I’d like to blame the people behind HGTV (home and garden television) but, in reality, they’re only partly to blame. OK, maybe they’re not to blame at all. Maybe they’ve just created compelling television and I’m the one who has morphed it into a pathological addiction.
Like an alcoholic who can’t handle having just one drink, I can’t watch just one HGTV show, so I have to avoid it altogether. But sometimes, like recently, I slip up, planning to catch just one episode. And then, the next thing I know, I’ve gorged myself on hours and hours of house-lust-inducing home improvement television.
Each show starts out by stirring up a need-to-know curiosity that’s akin to hunger and grows into a compulsion. I NEED to know. How will they transform the dated, discombobulated room into a dazzling showpiece? Which house will the couple choose and what will it look like three months later? How will they re-do a drab façade to possess attention-grabbing, jaw-dropping curb appeal? Each time, when the answer is revealed at the end of each show, I experience a sense of exhilaration, a rush that must set off serotonin surges in my hypothalamus—but it’s short-lived because then the hunger starts all over again and I keep coming back for more, more MORE!
It’s an endless tease in search of another aesthetic high, presided over by hip design priests and priestesses who are like seers of old, only instead of seeing future events they envision future environments with elements like travertine, accent lighting and coordinating fabrics in pleasing combinations beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. And then they conjure up the vision by mobilizing teams of carpenters, electricians, and assistants who do their bidding with skill and precision, all compressed into a 30-minute time slot.
Post-binge, when I’m finally exhausted by it all, I start to feel disgusted and depressed. My house is so UGLY! I need a design team to descend upon my humble domicile and transform it into stunning display of creativity that’s practical and functional yet sleek and inviting. And it has to have something that “pops,” according to the oft-repeated refrain of the HGTV design divas.
And unlike me, the design divas always seem to know exactly what they want. For example, it’s taken me months to try and choose a paint color for my dining room, where I turned the walls into abstract art from the application of myriad paint sample colors as I tried to make up my mind. Seriously, I must have bought at least 20 paint samples. Of course, part of the problem is that I was – and still am – dealing with dislocated, multi-colored furniture that wasn’t really designed to coordinate, resulting from the merging of my household with that of my husband’s. But the design divas have no such dilemma. They simply sketch a design, compile swatches, seemingly manufacture the components out of their fertile imaginations, and voila, there it is, design perfection!
Watching HGTV isn’t a waste of time, but it’s just that I lose all capacity for moderation. But I do get ideas and learn things, including facts about other cultures. For example, in one episode, I learned about a girl who was looking for an apartment in Saudi Arabia. The apartments she had to choose from each cost about $60,000 a year, which had to be paid for in an upfront lump sum, a provision that would exclude just about every prospective renter in the U.S.—but in Saudi Arabia it’s no problem because, according to HGTV, each Saudi is worth about $16 million, and besides that, 80 percent of the people in Abu Dhabi are foreigners and their employers often pick up the tab. In the case of the prospective renter, a Canadian, she was paid about $60,000 for teaching young children, plus she received a whopping $65,000 housing stipend from her employer. Not bad for a twenty-something who saw a bidet and asked, “What’s that?”
HGTV also provides an opportunity to see how other socio-economic groups live. Sometimes I can relate and other times I can’t, like when a couple that had a $2 million budget to spend on Napa Valley housing sniffed at a gorgeous home because it didn’t have a vineyard view.
Sometimes, the ideas are great but definitely beyond my skill level to implement them. For example, I would love to construct an inexpensive fountain/water feature out of plywood, pipe and slate, but lack the required carpentry cred. And by the time I factored in the cost of a carpenter to construct it, it would cost a couple of grand, decidedly more than the advertised "design on a dime" cost of materials.
The other day, I combined hours of watching HGTV with home magazine reading and talk about other peoples’ homes, resulting in irritation and dissatisfaction with my own home. As usual, Scripture provides the only antidote to carnal craving that’s beyond the bounds of what God has provided.
“Keep your lives free from the love of money,” says the book of Hebrews, “and be content with what you have, because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you’.”
OK God, help me, please … but first just let me see how the amazingly talented Candice Olson infuses this hum-drum space with a touch of glam and pizzazz … and then transforms this Disney-ish kids’ room into a sophisticated space a teenager will love … and then …
