POLLY VERNON
COLUMNIST OF THE YEAR
THERE’S A THING happening on TikTok of which, for once, I thoroughly approve. It’s called Normalise Small Little Houses and is an attempt to disrupt society’s unrealistic house beauty standards. People post pictures of their messy, poky, imperfect homes as pithily shambolic rejoinders to the elegantly conceived, eternally neat Instagram house images we generally see. They take your ‘hotel bathroom’ – with its tiles ’n’ towels ’n’ freestanding bath – and they raise you their wonky grout, ugly shower curtain and battered loofah. They take your majestic kitchen island, raise you their peanut-butter-smeared worktop, last night’s washing up and an as-yet untriggered mousetrap.
I approve of this – because I am living it. Living in A Small Little House that looks nothing like the ones you see on Insta. Not. At. All. I love it – it’s my home, which I bought with my bloke – but. It is not beautiful. It is not, as the young say, ‘aesthetic’. I keep assuming – hoping ! – it will be. I’m a well-dressed person. That’s one of two boasty things I’m happy to say out loud (the other ? I’m funny). Clothes matter to me, I’ve… mistressed them. It’s reasonable to expect a well-dressed person to also have a well-dressed home. Same skill set, right ? Apparently not.
Because my Small Little House remains completely unremarkable. It functions. The taps run, the duvet duvets, washing up gets done In The End. It’s not offensive, distressing , not, like, a cry for help. I’m not a hoarder or anything. It’s just: ordinary. Really not one of those airy, witty, chic spa
