shedding some light on the situation

As mentioned previously, lamps have given me a minor headache. Or a major OCD attack. You see, I have two fixations I'm trying to work though while simultaneously redecorating our living room. They are as follows:

• I have what I have recently termed an unhealthy obsession with symmetry.
• I am extremely rigid in my ideas of what matches.

 Are these necessarily bad fixations? In the scheme of things, no. A little symmetry never hurt anyone, and in the long run, rigid matching is more attractive than not matching at all. But I think they're limiting me. They came to a head when it came to lamps.

First I immediately thought we needed two matching lamps to go on our end tables. Because that's just what you do, right? This directly butts heads with Husband's and my lighting needs and preferences. I like what could be termed "mood lighting." I (pretty vehemently, maybe violently) dislike overhead lighting. Husband of course likes lots of lighting and thinks overhead lighting is pretty effective at that. Our living room and bedroom have ceiling fans (an awesome feature in a New York apartment, I might add), which conveniently feature lights. I get a little stabby when Husband turns them on, particularly in the bedroom. Overhead lights are, to me, for the kitchen. For places in which you'll be working. Not for cozying-up places. I prefer not to be on display while cuddling up watching Dancing with the Stars. Husband also likes what I term "funeral parlor lamps." You know, floor lamps whose fixtures face upward like this. Apparently they are traditionally called "torcheres." I take my terminology from my mother, and I have seen them in funeral parlors. I think they're fine for providing additional lighting, but not for right-by-the-couch task lighting. I'm not saying Husband wants these as our primary lamps. He just likes them more than I do.

Keep these differences in mind as we proceed.

Next, my rigid matching problems. This extends to all areas of my life that involve matching. Dressing, makeup, decorating, perhaps even cooking. And I'm really anal about it. I currently think our throw pillows don't adequately match with our rug. Time the throw pillows spend directly adjacent to the rug? Zero. So I'm going with it, because they aren't diametrically opposed and coordinate enough not to be jarring. When first thinking about lamps, and their shades in particular, I wondered if they were supposed to match the rug. I don't know why I chose the rug as the item in the room they should definitely match. Balance? Something at that height should match something on the floor? I just wanted to be weird? Probably the latter.

I got over that pretty quickly, because if I hadn't, my lamp shades would need to look like an abstract aerial view of the Midwest in order to match my rug precisely.

So whatever darn shade comes with the lamp I like is the shade that the lamp will wear for the foreseeable future. Unless the lamp randomly comes with a shade screen-printed with, like the Kardashians or large dice or perhaps some chevrons. I have chevron issues. Also Kardashin issues. Dice are fine.

In order to break myself of the symmetry habit--and focus on balance instead--I thought maybe we could each pick out a lamp. Thus satisfying the new balenced-not-crazy-symmetrical initiative and our different lighting needs and preferences.  Ergo: I get a table lamp on "my" side of the couch, and Husband gets a standing lamp on "his" side of the couch. (He really likes lighting to be high. He is rather tall, but less so when he is sitting on the couch.)

Here are our ideas:

Possible table lamp for me (from West Elm)

Possible standing lamp for Husband (from CB2)

Putting them next to each other like that rankles both my matching and my symmetry tendencies, so I'm going to try and write them away. The lamps are similar in these ways:

• Exposed cords (the glass jar lamp's cord runs through it, while the standing lamp's cord runs down the whole of it [and allows you to adjust the height!]).
• Drum shades (not exactly the same size, but the same shape).
• White shades (it doesn't look that way in the top photo, but the glass jug's shade is actually white.
• Organic materials. True, a glass jug is nothing like a wooden frame, but they're both organic materials. The wood frame definitely has sharper lines, but it does complement the round glass bottom...by being the exact opposite? 

I think I'm okay with it. I sort of prefer the wood over a metal floor lamp, just because both glass and metal might be too shiny (and sterile?), and the wood adds warmth. And our room is cozy. We'd like to keep it that way.

Of course, now that I say this, we will go see these lamps in person and Husband will not like his lamp. He is unsure about the exposed cord, which is bright blue. I can work with it, I think. I will probably like the glass jug lamp in person, as my only qualification for a lamp was "glass jug base." Since it's called the Glass Jug Table Lamp, it's obviously meant for me.

As soon as we began looking at lamps, we discovered how much more expensive they were than what we'd hoped. Everyone wants a $30 lamp, right?  But we figure these, like our couch and rug before them, are long-term investments. We hope to have these lamps for years and years (hence our deliberation and blogging about them so darn much), so spending upwards of $100, while not a drop in the bucket, is something we can rationalize in the long run.

Yeah, this isn't a blog about saving money in home design. This is a blog about "re"-decorating an apartment you never decorated to begin with. (Hence the "re.") Investments abound.

We are saving money in other places. Wait till you see my blog about wall art!