I think smaller houses are more difficult to manage for "collectors" and people who are not willing or able to change their esthetic ideas.

For various reasons (largely emotional and financial), my mother is quite partial to large pieces of furniture. No problem with that -- except that her 900-sq. ft. house is full of that furniture and it often is difficult to move around. It's hard to complain effectively about a lack of space when one willingly chooses larger-than-typical pieces of furniture to fill that space. Similarly, people who fill precious closet space or an entire room with one or more collections need to evaluate what they're "paying" for the privilege. Sometimes these are hard choices.

I'm lucky -- I'm a minimalist by nature, and I prefer modern furniture which often features hidden storage. It was wrenching (for several reasons) for me to move from a 3200-sq. ft. house to a 650-sq. ft. efficiency apartment, but I thought about why I wanted to do that and the payback exceeded the pain of parting with some belongings and having to move one item in the apartment almost every time I wanted to access another. It helped that I knew I was moving to a house in a few years. Now 1800 sq. ft. seems positively palatial. :-)

I'm still making adjustments. My whole-house update this past summer opened the house visually by eliminating changes: the same carpet is used throughout the house except for the master bedroom and the kitchen. The same paint color is used throughout the house except for the master bedroom. There is a common motif and a common accent color found throughout the house. There definitely was a hard-dollar budget limit to this update, but a lot of time spent reading Sarah Susanka's "Not So Big" books and thinking about what I liked and disliked in other houses made choices much easier. And I like the results even now that the novelty has worn off.

Small homes are a challenge in several areas. Storage as was mentioned and also for us collectors and pack rats, having a place to display poses a problem. We have quit buying things for that reason. We feel we don't need anymore and are enjoying the pieces we have collected through the years, changing things around occasionally to mix things up. We have lots of paintings bought at flea markets some are stacked and that would be one reason for moving up, if we ever do.

Opening our kitchen to the utility room made a huge difference in our little place. More light, more storage and now I can look out the garden window into the secret garden. Last year we also ripped up old 50's gray lino squares, replace sub flooring then laid canyon oak laminate flooring. What a difference that has made! We have antique oriental rugs on the floors and they look great with the new flooring. Our walls are painted white except for the bath which is a peach color with blue accents. I've read more than once that painting your walls white or a light color makes your place feel bigger. We also have a lot of color with our paintings and collections that we didn't want color on the walls. We are about to remodel the bedroom opening up where we now sleep into the little room that we use for storage. We are thinking of beadboard partway up, then wallboard. Not sure yet. we did beadboard in the enclosed front porch, turned library and my computer space, and love the look. Keeping things picked up, straightened and getting rid of excess and clutter also works wonders. It's an ongoing challenge, teaching me patience, and ways to do things differently in limited space.

Emagineer ~ I think living small is an individual thing. Our little homes all have their quirks, etc. Reading about others ideas, styles, etc. is inspiring, and we take some of those ideas and go from there.

Steve o ~ We can't be minimalists, but do appreciate the serence quality of being like that. Less can certainly be more. I've started packing up some things just to make it look not so cluttered and feel freer from doing that much. It all takes time to change habits, each little step makes you feel better.

Once we are done with remodeling, I look forward to sitting back and enjoying our home sweet home.

I'll post some pictures later.

FlowerLady

I find that I need to consider scale more in my small house.

For example, our 70-inch sofa seems quite large, but it's much smaller than traditional sofas. Our armchair looked quite small in the showroom, compared to the other pieces, but it looks large in our living room.

The refrigerator in our kitchen seemed massive until I measured it and realized it's pretty standard -- it's just the space that's small.

The house has also changed my paint color preferences. In our previous dark apartment, deep colors actually worked really well. We had a deep salmon living room, a deep ocean blue bedroom, etc.

This house, though, has tons of windows, tall ceilings, and a very open feel, which I'm finding I want to preserve by using brighter, clearer colors, like celery green, "butter" colors, sky blues, etc.

Well, now I'm rambling, too :)

Enjoy your new small house!

