bean bag
If there is a term besides minimalism and maximalism that can describe home decor, mine would be “nonmalism”. No this is definitely not a clever excuse to begin this blog but I wanted to make an announcement of my recent commitment to acquiring a bean bag. Among many other reasons, I’ve moved around so much in my lifetime for any desire to decorate a new living space. Not sure since when I started dissociating but if you know me in real life, my apartment spaces have always screamed one thing: lifeless.
“You should try to decorate a little” my maximalism friend once voiced out, “Do you actually live here?”
He’s kind of right on me not really living here. Most of the time, my suitcase display is part of my furniture. Back in Shanghai and Beijing, the apartments came furnished to the extend of being livable. What that means is there were chairs, desk, good bathroom light for mirror selfies, pillows and even sofas. Now moving to my own place in Los Angeles, everything became an empty carcass. I’ve come to the understanding that in order to feel like I want to be here mentally and physically, I needed to push myself in making this place comfortable. After a long day, no one wants to come back to a dim, undecorated and solemn feeling place. Yeah, my nickname was gremlin and ghoul for most of my life.
I’m really grateful for the people who have taken their time to gift me things to decorate my place. Until literally this bean bag, everything in my apartment was furnished by other people’s gifts to me: my painting is from an artist friend, my plushies are from various friends’ achievements during arcade games, my speaker is a graduation and birthday gift, my tea cups are from my older sister’s trip to Israel and my coffee mug is a birthday gift from shanghai. You get the point. This sounds really condescending and self conceited but that was really how bad it got. When you don’t choose the belongings you live with, it feels meaningless.
I felt homeless in my own home.
Now, why a bean bag? To answer that question, I will begin with a quick description of what this bean bag looks like. Well, Amazon’s description will probably be more accurate so here is a quote from them, “DURABLE FABRIC: Stain-resistant, water-resistant and easily spot cleaned with a damp cloth, you’ll love sinking into the Classic Beanbag in SmartMax. The perfect choice for living rooms, play rooms, bed rooms and dens.” Moving beyond practicality, yes you guessed it! It’s blue. The shade is referred to as Sapphire. This is one of those beanbags that will pop out so obnoxiously that any mom would instantly reject their child getting. That’s an exaggeration but my mother didn’t let me get it okay. This is probably a deeper issue connected with asian cultural believes but my parents hated anything that was outstanding.
They just wanted us to fit in, “don’t become a sore eye, Lucy.”
Anyways, sucks for them because I’m a living menace. Saying that feels like I’m claiming to be still suffering in puberty but it’s not really about living for the sole purpose of rebelling against anyone. It’s more for myself’s sake. For the said reasons above, buying this will be a tribute to healing my inner child and also adult self. Two birds in one stone! The concept of owning less or more possessions isn’t really a concern for me. I’m still trying to figure out how to express, what to express and why to express. Efficiency is above any priority for me in terms of decision making.
In any case, I’m looking for more suggestions to buy as decoration. An idea I had was to tuft out more rugs to leave around the place to make up for the floor looking empty when there isn’t a suitcase laying out. I’m not really against maximalism or minimalism. It’s really just about making this apartment more me. Does this count as inner expression?
If you have any good ideas, feel free to reach out and let me know. I’m sure any advice is good advice for someone at literally ground zero. Have a great day.
