#51 - If you give a girl a drill...

I spent the last month purposefully working to improve my apartment.

I set out to acquire the titular drill and immediately mounted a giant mirror, and moved my favorite piece of art from my living room (where it was sitting above my TV) to my bedroom (where it now sits next to my desk. Also I think I’m going to get a corner desk to really make the most of the space? We’ll see!) it’s a painting of cards and tea by Leah Gardner and I love it so much, then I mounted another frame with a record in it. The frame turned out to be a much pinker pink than I thought it would be, but it turns out frames for records are super cheap compared to other 12x12 frames, so, do with that what you will.

(I put my BTS record in it. I’m not like…a merch person in general but this felt the most ~me type of representation (also lol at me last month writing an essay about how much they mean to me and then within 5 days they announce they’re focusing on more solo work—but actually I’m like really excited to see what they’ll do solo and apparently they're still going to film their variety show and I don’t think I’ve ever talked about Run BTS at length but that is exciting. I just want to watch them run around malls and make food and argue about how many times they can call it a practice round!).

And then I found this little Balenciaga scarf that I’ve had for years (it came in a Sephora 500 points gift thingy and is truly one of the cutest things I own, make more replicas of silk scarves for gifting purposes, brands! Looking at you Hermes!!) and that hooked on a nail and now my favorite little spot in the house is in full view of both my bed and my desk and the light coming from the mirror is lovely and I’m just so pleased.

I’m going to get paint and do the bookshelves, I’m going to get a metal table for my bedside table in either a bright orange or acidy green (update since I purchased one while writing this, I got it in pink), I’m basing my entire house aesthetic off of this cup I bought from Urban Outfitters because I have decided that I am past due for embracing my more creative and colorful aesthetics. I don’t want to rush or just buy things for the sake of buying things (nor can I afford to!) but I think I’m still learning that I don’t have to compromise any part of my life and I get to invest the time in myself and I get to create a space that is my favorite space in the world. And one that’s all my own!

I moved a lot growing up. If it wasn’t to a new country, city, or town, it was to a new house. My family never settled when I was really young, and when we finally planted ourselves firmly in Vermont I had made being a nomad a big part of my personality and refused to update the file. (I have never not once hesitated when it comes to providing a fun fact during the world’s worst icebreaker question.)

I don’t collect tchotchkes, I have absolutely no problem clearing out trinkets, my rule when moving into ever-shrinking apartments throughout my 20s was that if I hadn’t used it or missed it in the year it had been stowed, it wasn’t coming with me to the next place. I don’t keep closet clutter around. I am sentimental in many ways but so rarely does that translate to physical objects.

In the years we didn’t move houses, I moved my room around all the time. Like every other week sometimes, I truly couldn’t get enough rearranging. I would beg to paint but I don’t come from a family of DIYers, and professional painters were only called during major renovations, so for the refresh, all I really had was piles of magazine rip-outs and the strength to drag my desk across the carpet once again. Some of the shapes I ended up arranging were bad, weird, and definitely went against the energy flows of the room, but it was fun and I was in control and it always felt like my room matched whatever chaos my personality was latching onto at the time.

I was also deeply obsessed with PB Teen catalogs. At the time they were filled with crinkly puff duvets and so many trundle beds. I wanted to live in a world where I too had a low low center coffee table and a full couch set in my room where my friends would gather to make posters that the prop stylists were constantly making for pretend class president elections. (Actually, you know what, I love that they had voting propaganda wedged in, good job PB Teen.) I fully lifted how I drew arrows from the whiteboards they showcased (there was a loop in the tail, it was v cute) and eventually did wear my mom down enough to purchase what I can only describe as the world’s tackiest bedding: sky blue cheetah print sheets and matching duvet cover. It wasn’t even that comfortable! (It would eventually be replaced by several Ralph Lauren bed-in-a-bag sets from Marshall’s, the world’s best outlet store for random housewares!)

But wow did I love their room sets and I wanted to live inside of that catalog and have all of the weird accessories because my friends and I would have totally used a double dare dartboard, right? (Actually, I take that back, we did use the dartboard in the basement all the time, as evidenced by all the holes in the wall that were left there. I wonder if I’m still good at darts. Someone take me on a bar date, stat!) But it was in a magazine, and the entire time I was very aware that no one would actually purchase the entire photo just to recreate it, you buy pieces and you match them with what you already have, and you gather and build and cobble together a representation of your style through the amalgamation. And also canopies look cool but are ultimately a huge pain in the ass, something I only discovered when sleeping in a friends childhood bedroom in my 20s and almost ripped a chunk in her ceiling by rolling over in my sleep.

