MRS WOOG IS A STUFFED CHOOK
Homemaker shows. You know the ones.
Where shiny, happy people show you how to make paper pom poms for children’s birthday parties as a stuffed Barossa chook finishes itself off in a fancy oven in the background.
I think that they are dangerous and I recently very nearly fell prey to their evilness.
It was last Friday Night and the combination of a rapidly diminishing bottle of wine in the fridge; me assdown on the coach suffering from mild intoxication; complete exhaustion and a lost remote control left me with no choice but to watch a homemaking show.
Those shows tend to love a makeover, like turning this….
Current state of the Woog Laundry…
Into this!
Current state of some very anal person’s laundry.
Yes. THOSE shows.
Shiny Home Shows are developed in collaboration with plumbing, paint and hardware businesses and are designed to get you all pumped up on a Friday Night and get you out the door on Saturday to go to said retail outlets and spend money so you can make your own shabby chic spice rack.
Or inspire you to colour code your wardrobe…
…and even your bookshelf.
I sat and watched this show and for the first few minutes I scoffed, laughing at the presenters who got so excited about roasting tomatoes, dipping the end of cuttings into hormone powder before replanting them and being treated to the pros and cons of owning a Maltese terrier. (Note. They are notoriously fussy eaters.)
I rolled my eyes when a smiling presenter demonstrated how to change the cushions and throw rugs around to create ambiance and how the use of scented candles helped to heighten the sense of calm in the newly created “space”.
And then I felt an internal shift. That from one of complete surrender to inspired.
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33 Responses to this article
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Smaggle May 8, 2012
I’m a Virgo so shows like that are my porn. I’m kind of annoying with all my clothes divided and labelled and I grow my own herbs.
You can stop speaking to me now.
x
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Madmother May 8, 2012
Oh hell yes. I have house envy every time I watch one of those shows. But instead of making me run around and compulsively re-organise it leads me straight to a deep yearning for a Alice from the Brady Bunch. For I do not have that cleaning gene, but by gosh, she does!
*ALICE*ALICE*ALICE*ALICE*P.S. I did actually request one of these in my last ad for a cleaning woman…
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Mrs S May 8, 2012
Yes, I’m addicted but not to BHG, I’m addicted to the Foxtel ones like Sarah’s House. I think the reason why I’m addicted is that I waited 7 years for my now hubby to buy me a house and I have spent the last 7 years with crap second hand (often hard rubbish) furniture and ugly nick nacks the in-laws have given us because they think we need more furniture. (Wogs dont do sparse)
Now I have my big open plan house I can see all the crap that doesnt match and not in that good “I’m kind of retro kinda way” I want to be a grown up now! I want nice things! So thats why I think I am addicted. The draw of something nicer! -
bigwords May 8, 2012
Love them. I too am a Virgo and live for anally organising my laundry. I am also lazy, so I find it easier to watch other people do it on those shows and get pleasure out their homes looking like I’d like mine to.
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Meggsie May 8, 2012
People have fresh flowers in their laundries? Hate homemaking shows. They either make me feel inadequate or regretting having children who turned into teenagers and leave any attempt at style or just cleanliness a complete WOFTAM – waste of f***ing time and money. AMFYOYO
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Mrs Woog May 8, 2012
The fresh flowers in the laundry thing? I have a theory. You sniff them in between sniffing crotches of underpants, working out whether they are clean or dirty.
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Sam-o May 8, 2012
Nope. They pee me off no end.
But I will admit to watching food shows with no intention of cooking anything on them.
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Mrs Woog May 8, 2012
Oh my god! I do this all the time. I get so inspired as to how easy it all looks, then lose interest when I realise I would have to go shopping for the items. x
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Kelly Exeter May 8, 2012
Three words for you Mrs Woog: Friday Night Footy.
Never again will you fall prey to the temptress that is Johanna Griggs and her cronies again
You may however develop a taste for short shorts. Sometimes you gotta take the good with the bad!
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Edwina May 8, 2012
I am completely addicted. Home-type shows are about all I can sit through on TV. My husband and I even invented a drinking game for Escape to the Country. You have to drink anytime anyone wants a house with period features then complains about it being poky, or whinges that the house is too near some motorway starting with a letter, or ultimately decides that they want a barn conversion which they really can’t afford, or gets all excited about an Aga.
You will get through a bottle of red in no time at all.
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Mrs Woog May 8, 2012
I like the sound of that game! Count me in xx
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Keryn May 8, 2012
Hilarious! Sounds like my kind of game!
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Kerri Sackville May 8, 2012
I have never watched a home-making show and every time I break (another) item of our dinner set the kids and my husband chorus together ‘AGAIN????’
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sam May 8, 2012
Dear Edwina, can I play too! I love cooking programmes the best, but when Hugh Fernly-whateverham is not on I love a bit of ‘selling houses australia’ or ‘location location’
It never ceases to amaze how much money these people have to spend! The worst thing about my new apartment is that we can’t get Foxtel connected. Boo Hoo -
Edwina May 8, 2012
Mrs Woog and Sam, let’s all play!
