Why I Should or Shouldn't Look at Pottery Barn Catalogs

Sometimes I can leaf through the Pottery Barn catalog with nary a twinge. Sometimes the mere fact of it being in my house makes me want to go shopping. A few years ago when The Spouse was working in Philly I went to Pottery Barn a lot. Almost every week. And I never came back empty-handed. I bought furniture, rugs and myriad geegaws for the house. It was, I realized later, my way of compensating for being Spouseless in Seattle. I didn't have him but I had his money and since the money was the result of my not having him it was only right, nay, necessary that I spend it. This was very silly of me and the only thing I don't regret is paying cash for everything.

I pretty much have the compulsive compensatory spending under control (what with The Spouse home again and all). But there is still a way in which the PB catalog can affect me. I'm a sucker for organizational stuff.

It isn't just all the lovely, clever units of organizational genius that PB offers. Seduced by the 'just so' photographs, I am lured into thinking that if only I had just that piece there, all my organizational woes would vanish. Which is, of course, precisely what the catalog is supposed to do. Never mind that the first year of The Child's college tuition has been invested with Pottery Barn and I still have my issues.

Getting a piece of furniture which will allow me to more artfully display my desk clutter is really not a solution for clutter. All that tidiness is an illusion. I read once that PB uses real homes to shoot their catalog. But you know that to do that they box up everything those people own and put it on the lawn under a tarp. Those magnificent desks with all their cleverly arranged cubbyholes don't actually hold volleyball schedules, dentist appointments, field trip permission slips and utility bills. The fabulous interlocking systems that include bulletin boards and magnetized blackboards are artfully arranged and tidy but in a real home would be scrawled with messages of which the only decipherable word is "called". They certainly wouldn't have, in calligraphically perfect script, "Wine tasting at Shira's....chill Sauterne". "I need mouthwash" is more like it.

I know all this and I have willpower. I have not ordered anything from Pottery Barn since we remodeled the kitchen. (There is this really great pot-rack/shelf combo that I sort of lust after but it wasn't available a year and a half ago. Sucks to be me). I have to recycle that demon catalog and be thankful for my lovely little home. Which is lovely and will be lovely even if I never spend another dime at PB (or Anthropologie or Restoration Hardware...) As for the final frontier of my clutter (my desk), looking at those beautiful fake desk representing fake organization is a challenge and invitation to solve my problems with what I have. I don't have to have a stack of junk on my desk. I have all the tools at my disposal to address the problem. In fact, I'm going to set my timer right now and do just that. Take that, Chuck Williams, you devil you.