Hi!  Yeah, moving sucks.  A lot.  Soooooooo much.

Anyway, because of moving I wanted to talk about a subject near and dear to the hearts of the household:  Geek Decorating.

So, we’re all adults, so we want our home to look somewhat sophisticated.  However, inside we’re all about 13 years old, so the odds of sophisticated being a thing are somewhere between slim and none.  At least for the whole house.  But I need to say, this is a banner time to be a nerd decorating a house.

Ok, so first things first.  Our bathroom needed a shower curtain.  I’d found a cute one at Target  with little sharks all over it  that really matched the tile well, and I had gone there to get it.  Then, on an end cap, there it was:  A Captain America shower curtain .

Of course I bought it.  And the matching bath towel .  (See, Marvel, this is what I mean about not pissing off nerd girls with a social conscience who have disposable income and a new house to decorate.)  I also may have picked up a Captain America journal, but that’s another post.

Currently, the Geek Husband What Rules and I are debating setting up the Nightcrawler shrine and then painting, or leaving it boxed and setting it up after painting the space it’s going in.

And just go look at the Housewares section on ThinkGeek , or google any of your favorite properties on Amazon.  The options are endless.  Giant vinyl wall stickies, clocks, lamps, tin signs, framed art, pillows, sheets, comforters.  I think I have in the past posted the pictures of my bed made up with my Avengers sheets and comforter.  Hell, head on over to Society 6  to pick up some truly magnificent fan art on a wide variety of objects from prints, to phone cases, to throws, pillows, shower curtains, coffee mugs, and lots of other things.

But other than fandom loyalty what are some  concerns when it comes to geek decorating?

Collectables.  Collectables of most types should be kept out of direct sunlight as it can degrade them (Funko!Pop  vinyl figures and other vinyl figures) or fade them (most other figures, posters, prints, the spines or covers of books, fabric).  You can display them with artificial light, however, be aware of how close you can safely have these things to lights.

Collectables also take up space.  Do you buy display cases? Do you build shelves into the walls?  How much art can you fit on your walls, and will it be a race to see which fills it up faster, art or book shelves?

Other inhabitants of the house, spouses, room-mates, children, pets.  Do you have small children?  Well, those fragile Gundam models  are gonna be living up on some top shelves or in boxes in the closet for awhile aren’t they?  Do you and your housemates have competing fandom loyalties?  You may need to declare some spaces fandom free, or manage the proportions of fandom articles in any given space.

Now the Martian has a strong Steampunky streak in his esthetic.  The GHWR and I, not so much.  I, the Martian and the Best Girlfriend in the World all love Cephalopods and Cthulhu, the GHWR, not so much.  However, the GHWR does not care and lets us liberally sprinkle cephalopods throughout the house, except for the kitchen, which is his domain.

There’s also been an awful lot of “Who has the best what?”  Sometimes the runner up is sent to Goodwill, sometimes sent to the basement to live out it’s days as a spare what’s-it.  Between the four of us, we have a LOT of furniture, and we inherited a pool table and poker table when we bought this place.  We’ve got a plan to replace a lot of stuff gradually over the next few years until we have an integrated esthetic of vaguely Deco and Nouveau looking furniture pieces with a few ultra modern touches.

And cephalopods.

Now the GHWR and my space has a different sort of esthetic:  early American comfy with a sprinkling of cats are fuzzy destructive jerks.

Basically, though, when decorating the Geek Household you have to look at what’s out there, what your co-inhabitants will put up with, what your space limitations will allow you, and how best to safely display those collector’s pieces we’ve all got. All the signed editions go in a bookcase in the living room, while run of the mill books go in the game room and den in the basement, for example.