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Since I was young, I have been a fan of home renovation shows. Some of my earliest memories are of my mother and I watching them, curled up on the couch. I remember the mild shock of the demolition, the relief of the reconstruction and then, finally, the arranging. The people on these shows always arrange the most minute details in almost imperceptible corners of the house for at least half the episode. I watch every second intently; I always have. I like to know what other people think of as important in a house. I like knowing what they can’t live without and what never crossed their minds. I can find something of interest in every episode, and in turn I’m nearly always guaranteed a small disappointment. I always sense when the disappointment is coming, too; it feels like the room itself holds its breath every time the hosts go to pick up the throw pillows.
Throw pillows are the vilest decorations; they can’t quite be called furniture, as they leave a dark smudge on the good name of the pillow. Furniture is meant to be stable and structured, supporting your weight so you can have a rest. Throw pillows limply cower in the corner of couches, unable to support anything at all. Invoking the word “pillow” may provoke you to think that where they are lacking in support, they make up for in comfort. After all, pillows are soft and plushy, and they give you comfort when you need to rest. Throw pillows are nothing more than flat slabs of tough stuffing, waiting for you to need a place to rest your head or just have a seat, only to let you down again. Even as décor, throw pillows fail. If a couch with throw pillows is facing capacity problems, everyone knows the pillows are the first to go. The pillows occupy so much space on our couches, failing at all other responsibilities, in the name of a “pop of color,” and we can’t even indulge that all the time. Certainly, throw pillows can’t possibly be the only way to incorporate color and comfort in a space. Throw pillows are intensely lacking in effectiveness, and you will be better off replacing them with blankets.
Throw blankets are a far more functional alternative to those fraudulent peddlers of peace. A blanket may be shared or hogged, may be loose or bundled, may even be twisted into a pillow in a time of need. In my lifetime, blankets have served as hiding places, shawls, travel pillows and more. The solutions a blanket can offer outnumber those of a throw pillow easily. A personalized “pop of color” is also just as easy to achieve with a blanket while occupying less space that could then be occupied by people. You can drape a throw blanket over the back of the couch, fold it as part of a seat or even fold it and carefully place it across the foot of a bed. The possibilities are just as open as you are; you are free to bend it to your preferences in color, pattern, size and styling choice. With a throw blanket, you can build the world of comfort you’ve been waiting for.
Throw blankets welcome the true nature of the arranger, while throw pillows ask us to abandon our most baseline instinct to cozy up. This fall, as you sit around the coffee table with your friends, sipping warm soup out of mugs and lamenting the divine lessons thrust upon you this term, consider the lesson of the throw pillows: we cannot force our surroundings to change their nature; we must instead engage new solutions to build peace for ourselves.