Having less house to clean and fewer possessions to worry about frees you to spend more time living your life :)

We're making a change right now that has been hard for me, but we have to make this change because we don't have the room for the lifestyle that I wish I had. Currently, we have a dining room. In the life that I wish I had, we'd have regular dinners in there with lots of people around. In my reality life there are 3 of us and we never eat in there because it's too far away from the kitchen. We've decided to rip out our peninsula so that we can fit a small table in the kitchen. We'll make the DR our new office, and our old office will be my sewing/craft room and fitness room. I wish that we had a seperate room for each thing, but since we're restricted in space, we have to have multi-purpose rooms. The reality, though, is that even if we had more room, a seperate dining room just wouldn't get used much. We're an eat-in-the-kitchen type of family. That's why we plan to put an extension on the house in a few years - we'll be bumping out a wall and making the kitchen bigger. Whenver we have people over, everyone gathers in the kitchen, so why not make it bigger instead of making new rooms.

I've never had a large house, but my previous house had larger rooms - a regular sofa looked fine in the living room; there was plenty of walking space in the bedroom with a queen sized bed; and most of all, it had huge closets. My current bedroom is 10x10, my living room is an odd shape - 10x20 or thereabouts, and we have three itsy closets. I also have lots of windows, which I love, but they do limit furniture arrangements. Oh, and we don't have a garage.

Of course I've learned to cut down on stuff (I had a huge box of clothes that I never unpacked from our move, and after 6 months I just gave them away.) But I've also been hanging out on the Decorating board to learn a bit more about how to make things work when you have tiny spaces and crazy traffic patterns. After 3 1/2 years, it is finally starting to come together for me.

I had a real revelation after coming across a book about Swedish country style. I am not trading out all my furniture or anything, but I finally discovered a style that has a palette I like and values the same things in interiors that I do - plenty of light, pale colors, beautiful woods. It's a very clean but homey look - kind of shabby chic on a diet. It is so different from what I am seeing in most decorating books and magazines (and on the dec forum) that it was really refreshing. The colors are very similar to what mcgillicuddy mentions - soft blues and yellows as well as a lot of white, which I love. ANyhow, this was probably a big fad that I missed, but it was a real eye-opener to me - a livable style that doesn't depend on deep colors or big furniture, that mixes things up so you can easily combine vintage with new.

The book I found was "Bringing It Home: Sweden: The Ultimate Guide to Creating the Feeling of Sweden in Your Home" by Cheryl Maclachlan. I've tried a few others but this is the best one I've found so far.

Working with smaller spaces is definitely challenging - which I think is great. I wouldn't trade my house for a big new one for anything!

Here is a link that might be useful: Link to book on amazon

In our last home the living room was only 11 feet wide and that made arranging furniture a pain. When shopping for furniture, it was hard to find a sofa, especially leather that was smaller than 90". I finally found one and bought it and the love seat. When we sold the house new owners bought those and other pieces, so will get to buy furniture for the new house.

It is a challenge to find smaller scaled furniture, even mattresses have gone on steroids. Just bought a queen set for DS, you'd think you were in "The Princess and the Pea" with some of those huge pillow tops. Did manage to find a "normal" set.

Jill

Valzone...my livingroom included the dining room. But have done the same as you and added a small drop leaf farm table to the kitchen. The living room is all living now.

Postum..I have always been interested in architecture/interiors. As I recall the Swedish designs included a lot of built-ins with storage. This included beds, kitchen tables, etc. They also had wonderful wood carvings in them. There was always a feeling of wanting to cuddle up and read a book in these spaces. I too spend a good deal of time on the Decorating Forum, love watching the changes people make and much of it is adaptable to our small homes.

Steve...I think a couple of people have asked before about your home. Would love to see pics of what you have done. I am not a minimslist, but do require a sense of order and am not a collector. The need for order is part of why this "adjustment" has been out of sync. Some of the trials were artwork loved and making the decision they just didn't fit...years of having something part of my daily routine. And, yes I know it is material, but still memories held. Your small should make the rest of us feel "big" in comparison and could take a great deal of input from you on living adjustments.

Did the book Not so Small House help a lot for what you did? For some reason the ideas still seemed bigger than what we have. Plus the cost of the interiors looked beyond possible. You made a great point about utilizing space and the value/price of such. Had not considered that side of the lifestyle.

McGill...Your high ceilings and lots of windows certainly open up small spaces. I'll get there, wasn't prepared for so much to do in a small home in order to make it home. Tis fun to hear other's adjustments. And my rambling may be tied to the awful weather...really ready for a garden to take me away from the inside.

Flowerlady...Jeesh, you have been as busy as I have in re-doing spaces. And, as said above, am ready for that garden time.

