The stories we tell ourselves
Checking Things Off the List & the Importance of Change
A couple of weeks ago I found out that a bunch of my college pals might come for a visit in the spring and once I got past the excitement of all of us getting together, I began to worry about them seeing me for the animal that I really am.
Truly, there is nothing like the threat of company — whether it’s a party or sleepover — that makes you see things around your house through other people's eyes and get your shit together.
If anything, my children are thankful this is happening as it has forced me to address potentially dangerous issues around the house I’d chosen to ignore. For instance, my daughter came home for a long weekend recently and was forced to remain in the dark down in her basement lair as the light switch had begun to — lightly — throw off sparks when operated.
Then, there was a hallway light switch that came off in hand when I flipped it on about a year ago. And a piece of hardwood floor came undone a year -- two years? -- ago with a very sharp edge exposed that threatened to bite someone's unwitting toe.
And even though I moved into my “new” house almost four years ago, I still had unhung pictures stacked in corners and a box of semi-filled notebooks gathering dust in my office. I often find myself frozen by indecision and unable to move forward with things (and not just wondering what to do with perfectly good notebooks). I get so caught up on everything needing to be perfect and just right, that I don't just fucking do it (again, apply to many other areas of my life).
The worst neglect might have been the collection of very cool mirrors my older daughter had gotten me for Christmas 2018, at my behest, still laying on the floor of my living room. As this holiday season approached, it was to her credit that she only said one or two snarky things when discussing with me this year’s wish list.
So when the Gang of 8 college pals seemed to be heading here in May, I finally called my electrician who was here for an hour and solved four long-standing issues.
Then I had my favorite handyman send his crew to repair a hole in my teenager’s bedroom wall that made me want to punch him in the face every time I dropped laundry off in his room, and nail down a floor saddle that had been floating untethered for four years.
Then it was time to address the mirrors and for that I called in my favorite amateur decorator, a girlfriend who’s happy to discuss Proust or paint colors with equal enthusiasm.
She came over after work on Valentine’s Day and later, I’d tell one of my kids it was the best VDay ever.
She walked into my house ostensibly to help position the mirrors in the living room, but we immediately began to address decorating issues in the family room. If I had to describe my decorating style, I’d call it “Early Hoarder,” because I love lots of STUFF. It’s all extremely personal — family photos, memorabilia, travel souvenirs — but it’s also A LOT in a little space (probably in a bigger house, too). In my opinion, more is always more.
And my pal's design credo leans more to the "less is more" thinking and she always seems to be cleaning out her closet or her kids' drawers and sometimes I want to whisper to her dog she better keep moving or she's going to get caught up in the decluttering net.
"Let's just see what it looks like if we move this out of the way," she said, pulling a map of the Jersey Shore off the wall that was wedged between an air conditioning unit and the television.
We purged the hell out of the room — eliminating the IKEA crocheted ottoman and random end tables. Then we started taking more art off the walls and bringing stuff in off walls in other rooms. Then we did the same with lighting and pulled all the dark throw pillows off the Ektorp couch.
All afternoon, we cleared tabletops and floors and created a giveaway/relocate pile that grew by the back door. Later, when my older daughter walked in from a train home from NYC for the weekend, she took one look at the situation and through up her hands and said, “I am not involved in this.”
Too bad for her, I am very convincing. And before she knew what was happening, I had her on a shopping odyssey the next day. We bought some cool, light-colored throw pillows from Target for the IKEA couches and plates that were on clearance at Anthropologie for a hutch in the living room that has served as a holding spot for junk I didn’t know what to do with since we moved here four years ago. Now, my vision is a cool Parisian bistro bar to match the vibe of my record collection and groovy couch nearby.
We also bought some baskets at Target to contain all my newspapers and magazines and our (my?) extensive collection of keys and sunglasses by the back door. Another good Target find was a metal shoe tray I put under all the plants I’m slowly murdering in my office.
Then last weekend, I checked even more things off my I Am Not An Animal checklist. For instance: I finally got rid of the ENORMOUS dog crate that’s taken up a quarter of my kitchen for three years. And I made the teenager stand on tiptoes on the stepladder to replace lights in the ceiling that blew out months ago. Reader, I even got rid of the outside Christmas decorations and rehung the bulletin board in my kitchen the fell off the wall like two months ago.
And you know what? Even if another soul does not come to visit me, I am extremely happy not to be living like an animal. In fact, seeing all the improvements — the nailed down flooring and rearranged chatchkes — brings me great pleasure.
I finally got around to tracing the outlines of the mirrors on newspaper to figure out where to hang them along my stairway. I cut out the different sized circles and used blue painter’s tape to experiment just where I think they should go.
I had my girlfriend come back last night to sign off on my placement, and we adjusted a couple of them and went back down the stairs after each adjustment to assess the overall results. At last, we thought we had it right and then she had one more idea, another way the mirrors could be hung.
“I like that, too,” I told her. “The good news is that now I know I can hang them this way and then maybe in a year or two, decide I want to do it a different way.”
It’s been a good lesson in seeing things in new ways. In remembering that there are lots of different ways to do things and what’s right now might feel a little off a few years from now.
And that, I think, for me has been the gift of getting older. Realizing that it’s all about perspective and how it’s always changing. And that change is good.
Happy Friday everyone!
xoAmy
This Friday's Faves
As you might have surmised, while my tastes lean towards a kind of Serena & Lily sensibility, I'm working with more of a Target budget. But maybe that's the fun of it? Channeling a $145 throw pillow you see in a catalog into the $25 one you find on the shelf of your local Target. Here's stuff I found:
This great galvanized shoe tray to corral the plants in my office.
Here is a sampling of throw pillows. I say just go and find the ones that speak to you.
I think almost all of the table lamps in my house are from Target. I have a cool one that has that mercury glass vibe sitting on a sideboard in my kitchen and when I had my knitters over this week to pretend to knit, one of the gals asked if I got it at Pottery Barn. Just saying.
Anthropologie was doing 40 percent off sale items a few weeks ago and I picked up a couple of these elegant plates
I mentioned that Valentine's Day was super lovely, moving everything around my house. It got even better when I made this very delicious chicken and shallot dinner in a cast iron skillet, which was followed by THE BEST AND EASIEST DESSERT EVER. Seriously, if you are having any kind of gathering and want to distract your guests from missing floor planks or sparks coming from your wall switches, make this tart and serve warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Their eyes will be rolled back in their heads and unable to see the extent of your slovenliness.
Oh, in case you were wondering, I finally finished this INCREDIBLY LONG AND UPSETTING novel. That was another huge thing I crossed off my to-do list last weekend. I don't know if I could recommend it, but I do know that those characters will stay with me for a long time. I feel like we've been through a lot together.
Finally, do you have a pal who you think would enjoy talk of throw pillows and banana tarts? Is so, I would like to suggest that you share this newsletter and encourage them to right in their inbox.
xoAmy