"trying out all the ideas that come to you"

"It seems to me that, whether it is recognized or not, there is a terrific frustration which increases in intensity and harmfulness as time goes on, when people are always daydreaming of the kind of place in which they would like to live, yet never making the place where they do live into anything artistically satisfying to them. Always to dream of a cottage by a brook, while never doing anything original to the stuffy boarding-house room in a city...to dream of what you could do with a hut in the jungle yet never to think of your inherited family mansion as anything but a place to mark time, is to waste creativity in this very basic area, and to hinder future creativity by not allowing it to grow and develop through use. Trying out all the ideas that come to you, within the limits of your present place, money, talents, materials, and so forth, will not use up everything you want to save for the future, but will rather generate and develop more ideas.

Express yourself not only in selecting things displayed in a store, but also in what you can produce yourself, with some degree of originality, craftsmanship or artistic creativity. There is great satisfaction in making something out of nothing...and turning it into an object that has purpose and charm in your home. Among other things, this would also help to limit the ghastly filling up of dumps..."

       from   The Hidden Art of Homemaking, by Edith Schaeffer  c1971


By the word homemaking, Edith Schaeffer is not referring to housework, but how artistically we try to live our lives at home, and with those nearest to us; finding time or making time to pursue whatever is within us which seeks to express itself in any artistic way. Which, she says, is a reflection of our being made in the image and likeness of God, the creator of everything.

As for the reference to the "filling up of dumps" - thank God that some peope are/were ahead of their time!