Donna Van Cleve's Profile

I’ve enjoyed reading the comments on the Roeder Home Tour – and I try to be open to constructive criticism, but some comments have made inaccurate assumptions about the Roeders. “unnecessary, conspicuous consumption” - most of the furnishings in Ness & Jonathan’s home are hand-me-downs, secondhand, or even picked up off the side of the road and given new life (like the yellow chair in Audrie’s room). I’d call that creative reclamation. And a side note, Jon still drives the truck he took to college, which is rare for the over 30 bunch. “borrowed from a design blog or a West Elm catalog” (I don’t even know what that is) - Few things in life are truly creative. Everything we do are products of what we’ve viewed, read, heard, etc. Otherwise why would design catalogs or blogs put anything out there at all if they were not meant to provoke new inspiration and attempts in expressing ourselves in the places we live. I’ve yet to see a robot in a baby nursery or a hand-made five foot tall cardboard village like that in a house, but those are just a few of the things that make that house (no matter what size) uniquely their home. “since the house is so large parts of it are probably not really lived in” - I can attest that they live in and use every room of that house daily except for the dining room, which is used for overflow or games when company comes. I love what they’ve done to the house so far, and knowing Vanessa, the house will change through the years as they change. What a great place for Jon and Ness to raise my grandkids—not because of the house itself, but because they’re in it.