Those cool, messy, usually wealthy mums

[Shessodowntoearth]

I want to be one 😅
Does anyone know the type?
Usually quite a few kids, at least two, kids are lovely, but generally quite messy/put together in a kooky way.
Houses are beautiful, but messy/disorganised, beautiful pieces everywhere/decoration but with a lived in/messy vibe. The mums are the same, usually seem quite disorganised but chilled out at the same time, generally away somewhere every school holidays and don’t work.
I know quite a few mums like this near me and wonder what this life is like, mainly the having more money. I’d love to be as laid back if people come around, to not care about the mess as the house is so incredible, to not worry if my kids clothes look scruffy in a cool way and to be comfortable in myself. Is this what happens when you come from money?

I’m well aware of where my liking for a tidy house comes from - I grew up in a ramshackle cottage which had no loo when we moved in and still wasn’t finished when my parents split and we moved out. It was lovely and homely but I do like order.

For me it’s also about control. There’s so much in my life I have no power over but my little (read tiny) house is mine, bought and paid for be me alone, and I choose how I want it to look and how tidy it is because I can.

My mum’s house now is full-on Hyacinth Bucket which I guess is her reaction to the above. I’d like to think mine is warm and welcoming with an interesting mix of things that reflect my personality (arty but skint) and tidy but not pristine.

@Utterbunkum I badly want to distance myself from everything you mention and I promise you I am extremely ambivalent about the insane impact of gentrification in my bit of E London. But infuriatingly I was the first person to have my exterior painted in knockoff Barrow and Fall in the whole postcode hahaha - and people did used to knock on the door to ask about the colour or what it was like round here if they were thinking of moving in. So basically you are entirely correct and I hate myself

BUT you are so wrong if you think my view of mismatched plastic fucking windows has a kind of beauty to it, if I could but find it

@WinterDeWinter it will be beautiful to someone, though and it may just be because it's attached to the home they love.😜
I used to like, in the days when I regularly got the train through Bristol looking at the houses on the way into the station with the murals on. There was a brilliant one of a chimpanzee., I do love when people do that, it brightens my day.
Mind, I would be scared to paint my house just a different colour, lest the lady opposite is like you, and has to move because she can't bear the ugly colour l picked, lol. Somebody where I used to live painted a fried egg design on theirs. Made me smile when I walked down that street, but couldn't see the rest of my terrace row going for it.

@Utterbunkum I'm glad we've had this thoughtful exchange of views. It does sound like we are pretty different constitutionally - but I feel like I have a more nuanced understanding of other ways to be in the world and that's always a good thing, so thank you very much. ❤

So am I. Different perspectives are what makes the world interesting and it's nice to discuss them without some of the hostility that is so common on the internet. It's never wrong to have strong preferences, I certainly have my own. It's certainly not wrong to share those preferences.
I know I struggle myself with the concept that someone else likes something I can't stand. The key thing is (and here is where I still very much have to remind myself and work on this when it's something I am passionate about) is to tell others what YOU think. Not what THEY should think. Let the person who reads the book/owns the object/lives in the house decide what it is to them, just as you have decided what it is to you.

It's hard, especially when you know in a technical sense you are right, when it's a subject that's in your wheelhouse.

This whole thread is full of what different people do differently and why, and it's been great, on the whole. I like reading how others live and got a great storage tip to boot.

I've been casting my eye over the thread from time to time. Must say it's a refreshing change to have seen it veer away from the usual class-anxiety that can make discussion so repetitive on these threads.

I also think, @Utterbunkum, you've hit on the underlying cause of the most bellicose of these threads, in particular the WOHM vs. SAHM ones. They're apparently underpinned by an attitude in far too many posters that if someone takes a lifestyle decision that's radically different from their own, this is somehow a personal affront.

There isn't a whole lot of nuance - that disappears under a groundswell of angst. There's rarely acknowledgement, for instance, that I've taken the lifestyle choices that best suit me and that I'm happy with these, but if circumstances and variables were different I might have made completely different decisions and also perfectly valid ones. To what do I owe the 'sisterhood', when various sisters are parroting NAMALT, or telling each other they're useless to society without paid work, or that they farm out their kids, or that my name isn't really mine at all, it's my dad's (but my brother's is his).

I guess that's more of an anathema to me because I'm a seasoned, constructive critic: it's what I do for a job. I'm versed in spotting patterns, of approaching everything critically, viewing the same text, or context, or scenario from various perspectives and using those perspectives to build upon. I love the fact that I can give the same question to thirty students, and that every essay I get back will be unique, have its own diverse perspective, and offer me a really individual take on the same situation. What on earth does it matter if someone hates a book I love? It makes for a more interesting discussion.

All boils down to taste. Aesthetics by their nature are contrived, and the lifestyle largely being referred to in this thread is nothing more than an aesthetic. 'Aspirational' for me would be pretty much on any vaguely educational point but absolutely not social class - the concept just makes me impatient - and I do not 'get' why arts and culture are so often seen to be for artsy fartsy people, gay people, the floaty, willowy upper classes or whimsical types.

They're for everyone.