Sam – That’s actually another one we drink to – when a couple our age (30 something) comes on with a budget of 800,000 pounds to buy their rustic dream home. Which sort of ties into Mrs Woog’s point that all these shows do is make you feel like crap. I’m still hooked though.
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Kerrie May 8, 2012
I’m heavily into storage porn. I drool over the Howard’s Storage World, IKEA and even Bunnings catalogues. A house guest recently discovered my guilty secret – a pile of catalogues, all with dozens of Post-it notes protruding – and I had to reassure her I didn’t actually intend buying all that stuff. I just like to look. It’s cheap voyeurism and no one is harmed. Win win.
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Ali May 8, 2012
I love BH&G,and lots of other reality home/cooking/reno shows if for no other reason that my 7 year old daughter and I can actually sit and watch it together, talking about what we see and how they make it etc… She does hanker after all the great kids stuff they make and I say ‘yeah yeah’ under my breath… As if!! I do get inspired to tidy up around the place, I just want less crap in my house…
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Jodie aka mummaducka May 8, 2012
I hate how they spur you to go and spend gazillions buying shit online or at the shops, when what you really should be doing is using your time, staying home getting off the lounge and just cleaning up and decluttering the shit you already have!!!
They need to do shows that can get you inspired to get up off the lounge tidying up and decorating with all the family heirlooms and kid’s crap! -
The Huntress May 8, 2012
Nope, I already feel inadequate. LOL Seriously, I think housework is boring, so I don’t do it. I love to cook, so the kitchen is always clean and because I’m vain and like to spend a lot of time in the bathroom that’s always kind of clean too. Everything else is a chaotic mess and I’m quite comfortable with that. Everytime I see an anally clean house with everything in order I just think to myself “so you can vacuum a floor and arrange linen, huh?!? Well, guess what? I save lives for a living!” Somehow, in my mind, it justifies that I’m a complete slob.
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sam May 8, 2012
Jodie, there is one like that. “Cleaning houses, NY” they go into some serial horders house and make them throw things out and sell things in a “yard sale”, then redecorate for them. My husband hates it, but I can’t get enough.
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Cate P May 8, 2012
I watch them, but never replicate them. Having spent half the morning pooperscoopering two big steaming piles of sloppy dogshit from the family room floor, what hope do I have?
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linda May 8, 2012
I don’t watch those shows – they are all boring!
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Nikki @ Styling You May 8, 2012
You’ve just saved me. After a week in a hotel, I was thinking I needed more cushions in my life and on the bed … I think I’ll resist on everything except the pillow-top thingy for the bed. That’s all about comfort, not style.
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Roni Jean May 8, 2012
Yeah… I like to watch sometimes, but it just makes me depressed, because then I have to return to the reality of all the stuff we’ve been hoarding and cramming into our standard brick and tile rental. Oh for the day I can actually park a car in our garage…
My daughter said to me the other night, “Mum, why can’t we have a matching set of plates, instead of all these odd ones?” I replied, “But darling, these are a matching set of all the leftover plates of all the matching sets we used to own before you kids learnt to wash up!” -
Valerie Parv May 8, 2012
My theory is we watch these shows as a kind of virtual reality. At the end, we have the same sense of satisfaction as if we’d actually built the combi-bookshelf/food preparation bench, groomed the poodle into the shape of a Christmas tree, or baked a six-layer fudge haloumi surprise. Must try the drinking game though, Escape to the Country is my must-watch real estate porn. I could get through a magnum of champers just on the couples who walk into a kitchen the size of my entire home and say, “It’s a little small.”
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Jo Johnstone May 8, 2012
so funny mrs woog…..valerie there’s lots of advantages having a small house…less cleaning, less insurance, can talk to someone from one end of the house to another without having to get up from the lounge, less heating cost, i could go on and on
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Valerie Parv May 8, 2012
You’re right, Jo, plus the benefit of having a smaller environmental footprint – my reason for choosing to live moderately long before it was fashionable. Doesn’t get me brownie points with interviewers who expect every romance writer to have a heart-shaped pool and a mansion, but I save those for my characters. Like you, I look at the houses on Escape and am glad I don’t have to do their housework.
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Valerie Parv May 8, 2012
Remember how Andrew Denton used to ask his interview subjects who they would turn gay for? I could never think of an answer. Now I know – it’s Mrs Woog.
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Mrs BC May 8, 2012
I love those shows, and shelter magazines as well. It’s shameful. My house looks nothing like a Better Homes and Gardens house, even with a 25 year magazine collection. In fact, because of a 25 year magazine collection. *sigh*
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Stacy Rushton May 8, 2012
I don’t watch the home decorating shows since I don’t have an ounce of cushion fluffing, matchy matchy in me, but I am addicted to the cooking shows. I love the things they “throw” together and they inspire me to make my own feasts.
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Alyson May 11, 2012
Ha! That’s why I’ve chucked in Friday night telly – now I drink and read the new WHO mag…I usually end up so sozzled, I can enjoy it again over the weekend like I never read it before!