I've been a great admirer of Japanese arts and architecture for the past thirty years, and always thought I'd like to live in a Japanese inspired house some day... one which overlooks a tranquil garden with a pond

I would also describe myself as tending towards the 'minimalist' camp... and prefer sparsely decorated interiors to organized clutter - which is possibly why I'm predisposed to the Japanese aesthetic (lol)

I guess I've been steadily simplifying all aspects of my life over the last ten years, and have reached a stage where I feel more attuned to a smaller space

The house I'm designing is a single story (approx 850 sq ft) with a strong Japanese influence, which I hope to build on an acreage in the near future

Steve...I think a couple of people have asked before about your home. Would love to see pics of what you have done. I am not a minimslist, but do require a sense of order and am not a collector. The need for order is part of why this "adjustment" has been out of sync. Some of the trials were artwork loved and making the decision they just didn't fit...years of having something part of my daily routine. And, yes I know it is material, but still memories held. Your small should make the rest of us feel "big" in comparison and could take a great deal of input from you on living adjustments.

Thanks, emagineer! I'll see what I can do about pictures ... I only wish I'd taken more "before" pictures....

I hope I don't come off as any kind of expert on minimalism. It's just an approach that has worked for me. I'm not much on "stuff". I'm not much on possessions that are mostly (or only) for show. I admire the clean, simple lines of, say, an Aalto chair instead of an overstuffed chair piled on with layers of busy-patterned fabric. I dont want collections of things I never get to enjoy because theyÂre either too numerous or too "perfect".

Moving to the efficiency was making a choice to be around people and interesting restaurants, good mass transit, and the cultural and educational opportunities that came with being near several small colleges. What I spent to rent that apartment would have been enough to rent a much bigger one-bedroom apartment in "the burbs" (complete with a garage and a laundry and a party room; I got none of those). But then I would have had to get in the car to go almost anywhere and walking likely would have limited me to a convenience store or a fast-food restaurant.

So the price was paring down. HadnÂt read that book in a few years of trying? Off to the used-book store it went. DidnÂt have room for a sofa and a bed? I got a futon that served admirably in that capacity. The small TV was all that fit in the wall unit? I shouldnÂt watch so much TV anyway. And you know? It worked. And now that IÂm in the house, I donÂt really use the basement at all; nor do I use one of the bedrooms at all and another is rarely used. That probably wonÂt change any time soon.

All that said, I fight a continuing battle (as many of us do) with keeping items that have sentimental value. And, as a bit of a "treehugger", I find it difficult to "just toss" something if it can be reused or recycled, so such things hang around the house way longer than they ought to. So while I aim at minimalism and sometimes come very close to the mark, I still have a way to go. :-)

The "Not So Big" books were of some help in identifying what made smaller homes more comfortable and more appealing, and I have tried to work what I can of that (sight lines, human scale, common motifs, etc.) into my house remodel -- and avoid mistakes that sound grand on paper but don't translate well into real life. Even if one does not have the budget to build their own "Not So Big" house, changes you make can be accomplished with those principles in mind. I understand Susanka now has written a book on the "Not So Big Life". IÂm looking forward to reading it.

I've been lurking for a while and decided now is a good time to jump in. We downsized to a small 2/1 home in 2005 (from over 2500 sf to about 1100 sf) and it has been quite an adjustment. As you can see by my name, I was quite a collector of stuff, but I've learned to get a handle on it.

We are still making adjustments, but I feel we are almost there. The biggest challenge is storage. The only storage in the house is a small closet in each bedroom and a linen closet in the bathroom. We are lucky to have a good size laundry room and another storage room on the back side of the garage, which helps, but it is still is a challenge.

Add to the fact that I run a business from home; well let's say I've had to be real creative.

Lookng forward to joining in more.

Angie

Angie..you made the same change I did in sq. ft. along with a single garage now.

Jill, your comment about the mattress was funny...Princess and the Pea. Told that story to somone once and they didn't believe anyone wrote it, that I was making it up. I gave mine to my daughter and she almost fell out getting up the first morning.

Steve, do you work with furniture? Thought I read a post from you over on the other forum. If so, you must have a keen eye for how it fits and what is available.

Gray, it must be great to design your own. I wonder if adaption to small would be happening during the design and building. Without total remodeling of a small old house, the use of space is up for grabs. Will you be doing this soon? Someone posted a layout of their new small house being built and it was a wonderful design.

