My Middlemalist Home Style: Where Collecting Meets Order

My Middlemalist Home Style: Where Collecting Meets Order

I’m thrilled that you’ve found my little corner of the internet! This home on the web is where I share about my love of homemaking. When I started writing about homemaking, I was a single woman who lived in various non-traditional households both solo and shared with roommates, housemates, even flatmates. Now, I live in a multi-generational household, taking care of my elderly mother. Most recently, I’ve been blessed to have met a man who will become my husband very soon and we are embarking on a new chapter of a non-traditional household of a different kind!

Throughout each phase and living situation, I’ve learned a common theme: homemaking is for any woman with a heart of making a home for herself and the ones she loves. 

And for the woman who finds herself living in a non-traditional household, such as solo, shared with roommates or in a multi-generational setting and caring for aging parents, being a homemaker is just as valid and worthy as those women who are blessed with a husband and children to raise. It just looks a little different!

I’ve broken homemaking down into six separate categories and this introduction series will give you an idea of what to expect to read and learn in each one. I’ve also linked the core post for each category so you can easily read about the philosophy behind each from a deeper perspective.

Each category represents a piece of what I believe goes into making a home truly yours. The names themselves are ones I created because they felt like me and how I like to approach each area. Still, a name only tells you so much. I believe it's worth defining terms plainly so there's no guessing at what each title means here.

So, let’s get into Home Style! It might not mean quite what you’d expect.

I love this category because I love making the environment around me beautiful. I love each of my six categories here at singlenesting. Home Style hits in a way that's particularly deep and meaningful to me because it's where my middlemalist home style comes fully to life. The name was born from the height of the lifestyle blogger era. I thought how homemaking is definitely a piece of the lifestyle we cultivate and the physical pieces we choose to fill our homes to support our lives and remember our family’s story is a big part of that. Furthermore, our decor sensibilities are an extension of our personalities.  Thus, Home Style.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I want to honor that here. So I'll share my style philosophy for decor, styling, display and the general ordering of the visuals of home. And encourage you in yours!

What My Middlemalist Home Style Is and What It’s Not

I'd describe my style as classic, leaning toward the traditional side of the spectrum. I like formal but not stuffy. Comfortable and inviting. I'm not afraid of color. I love a good pattern. I love to surround myself with books, vintage curios, pretty, sparkly objects, and antiques collected over generations. All displayed with intention. A stuffed shelf can still be an intentional shelf.

I am not a minimalist. I do not want to be a minimalist. I like my stuff and I want to keep it.

I wouldn’t say I’m a true maximalist, either. While I admire the fullness of some maximalist homes, I prefer order, some white space, organization and meaningful displays. One way I achieve this by being patient while collecting my treasures. I don't mind if it takes years. Life is a journey and so is decorating your home.

Since I’m neither a minimalist nor a maximalist, I find myself landing in the middle. So I started describing myself as a middlemalist. I've developed a method to answer this problem for others who share my inclinations. That’s what you’ll find here.

Home Style as the Truest Reflection of Who I Am

Much like our personal style such as the clothes we choose to wear, how we do our hair and makeup, I believe home style conveys our personality to the world, too. However, it's a much more intimate reflection. Most people don't invite the whole world into your home the way you go out into it. Unless, that is, you're a blogger who writes about homemaking.

Even if you need to present a certain side of yourself when you go out into the world, say, to a corporate job, your home style can remain the truest piece of who you are and how you prefer to move through life.

How I Build a Middlemalist Home One Piece at a Time

I don't do this all at once. But a few things do hold it all together:

• Order and organization first. I like structure, not chaos, even with a lot of stuff in the room.
• Meaningful displays. Every curio, tchotchke or heirloom has to earn its place; nothing goes up just to fill a shelf for the sake of filling the shelf.
• Patience in collecting. I don't mind if it takes years. Decorating is a journey, not a sprint.
• Good storage and rotation. I like my stuff and I want to keep it but I don’t have to see all of it all the time. I pack treasures away, inventory them and then when I need a change, rotate things in and out. It’s like thrifting but in your house with your own stuff.

Where I Learned to Separate My Two Selves

When I go out into the world, and especially when I was in corporate America, I present a certain part of myself. And when I come home, I relax into the sanctuary I've created and just be. Not that I’m aggressively different from how I present myself out there. But I’m definitely more at ease, softer.

That's why nurturing my home style, with the furnishings, the collections, the cherished family heirlooms, the order and the routine, is so incredibly important to me. To me, it's the home environment that is life-giving to my introverted soul.

Why This Matters More Than It Seems

There’s so much pressure for your home to look like everyone else's. It doesn’t have to. In fact, it really ought to:

• Reflect who you actually are, not who you think you should be
• Hold the things that mean something to you, collected slowly and gathered on purpose
• Feel like a place you can exhale in, whatever the rest of your day required of you
• Reflect the life you actually live

Do you feel the same? Send me an email and let me know!

Recommended Reading

More from Home Style:

• What Is Middlemalism? — the full definition and framework behind this post
• The Middlemalist Home: Finding the balance between Minimal and Lived-In — a practical follow-up to this one

Something for you from Simple Living:

• What Simple Living Actually Looks Like — when your home doesn’t look like everyone else’s