I keep seeing signs all over the place.
Not signs as in harbingers or forebodings. I mean the signs in stores that are essentially decorative labels: “Laundry Room,” “Pantry,” “My Happy Place.”
An occasional accent word is one thing. “Pillow” embroidered on a pillow or “Shower” painted on distressed wood and propped on a bathroom shelf is décor and therefore tolerable if you like that sort of thing.
Recently, though, I walked through a store’s home-accessories area and saw signs for pretty much everything in a house: Porch. Kitchen. The Gathering Room. Hearth. I rolled my eyes at “Laundry” on a wire basket, but when I saw another basket labeled “Dog Toys,” I said, “Oh, come on,” out loud. A person who doesn’t recognize chewed-up, disemboweled, stiff-with-dried-dog-spit remnants of hedgehogs, ferrets and knotted ropes as dog toys without signage at the very least should never be trusted to house sit.
If dogs regularly put away their toys, I suppose, a labeled basket might look cute in the online videos, but I have never known a dog who tidied up. Dogs seem to believe their toys should be scattered willy-nilly through the house. From where I sit, in fact, I can see no fewer than four dog toys, and not one of them is in our dog toy basket. The basket doesn’t have a label, but if it did, it would read, “Stuff that doesn’t interest the dog.”
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People probably aren’t expected to purchase every sign. The idea likely is that people decide what in their home cries out to be named. A couch that says “couch” seems a little on the nose, but apparently, it’s OK to hang signs that say “coffee,” “bread” and “apples” over the coffeemaker, the bread and the apples.
Before I ask why people do this, let me clarify: I’m a person who does this. In our tiny downstairs bathroom is the matted-and-framed “BATH” created from alphabet letters found in random places: the curl of wrought iron, the frame of a gable. The sign was made years ago by a photographer friend of my daughter’s, and I like it, even though I sometimes look at it and think, “But for this sign, I might be brushing my teeth in the backyard.”
Did pioneer families decorate their new log homes with “Sunday Frock Hook” and “Butter Churn” signs? Did they paw through a peddler’s wares for a script “Button Hooks” to hang over the place where they kept button hooks?
“This sign that says ‘Smokehouse’ will look right cute on the smokehouse,” a settler might have thought.
More likely, sign décor became popular after people grew accustomed to surviving winters, droughts and childbirth. That’s when they were apt to notice the bare space above the bowl of Keurig pods and post a “Life begins after coffee” sign.
As I’ve admitted with my “BATH,” I’m not immune to the appeal of decorative signs. However, I can promise now, hand on heart, I will never have a kitchen wastebasket that says “Kitchen Waste.” I will never hang a “Plastic Produce Bags” sign over the drawer that is full and overflowing with plastic produce bags. And as for “Political Mailers Good for Scraping Up Dog Vomit,” we know where we can put a hand on a variety of styles and sizes of those, and we need no signs to guide us there.
Frankly, I might be tempted to hang a sign in the bedroom that says “Go to Sleep” or “Dream On” or “Get Up When You Feel Like It and Not Because an Alarm Is Going Beep Beep Beep in Your Ear,” but I’m too inclined to sleep and dream and get up when I feel like it as it is. The last thing I need is encouragement from a sign that costs me $145 plus shipping. I’d sooner buy another set of flannel sheets. Those things are the best.
Email Margo Bartlett at [email protected].
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