'Please don't erase them': Domain's Alice Stolz finds beauty in the ordinary

For some, there’s nothing more insulting than being ordinary. But for others, the beauty and simplicity of the ordinary is all part of the appeal.

I don’t quite know when ordinary homes started to stand out to me. Maybe they were mostly what I saw when looking for more affordable properties. Or was it a throwback to my own childhood? The replication of what I was immersed in as a child, roaming up and down my suburban street with my sisters and a gaggle of children from the neighbourhood.

Whatever the case, I now find myself being led up a virtual garden path, poring over Instagram pages that focus on simple houses such this one and this one, as well as here and here.

1 Herbert Street, Beaumaris, VIC

SOLD - $1,552,000

1 Herbert Street, Beaumaris VIC 3193

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I’m mad for the way the curators of these pages are capturing the passage of time. How these aficionados look past the worn brick and see a wonderful L-shaped house, or the eccentric use of stone on an entrance. Elegant glass windows that are cleaned daily and sit amongst unassuming pale yellow brick. Houses that Goldilocks would surely deem not too big, not too small, but just right.

I love the fact they’re homing in on houses that were once seen everywhere and suddenly, are now seen less and less.

Their photographs stop you and point out the ingenuity of a curved façade at a time when all angles were straight. The playful use of gelato colours that looks like it’s straight out of Italy. The images make me stop and want to smell those old-fashion gardens of 50 years ago… not the heavily landscaped ones we see today, nor the agony of properties with no garden at all.

For all the “wow” homes I get to see, it’s actually these ones that move me.

It’s the nostalgia that I love – the jump back in time that now seems devilishly daring compared to some of the homogenised designs around today.

But increasingly, people are rubbing away these houses. Snuffed out in the dead of night.

They might never have been the most dazzling – their ordinariness is what makes them beautiful. Please don’t erase them and please don’t build something newer, bigger, better and blander. This is us.

There is beauty everywhere, sometimes it helps to see it through someone else’s eyes.