Remembered rooms

We've been reordering the pantry over the last few days--always some work, but always a joy. Over the years, we've featured some aspects of the pantry in several issues of The Storybook Home Journal. First, in Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer, next in Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs, and, most recently, in Charles Dickens' Bleak House. Each time it's been an exhilarating experience to rediscover that organizing with beauty in mind is just as efficient--and a thousand times more satisfying than placing everything in a series of plastic bins and closing the closet door.
We particularly love this quote by Lydia Lyon Roberts because it sums up the best measure of use and beauty:

How few rooms impress us so deeply that they become a part of our lives in memory or influence…We need rooms which hold out warm, inviting arms, rooms into which we can go and feel the atmosphere wrap us around with soothing and content…Remembered rooms speak to us in the low tireless tones of beauty whose impress can never be forgotten.

As quoted in The Pantry by Catherine Sieberling Pond

Tags: 2010, Beauty and home, Home quotes