Local Living, Local Choices: Home decorating and education

In this series of posts on Local Living, Local Choices, I've taken some time to look at issues of food, clothing and entertainment.

These are topics commonly discussed and covered on green blogs, and with good reason.

• Food: By changing the way we eat, and changing choices about where our food comes from, we can make a huge difference in our own "footprint" and the amount of pollution and carbon we produce.
  
  
• Clothing: Likewise, by making sensible clothing choices, we can actively support ethical companies, reduce problems of child abuse and poor working conditions both in our own countries and overseas, and save money.
  
  
• Entertainment: By supporting local entertainment and tourism industries, we can reduce transport emissions and actively encourage the development of sustainable tourism, eco-tourism and educational tourism ventures that help our planet and support healthy ecosystems and protect wildlife.
  

Today, I'll be talking about making active choices for the better in two areas many people may not have considered - home decorating and education.

Both areas can have a significant impact on the connectedness we feel towards our local community and environment. By making local choices, we can support our local economy and help rebuild fractured friendships and neighbourhoods in ways we might not have thought about.


Putting down roots: Decorating your home in a traditional, local style

• Decorate your home in a local way. Put paintings and photos on the wall that are meaningful and local to where you live and to your family and friends. Children's art can be framed and looks beautiful.
  
  
• Using art and decorative content local and meaningful to your area and family helps connect your interior with your exterior. It avoids the "generic show home" look that is beginning to take over family homes, and lends a uniqueness and character to family homes that can only be achieved in this way.
  
  It also helps put down roots and gives a sense of place and time to a home that cannot be achieved by the purchase of mall-purchased prints and made-in-China vases.
  
  
• Posters of concerts you have sung in or shows you have featured in can be block-mounted for a low cost. They look terrific on your wall - and they're also a conversation starter!
  
  
• Take your OWN photos of the local area and city streets. City photos look terrific in black and white (or even in colour) and country scenes local to where you live give a sense of place and will help you connect and grow roots in your community.
  
  If you really SUCK at photography, ask a close friend to take photos of places in the local area that are meaningful and special to you.
  
  Ideas might include: the cafe you had your first date with your partner; the lookout you had your first cuddle in the car (!!); the view from your living room; a photo of your garden in Spring; a photo of the main street of your town at midnight in fog; a photo of the town hall or your church.
  
  
• If you live in a farming area, try to source prints of the area in settler times. The local library can be a good place to start, or a local antique shop.
  
  
• Or hunt out antique farming implements. They can be hung on the wall for a rustic look. Just make sure you know what they are first, and where they're from, because guests are bound to ask!
  
  
• Buy locally made and produced furniture. It often isn't any more expensive than imports.
  
  Our whole house is now almost all 100% kiwi furniture, made locally from sutainably produced pine, and it didn't cost any more tham imported furniture. It is beautiful, well-made, and built to last!
  
  
• DONT paint the walls beige! Ignore trends. Decorate your home the way YOU like it - not the way some trendsetter in a magazine tells you to decorate. Make your house into YOUR home.
  
  
• Be you. Be proud of your heritage. If you come from a particular minority group, treasure that and show it in your decoration. Be proud of where you are and how you live in this place and time. That's how community and a sense of place is grown - not from catalogues.
  
  
• While there is nothing wrong with a few items bought from mass market stores, try to add as many local touches as you can.
  
  
• Put heirloom decorations on display - no matter how odd. Share who you are and how you came to be you. Put your old, treasured teddy bear from childhood on your bed. Wear your estate jewelry (check clasps and claws first!).
  
  
• DIY. Make your curtains yourself. Paint or paper your home yourself. Don't get the experts in - they'll decorate "their way" instead of yours. Use colour, and plenty of it. Be daring. The settlers used colour, because they had few possesions, so take a leaf out of their book.
  