Steve, do you work with furniture? Thought I read a post from you over on the other forum. If so, you must have a keen eye for how it fits and what is available.

The only "working" I do with furniture is deciding where it goes. :-) I just tend to think a lot about things (some people would say "overthink") -- such as why I like the furniture I like. I really appreciate modern/mid-century modern, but I lack the financial wherewithal to own the real goods, so I try to identify what it is that makes an item so attractive to me and use that to identify pieces which fit in spirit, if not in exact name.

I'm also a fan of what I call "hidden" furniture -- hope chests used as coffee tables, desks with hidden storage, pull-out leaves on tables, and so on. That plays really well into furnishing a smaller home.

This thread should probably be in conversations...but, look what I found while searching info on smaller homes. I think it should be called a Murphy Table after the beds.

Time to go do something creative and productive..a finished bathroom would do well for the soul.

I moved from house with a formal living room and dining room, 4 bedrooms,3 baths and a double car garage. Now here I am with a raised Creole cottage on pilings. I have given away many of the pieces belonging to my grandmother-to my son, my cousin and my cousin's children. I have never bought new furniture for a space. The new furniture for this house has brought me great joy. The only really painful part is getting rid of the things the children gave when they were small. Those things have no monetary value but great sentiment. I took pictures and made an albumn. I gave away huge sewing machines and sergers. I have a 1938 Singer feather weight. I have sorted through 18 33-gallon totes of things I just couldn't discard when I left my previous house (house and husband of 20 years).

I can't part with my quilting material, quilting patterns, beads for sewing and jewlery making and any of my scrap book stuff.

I gave away my oil paints, brushes and stuff. I gave away all of my spare dressmaker weight fabrics. I gave the stuff to people who understand the value in those things was greater than the money I spent to buy it.

I vowed to only keep the very best of the best. Everything is multi-functional.

I wish my old stuff would fit but it just wouldn't fit in this house.

Did you change your personal life focus when you changed to a smaller house?

sunshine,

I really appreciate your post. I have yet to reach the point of going smaller, but I have been yearning for it for years. I am sure the 'personal life focus' will change and that I will experience what you have---having to pare down the things given by my children/grandchildren in the past. I am truly trying to prepare myself to do just that and retain, in memories and pictures and albums, those things that are of the deepest value to me.

What I am aiming for is a peaceful grounding for this stage in my life without making those around me that I love feel I am just discarding what had meaning to them also. Does that make any sense?

Gray, it must be great to design your own. I wonder if adaption to small would be happening during the design and building. Without total remodeling of a small old house, the use of space is up for grabs. Will you be doing this soon? Someone posted a layout of their new small house being built and it was a wonderful design.

Emagineer, I've never considered buying a house and remodelling, as my strongest desire is to build my own. Since this will be my 'forever house', I also don't have to worry about the resale market. I guess I've had lots of time to know my likes etc, and how I prefer to use a given space..

One book which I found very instructive early on was 'Measure and construction of the Japanese house' by Heino Engel.... though the outer shell of my house will be modern, with a flat roof

An integral aspect of a traditional Japanese home, is the way space is used. Often there is only one main room, which is used as the living, eating, and sleeping space. Closets line the walls, and futons and small tables & cushion are brought out as required and then stored away. Towards the rear of the home, are the utility spaces

With the exception of sleeping in the same space ( I do prefer to have a separate bedroom) I have designed my floorplan and living space in a similar vein... and I included a small surprise as well :)

Steve has mentioned his favourite chair, and that same type of chair plays a pivotal role in my living room plans .. as it will allow me to configure the room in different ways, depending on it's usage.

I'll try to get some jpegs off my 3D plans and post here , so it's easy to see what I'm rambling on about :)

I guess I forgot. I can't believe I just bought a 25" square clock. I love it elegant, black roman numerals on an ivory mat with a hefty matt black wooden frame with a bead trim on the mat side of the clock. Good price $25.00-don't you love Big Lots!

Well, the clock ate the entire wall. It is huge-what was I thinking of??????

Well, I forgot for about 1 hour my personal focus wasn't on the huge house with too many rooms and room for everything.

Darn it the clock goes back SAT.

nwesterner,
Yep, you do make sense. The problem with me as a 50 something is I'm pairing down, weeding out, and finally passing along and my 25 something child is buying, acquiring, collecting and TAKING MY STUFF!! Yipeee!

