When God was handing out interior design genes, I must have been lying on a beach reading New Weekly.

[Welcome to a Mamamia Best-Of holiday post where I get to take a little break while keeping you entertained with some of the most popular posts from days gone by]

Clearly, I forgot to join the queue. Because by the time I put down my magazine and lined up, it was over and there was nothing left. What other explanation could there be for my utter disinterest in all things interior? While I can appreciate other people’s good taste, I am bamboozled by the world of furniture and finishes. And what even IS a finish?

Some say that when you’re talking to a dog, all it hears is “blah blah blah, FIDO, blah blah blah WALK, blah blah blah DINNER.” I’m like that with interiors. Admittedly, I would rather eat a box of hair than have a conversation about renovations. But if I’m forced to participate, I find it difficult to make sense of the words, or even hear them. “Blah blah blah CHAIR blah blah blah RUG blah blah FLOORBOARD something LIMEWASH blah.”

It’s not that I don’t try to understand; it’s just that my brain keeps wandering off to think about what I might like to eat. Or starts composing a witty text to a friend. Or ponders what high school the children should go to. Or whether Princess Mary is pregnant again. Sorry, what? Swatch of what? Huh? Is that my phone ringing?

A couple of years ago, we did a brief spot of renovating. Actually, that’s a lie right there. The words “brief’ and ‘renovating” are mutually exclusive and should never be allowed in the same sentence. Time has clearly dulled my memory.
Anyway, during this renovation, it’s fair to say I was ambivalent to the point of supreme disinterest. Aka couldn’t care less.

I left it all to my husband who, fortunately, had a clue and did a sterling job. But one night, desperate for some input from me or possibly just to amuse himself, he insisted I participate. I waved my arm around a bit and said things like “Oh darling, I trust you. Whatever you decide is fine with me. And…is that my phone ringing? Goodness, I have to urgently answer it and speak to…anyone. Anyone at all.”

Despite my desperate attempts to look purposeful and run from the room, he forced me to sit down and cruelly made me look at an array of sample charts and swatch thingies.

“Which of these finishes do you like for the floor in the kitchen?” he demanded. No idea. None. “What about this one?” Oh, it’s OK. I guess. Yep. Sure. Great. Can I go now? “No. And what do you think of this one?” Um, I don’t know. Possibly I don’t like it as much as the other thing. “Well that’s good because it’s leather and those are couch samples. Not great for the floor.” And then I wandered off to play on my laptop as he fell about laughing at me.

Happily, that was pretty much the last time I was asked to contribute to the renovation process. Which suited me fine. Sure, I had to put my control freak tendencies on ice but if that was the price for not having to look at fabric samples and visit furniture shops and make cost comparisons and measure things up and place orders and think endlessly about how this texture might go with that tone and deal with tradesmen and builders, I’ll gag myself with glee.

However, this hands-off attitude appears to make me a freak. A traitor to my sex. Every other woman on earth was apparently born speaking fluent furniture. Except me. Me no speakie Ottoman.
One time I was at a work function and chatting with some colleagues when the subject of my renovations came up. Clearly, my female colleagues had taken THEIR place in God’s renovation gene queue. And then gone back for seconds. They were very keen to ask about my renovation and share tales of their own.

Aware that my eyes were glazing over and I was thinking about Princess Mary again, I interrupted with “Oh, I’m not really involved in the details. My husband’s doing all that.” For a moment, I thought I might have accidentally said, “Oh, have I mentioned I’m Hilary Clinton’s secret lesbian lover?” That’s how shocked they looked. “Are you SERIOUS?” exclaimed one. “Wow! That’s so….brave!” shuddered another, clearly disturbed that I was leaving such crucial decisions to someone without a vagina.

Virtually all my close friends are borderline gurus when it comes to interior design. One is a stylist. Another one may as well be. Their style is innate. But I do have one friend with great taste who wasn’t born that way. She married into the world of design, her husband is a talented builder who works in the family business designing, building and furnishing beautiful homes. “I grew up in the ‘burbs were chocolate was a food not a colour,” she says. “It was a shock to learn that there were some chocolates that ‘read’ mushroom and some the ‘throw’ lime…oh by the way, we’re talking about carpet!”

Over the past 10 years she’s learnt to speak interior – and exterior – quite fluently and has grown confident in her own choices. “You have to make mistakes. Isn’t that why Ebay was invented? To sell a disaster chair that ‘reads’ purple instead of aubergine…”

I hope you understood that. All I caught was blah blah blah purple.

Do you speak interiors? Fluently?

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