  
• Decorate a home, not a show home. Ignore the trend for beige and "showy", meaningless decoration and instead, choose items that are full of depth and character - yours. Choose practical over decorative, and don't feel you need to update simply because the fashion magazines tell you so.
  
  Remember that some of the most beautiful homes in the world - English manor houses - only got that way because they didn't update! Yes, I know they were also fabulous to start with, but imagine if they'd thrown out the marble fireplaces because they were "old fashioned"!
  
  
• Don't move, unless absolutely necessary!: Every time you move house, you lose the character and "homeyness" you had started to build in the last place you lived in. You lose roots, friendships and community. And you lose memories.
  
  Finally, you also lose the thousands it costs in agent fees and associated moving costs. Don't move, unless absolutely unavoidable.
  

All of these choices are simple but will help differentiate your home from the next. They make a house into a home.


Local education

The trend in recent times more and more has been to educate our children privately, and to ignore the local school option.

I'm not sure that's wise. Disadvantages of sending a child to a private school further away include:

• The cost. Many families spend, literally, hundreds of thousands of dollars educating their children. Is it worth it?
  
  My argument against it would be that the best education a child will ever get is from home, and no school can ever extend a child beyond his or her own natural abilities.
  
  
• Community fragmentation. The local school used to be a hub of social contact for parents to meet, befriend one another, share information and socialise.
  
  With more and more children being educated all over the cities, parents are not meeting other local parents.
  
  This furthers a breakdown in local communities, and can create feelings of isolation and depression in parents.
  
  
• Transport time. Children, like adults, are spending more and more hours in transit.
  
  Is this healthy? I don't think so. It certainly isn't good for our environment. Or, with the escalating cost of petrol, our budgets.
  
  
• Social separation from local kids. Kids who travel distances to school often end up having a "school set" of friends and a "home set" of friends. This can be confusing and disorienting.
  
  Furthermore, if your child is the only one of the local kids not attending the local school, they'll feel left out and alienated when they interact with the local kids after school.
  
  
• Parents working longer hours to pay for private tuition. Parents are working longer hours to pay for private school fees, uniforms, computers, extras such as trips and excursions, and all the other activities private schools assume parents can afford.
  
  Money and work pressure put stress on parents and their relationships with partners and children. Just because the kids don't say anything when you fight about money (and school fees!), don't think they aren't listening.
  

I think local education has a lot to be said for it. I was locally educated, at "the school down the road" in a poor area (state housing, mostly) and it has not harmed my career in any way. I went on to take degrees (several), build a successful career and attain financial security and success.

In the end, an able child is an able child. If your child is bright, she or he will do well wherever they are educated, especially if you support them every step of the way.

More and more these days, basic schooling is only the first step in an education. So many more children go on to traineeships and degrees after they finish school that where they actually went to school is becoming more and more irrelevant. Where they were educated for their primary and secondary years - and where you spent all those tens of thousands of dollars - may never even be asked, once your child reaches University.

In all the years I have worked, and all the positions I have held, I have never been asked where I went to school. Not once.

Employers are interested in my degrees, and what work experience and on-the-job training I have gained since graduating. This is typical across the board, and is a common experience for my postgrad-educated friends as well.


The best education comes from our homes, our communities, and our friends.

Also, I firmly believe that the best example a child will ever be set is at home. Our extended families, communities and our friends also have a significant impact. The actual education we receive in school is, I believe, of limited significance.

If a child's parents value hard work and a "can do" spirit, are sensible with money, and prize education and training (this does NOT mean just sending their child to an expensive school and expecting the school to do all the work, but instead taking an active interest in their child's development at every step of the way), the child will generally grow up with those same values.


Local IS affordable!

Quite often, the local option is the more affordable option. You just have to be clever. Shop around. Think twice. Plan purchases. Ask friends and neighbours.

In the next, and final, post in this series, I'll be discussing what to do when local is not available or affordable, and options for tight budgets (isn't that everyone these days?).

If you'd like to comment on this post, I'd love to hear from you.

Have a lovely day!