@SerafinasGoose I am sorry you have had that experience. What's NAMALT?
I think people do get defensive of their own positions. Earlier in the thread, I was unreasonable about a reasonable post. I had misread the tone. I was pulled up on it , and rightly so. Sometimes judgement isn't intended and on the internet, you aren't seeing the facial cues or hearing the inflections that indicate the tone of the remarks, which is one of many reasons why internet discussions can be so heated.
But sometimes people are judgemental of those who make different choices to suit their own needs. It may be because they are insecure about their own decisions, or genuinely believe they are right, that there is one way to live, and there's is it.
I do think class has a relevance in this thread in the sense that perceptions of social status affect the way two people from different classes doing the same thing are perceived differently. It shouldn't be that way, but as people have pointed out, it still is. There IS a difference between how the sort of people the OP refers to are seen, versus the equivalent in the poorer sectors of society.
Yes, Arts and culture are for all, and part of that inclusivity is ensuring that one section of society does not dictate to another what arts and culture should look like to them. As you say (you sound a great teacher) it's lovely to read different perspectives on the same theme, which we only get by not seeing our own as definitively correct, not just for us, but for everyone else.
Every reader becomes an author when they read, because their own life experience is brought to their perception of the characters. One reason why readers may be disappointed by a film adaptation. It's not the book they read, it's the book someone else read. The same book, but not the same. The same with a painting, sculpture, similar visual art. The artist creates, the viewer views with a different life experience to the artist. It's the beauty of all art. It is still being created, sometimes hundreds of years later, just by the act of somebody new seeing it with their own life behind it.

NAMALT = Not All Men Are Like That

Taken me a few days to finish the thread and I don’t want to be an arsehole, BUT, I reckon I’m allowed cos we are as far as I can tell, loosely from the same ilk.

When you say ‘no one would have ever come to East London’ that ‘no one’ is doing a lot of work. Hackney was not uninhabited in 1992. It just wasn’t inhabited by rich white people like it is now, (the ‘someones’ as it were) and it’s a bit horrible what’s happened to a lot of bits of London in the gentrification sense. So I don’t really think we get to hold onto our delicate aesthetic sensitivities about UPVC. I don’t like it either don’t get me wrong but maybe the UPVC belongs to one of the remaining few people who didn’t pay a million for their house and can’t afford to go conservation reno, or reno at all, so I think it’s a bit offensive to be upset about. Like, even anonymously or internally. I need to get over it, basically, is my approach. It’s not a special super aesthetic taste, it’s a bias and it’s not cool for me to have it, in the circumstances.

I agree with you from every political and moral perspective, I really do. But I can’t force myself not to hate it on an aesthetic level, like I couldn’t force myself to eat cottage cheese without throwing up. It’s ridiculous, but I can’t help it. So I have trained myself to look away. And I’m being absolutely honest, this is not some horrific Hackney-style humblebrag 😂

I just came across this in another context and it made me think of the original subject of this thread (apologies for the derail BTW).
https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/19924031.readers-react-homes-brighton-named-dirtiest-uk/

Good reading! I have enjoyed reading the later pages of this, and especially the discussions of aesthetics.

I can appreciate both arty bohemian and minimalist brutally clean. I have a lovely friend who creates such a warm welcoming home she’s a serial mover partly due to financial circumstances but every house of hers has such a great feel to it. Even dc pick up on that from quite a young age both speak fondly of happy times at this particular friends house. Such a gift to have.

I just listened to Changing Lives on R4. Baroness Rachel Watkyn talks about being an impoverished aristocrat. Living in a mansion but having no money to buy clothes, she always stank of urine as she shared a bed with her bed wetting sister, and at school she was known as 'fleabag' due to how unkempt she was. But still, her parents didn't allow her to mix with local children or speak to them as they were "peasants".

They always have a tutor for their child but never mention it. When it does get mentioned, they claim its because their child has some kind of fashionable learning need. It's never because they're a pushy parent.

This is soo true!

This thread is hilarious. Folk are just adding anything that irks them...

"Yeah and they also take the last loo rolloff the shelf at the supermarket"

" oh yes I know one of these, they don't give blood on a monthly basis".

Oh, phonedown, that made me laugh. Very true.

They're apparently underpinned by an attitude in far too many posters that if someone takes a lifestyle decision that's radically different from their own, this is somehow a personal affront.

This is so true! I some fairly radical choices in my life. It's not for everyone (nor most people, tbh) but it was great for me. A huge number of people (not all, but a large minority) saw it as almost a personal insult, my saying that their life is not good enough, that they are not good enough parents/friends/people/whatever.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that I don't give a shiny shit about how anyone else lives their life, and I can imagine myself in any one of their lives, possibly even happy in those choices.

But I chose something else. And it worked for me, and I'm happy. And I sincerely hope that everyone else is happy with their choices too, and I really want them to work out for them.

No idea why that's so hard to grasp, but it seems to be.

I think I have found the ultimate example of this type:

https://inigo.com/almanac/dropping-by-sophie-wilson-1690-crowland-manor

and here is said house

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/141025991#/?channel=RES_BUY

I absolutely refuse to believe she and her childrne live there full time.

Am I the only one who eyerolled at this whole thing, especially "The difference to her is that where one sanitises, the other accepts, respects and makes allowances for."? Lots of us live in old properties but apparently making them clean and liveable is uncool.

I did a full body cringe reading it.

I mean I grew up in a property older than that one and it had the requisite bumpy plaster, wonky floors etc.. but you know it wasn't falling down or dirty.

What utter pretentious shite. There is nothing virtuous about living in a shit hole. It's not bohemian and arty. It's scruffy and usually has a repellant smell.

A friend sold her house through Inigo. They actually come out and decide whether your house is beautiful enough to go on their books. I had to leave the room when they clasped both hands to their cheeks and swooned over 'the elegant way the light fell like a damask curtain across the floor.' Or some such nonsense.

As a home educator I very much relate to this!