The pandemic shoved me into a nesting state of mind. Our current home is the 14th place I have lived at, in the last decade. I wanted to live in as many places as possible and keep moving. This is slow travel. However, the season of travel and needing to meet as many ways of living is fading. I want a true winter where I stay put and hibernate. (At least for a while.) Maybe it’s Wendell Berry’s words that made me think deeper about living well in a place, instead of hopping from place to place and glazing surfaces as a global citizen. A home with friends and neighbors whose lives we are a part of, over a long period of time, is what I want need. Going in and out of lives of people, was well and good when we were all young. Our friends need us to be reliable part of their families and we need them to be in ours. It was hard to watch death touch our families and not to be around to help out/ask for help. The pandemic taught us this lesson. A tree that grows tall too fast results in shallow weak roots that can’t weather the storms. It is time to slow down and grow my roots. Any place and every place with him, has been a home. I couldn’t image more joy than us two. Then came the pets : Hombre, Cinco and Mina. They doubled the laughter and the wilderness in our home. Life has been good to us. We have to move soon and I am dreaming of a home to stay put in.
home . /hōm/ . a feeling
Where I live with or without him.
A place of beauty and utility.
A place for our animals/humans to spill in and out.
A place for green renaissance and less greed.
A sense of belonging, communion and security.
A place for fasting and feasts. A place for rest. A place for life to develop.
where we invest in the land, the water, the air, the people, the neighborhood, the city, the state and the country.
Land that provides and loves us back in some capacity. But those who love a land the most, make it their home.
What should my home look like ?
Decor is the fun part. The rest is stress and expense, now that buying a home in America resembles the Hunger Games. The ‘how to upgrade your home to make it a retreat away from the pandemic’ articles really worked on me. A home. I thought about it a lot and wished for a place to invest in. I envied my friends who made their homes cozier and retreated to their backyards once the lockdowns began. I quickly got over fashion and turned on my radar towards all things house related. Every blue dress made me think “this money could buy me a baby manzanita tree” or “this could fund a part of the rug” or “let me buy some Microsoft stock and use the dividends to reimburse for that desk”. After decades of sleeping on the floor, I am now getting ready to buy a bed frame and some duvet covers. As Mr.Diderot (effect) would have it, other nice things my house could use are on my mind. What started as a piggy bank of dollars for a bed became a small pot of money put aside for home goods. A desk, a coffee table, a lamp, a rug, olive tree, … a grown-up wishlist came to life.
The initial draft of this blog post ended here. This was supposed to be a placeholder for a wish list that gets edited till I am ready to make my home.
How should my home look ?
My first attempt at answering this question came from stitching up images from Pinterest and wishlists from furniture stores.
A better question to ask : How should my home be designed for living ?
Is this a question that can be answered in material purchases ?
It’s like going to an art auction to become an artist. It’s like going shopping to the mall to find one’s personal style. Figuring out form, proportion and color that works on me helped me find my uniform. The equivalent : Learn some fundamentals on home design principles and find ways to add beauty where ever I live. It did shock me as to how little attention I paid to how good design correlates to what I liked.
Designing a home for living : part 1, part 2, part 3. ( Changed the way I see spaces. )
Small Spaces : basics, blank space, choosing furniture, on cozy, ideas, more ideas, more ideas, decor,
Lighting : basics, candles, 101 for the American sensibility, color palette, mistakes.
Floors : wood tones, choosing a couch, rug.
Walls : paint 101, white paint, hang art,
Misc: window treatments, wabi sabi, …
There is lots of new information in here for me. At the least, it woke me up and forced me to pay attention. Walking around NYC/Boston/Portland/Maine-country-side/rural-Vermont/Cape-Cod/Conneticut-suburbs and observing spaces, has been an education. Most of the magazines and interior decor media is full of mansions, high celings and big budgets. In my case, I know that I will always live in a small home and need the design-wisdom tailored to small spaces. Maybe in a year, I would have learnt some.
How should my home look ?
is this the question I should be asking about writing down that ‘a home is where I live with him and my animals’ ?
Maybe the question should be :
What should a home feel like ?
cozy. “We can see each other from where ever we are in our home”, my father once said about what he likes the most about our childhood home. Feeling each other’s presence, is a requirement. Should have a room to retreat into when we need our space to work.
It should force us to observe sunset and sunrise. Shadows and light must do their dance, through the windows and doors.
Should not look staged. Will embrace the necessary chaos.
Will embrace age. A great-grand-mother’s beauty, is the kind I want.
Should aide with sleep hygiene.
Should be brimming with life and decay. Candles, twigs and flowers.
have stacks of books. have beloved plants. very little furniture. Enough textiles. Good light.
Corners with details. Some mismatched artifacts from the material remnants of our memories.
A patch of green , some soil to tend, walkable neighborhood, public transit.
authentic : the way we live matches our values.