Take great pictures and journal about your things that have meaning and the tell the children (grandchildren) the stories.

I love my Mom's house in MO. BUT she has 5 sets of white dishes each with service for 8 or some of them 12. I can't do that. I am blessed to be able to travel the world each summer. I collect experiences, sights, sounds, friends, smells, and pictures of everything. I put them on the web, all year long I journal about the pics and finally print, scrap and share my experiences.

Remember, in the home they only let you keep the pictures!! You know I'm not going to live with son-he won't have any room-he has my stuff!!!

I've posted the jpegs of my house plans on the Conversations board -- so as not to clog up this thread

Go see Graymoss's house plans in "conversations"...they are great virtuals. And her surprise is indeed a surprise.

Sunshine, admission that my son built a 10 X 12 shed (looks like a cabin) to store overflow. I can't let go of photos from parents and some small items of their life. But I did as you and let go of 30 huge boxes which were stored for 8 years. They were packed with power workshop equipment and art projects (built wood historic buildings in scale). I started to sell this, but it became an overhwelming job. Heard of a man who was wheelchair bound that built same and gave him all. He still calls me every week to share how much it meant to him and what a gift it was.

I also let my mother's china go, a wrench at the heart. Keep having to remind myself that many things can be loved by another as much as before.

Big Lots? Go there too and they seem to be adding more inventory of better quality with lots of options. The clock is a funny story, am sure we have all done the same.

I did the same. I just could not face the hassle of putting a price on the things I bought to comfort myself, admitting everything I planned was an illusion and then waiting for others to value those things. I gave those things to people who appreciated the greater than the money value. I get a good feeling to replace the feelings of loss.

Today is the first Mardi Gras parade. I have to get off this island. The population is going to triple for about 12 hours. I'm not getting a line to get off the island that lasts 4 hours for a 45 minute drive! I'm going now! Off to return "the CLOCK."

I find that my unsentimental attitude toward possessions freaks some people out -- in particular, my mother.

I can't even count the number of times that I've mentioned I'm getting rid of something, and the response is, "No, you can't get rid of that beautiful [insert name of object here]!"

Why do people care more about my stuff than I do?

I don't feel attached to anything anyone else owns, so I guess it's difficult for me to understand their concern.

Anyone else have that happen?

I guess the solution is to keep my possession divestment plans to myself :)

Mcgillicuddy,
Are you getting rid of stuff that others gave you or you dumping things you bought?

If somebody gave you something and really didn't want to give it up then you can understand why they are getting upset because you let it go. But if you bought something because it was pretty, perfect, and then let it go because you are through with it--then why is anybody whining?

Sunshine -- It's all stuff that my husband and I bought; nothing that was given to us.

I guess I'll just be flattered that they think we have such nice stuff, and leave it at that.

Mcgillicuddy, I'm not a terribly sentimental-about-stuff person either, so I can sympathize. If we had a fire and lost everything there are maybe half a dozen things in this entire house that I would be truly upset about losing, except for the inconvenience of replacing everything. ;-) I think it's a result of moving so much as a kid (my parents split when I was 5, and joint custody was a truly evil creation from my POV), I just couldn't take along much from house to house so I learned not to get attached to things. Some people go the opposite direction and get very possessive as adults, but I continued on the "frequent flyer" path and was just as brutal and dispassionate about culling. I have a bunch of boxes that we moved from the last house to this one in February of 2004 and have never even opened because I had a friend help me pack and she bullied me into keeping everything rather than pruning as thoroughly as I normally do pre-move. I hate that. I feel suffocated when I think of the closet and storage room (the sorta half-a-bedroom) full of all that stuff.

I don't understand either how other people can be so tied up in my having certain things or not, even if they didn't give me that item (and occasionally if they did). It's a perfectly good whateveritis that I have absolutely no use for, I should keep it and let it rot in a closet just because person X gave it to me? Wouldn't it be better to give or sell it to someone who would actually like (or even love) it and put it to use? If I kept everything everyone gave me just because they gave it to me I'd need to live in a mansion! I'm beginning to dig through the stored stuff and am half considering setting up a separate account on eBay for selling things off, lest I get nastygrams from relatives, screaming "how can you get rid of that whateveritis??"

