Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Small details that makes you wonder

I have this very nice Philipino girl who cleans my apartment once a week. It is sooo nice and I love the feeling of coming home from work and finding my home shining clean and smelling fresh. However there is this one thing I can't help but thinking about. We seem to have very different opinions on how to place decorative items in the home. Every time when she has been here I have to make a round and move candle stands, flower pots and other decorative items back into the right positions.
If I have a group of candle stands for example, I like to place them in a group, maybe a little asymmetric or askew. My five Malian elephants I like to line up a little diagonally so you see them both a little from the front and the side at the same time. But every time she has been here, everything is lined up in straight lines, totally symmetrical and the elephants facing you up front. And then we have the Dutch house!! It is one of those small blue and white Dutch houses in china, that one use/used to get when flying Business class with KLM. It stands on the kitchen fan with the front, which is in this case the gable, facing you, like it would face a Dutch street, or canal. But every time she has turned it 90 degrees so the side is facing front. Ok, maybe it is not totally easy to know that the gable is supposed facing that way and maybe the other way around is more common in the Philippines, but hey it is a DUTCH house, and we live in Belgium, not very far away (I believe she has lived here for quite a while) and anyway, why moving it??! Why not just leave it the way I have left it!?
But of course that goes for all the moving of candles, plants and vases etc. Why not just leaving the way I left them, especially since she must notice that I keep moving then after she’s been here. .
Maybe she just think I am messy and she just has to put things “right”. And ok, I admit, I can at times be a little messy and of course I appreciate that she puts all the shoes that I just leave in a mess in the hall in order, and that she takes care of the laundry that needs to be ironed and folded. But then again, that makes me wonder, why on earth does she think I would mess up among the candle stands at the mantelpiece? Or among the flowers at the windowsill!? Or accidentally turning the elephants and the Dutch house?! What does that say about her thoughts about me??
 
 
The wrong way!


The right way! Its's a DUTCH house!!