Form or Function?

Architects all know that function is more important than form. It is the use of an object that defines the shape.

This isn't a functional link to the book on Amazon, but it is what pops into my head every time someone says that form is more important than function. Go ahead, pour yourself a hot cup of tea. I dare you.

I saw a potentially beautiful house that a married couple just designed and had built. The kitchen has top of the line appliances, from a Wolf range to a Sub Zero fridge. The wife really wanted them. The husband is meh. There were several things throughout the house that were meh to one of them, but important to the other. As we were talking about this disparate set of house building needs and wants, I summed it up. "She's about the form and he is about the function."

I know I'm more about function than form, but I believe in a different definition of function. I'd get a Sub Zero only if energy efficiency and life expectancy factored in and made the purchase less expensive in the long run. Two cheap ones or one expensive one that lasts more than twice as long? And am I going to be here to use it? When I sell it, will the buyer care? Taking all things under consideration, nope, no Sub Zero for me! I ain't that young, I ain't that settled, and I ain't that rich.

I have taken that personality type exam multiple times. Four capital letters mean nothing to me. I define myself in terms of process over product when I'm making things and function over form for a lot of other things in my life. Useful and quality is more valuable to me than pretty and flimsy.

Room Crash Declutter

When we purchased our house, the family room was painted to exactly match my skin tone. I'd walk into the room and vanish. I hated it. There were dark maroon vertical blinds that I also hated and a difficult to clean, worn out Berber carpet in a mottled gray. These photos are actually a bit lighter than the paint actually was, and don't show the blinds in their full and terrifying glory. This is what the room looked like when the house was on the market. The furniture and art is not ours.

Hubster and I pulled all the furniture of of the room, ripped up the carpet, selected new paint, and tore down the blinds. We put in a tile floor, repaired holes in the walls where cables used to go, and painted.

The process took us far longer than we had anticipated, more like two weeks, instead of two days, and we are still dealing with the occasional touch-up. The carpet we put in isn't the one we want for the long term, but it's a carpet. The room looks a bit like this.

I don't yet have a final pictures that show off the completed room. You are going to have to trust me on this. The only things that have gone back into that room, aside from a couple of tools, are things that we specifically selected to go into the room. Period. Nothing is in there because we own it and it needs a place to be. It's an amazing feeling. 

Everything left. Even the decorating decisions we had not made left. The only things we allowed in were things that we decided on together. What we like, what we use and what works for us.