This page is not an attempt to convert anyone to my personal idea of style. I have been advised that I have an unnatural relationship with the colour black, and that my taste for stainless steel borders on a fetish. Neither are allegations I can reasonably deny.
Rather it is an attempt to persuade Brits, who I think are most guilty of this, to abandon the idea of 'best' and 'everyday' homewares.
The most extreme version of this are those who have everyday and formal living rooms. But many people have a 'best' dinner service and an everyday one. Same thing with glasses - fine crystal glasses used only for dinner parties, and cheap supermarket ones used the rest of this time. Ditto cutlery.
This is, if you will forgive me being blunt, nuts.
Think about it: you spend a lot of money on lovely things, and then you hide them away in a cupboard 29 days out of 30. Where is the sense? You've paid for the lovely things, so use them.
To paraphrase William Morris, 'have nothing in your home that is not a pleasure to see and to use'.
Of course, the standard objection is that your best things will get broken if you use them all the time. I have two answers to this ...
First, what does it matter if you break something that spends most of its time hidden in a cupboard? In any case, most high-quality porcelin, glasses and cutlery can be replaced as single items: break one plate, replace one plate. You'll do that every now and again; it's not a major expense.
Second, and this applies to all kinds of things in life, think about the 'cost per use'. If something costs you £1000 and you use it 20 times, it costs you fifty quid a time. If you use it everyday, it costs you pennies.
It's surprising how much difference it makes to use lovely things every day. After a long day at work, you have a glass of wine from your fine crystal Bordeaux glass instead of your cheap Tescos one. It feels different.
It's trivial, of course. Just material things. But the older I get, the more I see that life is mostly made up of the trivial stuff. And the trivial stuff is within our control.
What is lifestyle, after all, other than the style we enjoy in our day-to-day life?
Granted, sometimes this involves expense. I wanted a Bang & Olufsen hifi system since the very first time I saw one, aged around eight. It cost me about twice as much as a similar system from Denon, and about four times as much as something like a Sony.
But again, what's the cost per use? I get pleasure every time I use it. More here.
Often, however, hardly any expense is involved. How much more does it cost to have a beautiful bottle-opener compared to a cheap-and-nasty one? £20?
Or a salt cellar:
In fact, once you get into this mindset, it's hard to think of many household items where it makes sense to buy something cheap and nasty.
Those who've visited my home know that there's not much in it.