On the adjustment issue... we moved to this house with weird small rooms from a house with only 300 more square feet but much larger rooms, so most of our furniture is suited for larger rooms. Unfortunately, we can't afford to just get rid of everything and replace it all, although it would be fun, so we just have to work around it.

There are so many small-house features that were the norm in past generations that have been overlooked in more recent decades, like built-ins. Kneewall drawers under these slanted Cape ceilings are almost unknown nowadays but it's such an intelligent use of wasted space. If I could design a house from scratch (thinking rationally instead of daydreamily, I don't think we'll ever be able to afford to do so unless we win the lottery - just the lot alone is way out of reach) it would be loaded with clever things like that so we would not need so much furniture. Our bedroom felt so much bigger when I fitted wire drawer units into my silly little dysfunctional closet and took out the big dresser!

I bought a LG french door bottom freezer last night. I'm so pumped! The fridge I have wanted for 20 years since I saw a relative's bottom freezer. I researched, read the appliance board and ordered it from Best Buy.

Guess what! It won't fit in the fridge hole in the kitchen. I'm going to call Best Buy this morning!

Maybe I should just leave everything alone and forget changing anything!!!!!!

PS The CLOCK was returned to Big Lots. Now I guess the LG is going to stay in the warehouse.

I think the small of this small house hasn't really hit me even though I have lived here 3 years.

Johnmari -- I get that same suffocated feeling you mention when stuff is piling up (particularly in the basement). I moved a lot when I was young, too (and really didn't stop until I got married a few years ago). Maybe that contributes to not being so attached to things.

I think my mom is more attached to my things because she and my dad never had much money for furniture and such, so everything they had was secondhand. She really treasured the few nice pieces she had (and for which, unfortunately, no one else in the family had the same respect).

One of the happiest times in my life was when I traveled solo for about six months, with only a backpack's worth of clothes and such. When I returned to my "stuff," I couldn't imagine why I needed any of it.

It's funny what you said about being bullied into keeping things. I feel that way, too! Next time I'm in that situation, I'll just say, "If you want it, take it. Otherwise, it's gone!"

All of that said, I am currently sitting in -- and enjoying -- the comfy armchair my mother forced me to buy during her last visit, saying that my LR was too bare :)

Sunshine, I bought the LG French Door Refrigerator (LFD22860) that is a smaller model that is only 22.4 cubic feet instead of 25 cubic feet and only 32 7/8 inches wide instead of almost 36 inches wide. It is also 1.75" less high and .25" less deep. The one I bought may fit your kitchen. See if Best Buy can exchange it for you. The smaller unit only comes with either water on the door and ice in the freezer (the one I have) or the more expensive model with both ice and water on the door. I wanted a clean Stainless Steel look and no water on the door but I wanted the smaller model since it was easier for a petite person like me to open and close the doors comfortably and it did not look like it would overwhelm my kitchen since it was smaller. I love my refrigerator so much now that I have been using it for about a week.

LG (LRBC20512) also has a smaller 19.7 cubic foot model that comes in Titanium and not stainless steel if you need smaller dimensions but only comes in a bottom freezer, regular door model.

Go to the LG site and you will see these models. Here is the link to the model I bought on the LG site.

http://us.lge.com/products/model/detail/home%20appliances_refrigerators_french%20door_LFD22860.jhtml

Hey Lynn,
See your other post to me. I don't want to hijack the thread because I again forgot I live in a little house.
Sunshine

Johnmarie said: I don't understand either how other people can be so tied up in my having certain things or not, even if they didn't give me that item (and occasionally if they did). It's a perfectly good whateveritis that I have absolutely no use for, I should keep it and let it rot in a closet just because person X gave it to me? Wouldn't it be better to give or sell it to someone who would actually like (or even love) it and put it to use? If I kept everything everyone gave me just because they gave it to me I'd need to live in a mansion!

I'm with you 100% on that, johnmari. Have had to learn to be ruthless in purging all of the 'tchotchkes' that are never used or displayed.

Every year a few friends get together and do a joint yard sale. Gets a little tricky when some of the items I've put out are gifts that one of them has given me. Less inclined to care, though, when the gift showed absolutely no understanding of my taste or style. In fact, one of them told me once that she buys things that she likes as gifts for others...if she likes them, others will too...what the heck...??!!

It seems the older I get the less I care about that kind of thing. Yikes! Anyway, I digress - less if definitely more.

Margaret