pool or play darts, I hear them say, "Woah- this is so cool- Beatles, Fog Hat, Nugent, Styx, Journey, Elvis Costello, Kiss...wait...Who is Brenda Lee?!"