Not reek of material luxury.
beautiful, comfortable, have umami, …
Writing my desires, made me think of Nikaela Marie and her writing at Rose & Crown. There is this feeling I get when ever we go camping. like we are washing away the over civilization and rediscovering an ancient call with-in …finding a certain animalistic joy in the wild … how little I need for so much happiness…. that feeling you get when you hear an old fav song and recognize it …. the high you get after you do yoga and think “I feel better than any spa treatment right now”. The feeling you get when you realize that the joy was inside you all along and its there for you to find when you stop being so distracted … Her photos and words and her life reminds me of a certain purity in happiness, unadulterated by consumerism and some false idea of perfectionism. Where old things are used, people are loved and little pleasures are celebrated. Her home is my biggest source of inspiration. I constantly find myself distracted by shiny homes, products and wishlists. Her work, grounds me and forces me to remember what’s important.
Leonard Cohen knew the right question to ask : “what happens to the heart”
“lets stop with our wish list here. enough. Lets not get carried away with what to buy for the house and which house to buy.”
“I wont buy shoes though the year. But I will own lots of candles and light them generously. We will have beautiful light every night.”
“I will drink my morning coffee outside, everyday”.
“I will finally get a set of plates that match. “
“Lets print out some of our fav photographs and put them on our walls. I want one of my great grand mother”
“If our home is old and run down without shiny things, let’s not feel ashamed and apologetic about it. Let it creek. Let’s invite people we like and have feasts.”
“I want a lounge chair from which our guests will complain about having to get up, when leaving our home. let this lounge chair have an imprint of my body coz I spend too much time with my books in there.”
“Pet hair on our guests, so that they remember us for days after they visited our home. “
“Let there be bread, oils, dipping sauces and full bellies. Let there be lots of biryani. Let there be smoothies. Let there be tea in large mugs. Let there be whiskey in the winters, beer in summers and long conversations. “
“Nothing is stopping us from having any of this now. We have the good life, now. Let’s not forget. “
“Has to have an honor code for sustainable living”.
Sustainable home
is the square footage not built. Is forests/meadows/grasslands/swamps/groves not cleared for suburban sprawl.
is the home reached by public transit
is a home without the large gas guzzler parked in front.
is one that replaced its lawn for a native garden.
is a neighborhood that doesn’t have regressive zoning laws, builds upward and has green public spaces.
Is one without NIMBYS who make housing unaffordable to everyone else.
is the renovation and redecoration put off.
is a home that replaced its gas furnace with a heat pump.
is a home with solar panels / in contract with a utility company powered by renewables.
is a home with induction stove.
is full of old things used and reused.
is full of humans who live a low carbon lifestyle.
is full of humans who earn a living by not pedaling products that cause harm.
has humans who work to make the place better for all of us.
is a love letter to the land it sits on.
Oh, that’s my estethic too! and I shall have a view on a garden or a forest. My ideal place really is sadly the non-existent old cottage of my grandparents. they were farmers and lived of their land, their house was small and made of wood and clay. It had washed white and blue walls and doors always open. It had hens and cats coming inside it now and then, and constant stream of visitors from the village. It had just enough of space for three adults and two kids plus occasionaly me. I cant remember any brand new object there. Everything was old or used. It was fine. Most of daily occupation was done outside, we would peel off the potatoes and beens there laughing. The house had an attic, a place of secrets and little cats. Recently I stayed in 200 houndred years old house and it smelled just like the one from my childhood…
How I wish I could move into my great-grand-mothers cottage with her yard that could provide for a homestead. Her walls were washed with lime. There was a gorgeous well and gigantic trees under which we would have conversations. Her cottage has fallen but could be restored. Sadly, I am too chicken to leave this life and move back to our home village. Maybe someday, I will have to leave all this and will find myself there.
We just sold our home primarily because it was older and used too much energy. The questions you ask here are the questions I’ve been grappling with as we consider our next home. Trying to find the perfect balance of efficiency and character has proven to be more difficult than I had anticipated. As is the question of how much square footage is just right without feeling cramped. The answer, seems to be that small is good if you have a place to retreat outside. More land but with the comfort of neighbors nearby. Sidewalks, parks, like minded people close by. Is this an impossible dream? I’m starting to worry that I’m asking too much.
It is starting to feel like an impossible dream to me. I find the suburbs boring and ugly and full of McMansions. Downtowns haven’t been safe and walkable where ever I have lived so far. The magical place I have in mind could be old collage towns ?
Oh, I adore Rose and Crown, all the lovely light and vulnerable images.
A beautiful, insightful, thoughtful (and thought-provoking) post as always. And a gentle reminder to revisit Rose & Crown! I haven’t thought of Nikaela in many years, but she is still as inspirational and humble as ever. Well done.