Nowadays its easy to get inspiration. And like, direct inspiration. I noticed it first with clothing—one of the reasons that this next generation is so on-trend is because it’s so easy to be. There’s no picking through magazines or pouring over the Vogue runway issue to see what was coming up, now you just find an influencer who has a similar style (or body type) to yours and click links to replicate their wardrobe. The same is true for interiors too now, link lists to standing desks, catch-all trays, the footrest, sheets, the bedframes even. And while there’s nothing more that I love than getting tours and insights into people’s homes (once again here to remind everyone that modern YouTube was built on the backs of rich 16-year-old girls who used to wander around their bedrooms and show off every last inch of it, and then they would show us what they carried around in their purses—and just so that I don’t separate myself too much from online influences, I will admit that like a solid four years I always had a deck of cards with me solely because Elle Fowler did in her video and I thought that was a fun and quirky thing to latch onto) it’s a little uncanny valley to have a bookshelf being shown off that contains books solely bought for the purpose of being displayed in a rainbow. Like, not to be a snob about books (because truly, snore, so boring, dogear your books, read e-readers, who gives a shit) but I feel like it started with people color-coding their already owned books to make it more ~aesthetic, and now there are pre-loaded bundles on Etsy of the pre-curated rainbows of books and like…where’s the story? If I point to a bookshelf and none of the books are anyone’s favorite…what are we sharing here? What are we saying about ourselves beyond our purchasing power?

And ~back in the day~ we didn’t have the influencer marketing racket we now have, and also most people consuming those videos had no desire (or avenue) to start making their own videos. And then camera quality kept increasing, and then videos got easier to produce and the internet got a little more casual because the way to connect is to share online, and then TikTok happened and I just feel like there’s been a mad rush of interior design that is actually just now made to look like a set. It’s not a home—it’s a background drop curated within an inch of its life so that the material objects can inform and compound whatever the person is saying. The rise of “that girl” as a not-so-nebulous concept is fascinating. That Girl has open shelves filled with dustless memorabilia that’s cute and aesthetic and was purchased specifically for display.

Last month when my friend was moving, we wound up watching a ton of small/studio apartment tours hoping to source some ideas and map out how her apartment would be best laid out. She runs her business and ships out of the apartment, so she has a lot of inventory and needs practical storage solutions. And when we watched all of these beautifully produced and lit videos we kept asking “but where’s all your stuff?” like its great that the loft bed was the ultimate storage solution, but nary an ottoman contained anything inside it’s hidden storage beyond more blankets. (There were some truly excellent little gems that we stumbled upon though, I want to build a breakfast bar for my kitchen so badly after watching this one.)

It turns out, I love a house full of shit and for that shit to have stories attached to it. I found the grandiose house tours I liked best were often in London for whatever reason, just fabulous semi-posh Brits walking around cluttered corners past shelves stacked haphazardly with cookbooks and old towels. One woman wallpapered her foyer red, and I now aspire to that kind of drama for my own spaces. Yes please detail the flea markets, the drama of finding the perfect end-of-bed bench!

It’s been a good focus, a nice reprieve as the world outside continues to ramp up with tension. I don’t want to fall into despair, I want my home to be a place where I can rest and recharge and get ready to continue the fight that is daily life right now.

And it’s been so wild to live in a place that’s all my own. It really has allowed for my tastes to emerge, I never would have thought of myself as a pastel maximalist but uh, yeah, turns out I want a lot of color in my space. And I want those colors to be soft. A mix of cozy corners and modern-ish furniture, bright colors and bold patterns, with quirky charming little bits and art in every nook and cranny I can jam it into. I want to buy a jigsaw and make my middle room a woodshop. (The urge is stronger now than ever before, because I forget that I used to spend my summers as a baby carpenter sent away to the woods for 8 weeks where I thoroughly indulged in stagecraft and my camp took theatre weirdly seriously so we built three full sets six weeks in a row and then a massive set for the 3-act and another one for the musical. No one does casual summer stock like Brown Ledge, when we did The Lion King we had a full fucking running waterfall in one of the corners opposite an elephant graveyard that featured chicken wire/paper mache elephant ribs that were over six feet. Pride rock came out over the proscenium and like 10 people could safely stand on it. Anyway, that’s why I want to now design my own furniture apparently. Also because all cat towers are hideous and I want to build a custom one with a cute carpet cover that’s tall so Weem can climb.)

I love an ongoing project, and I’m excited that I got my space to a place that I’m thrilled with and want to continue building. The possibilities feel somewhat endless, the constraint is truly my budget (and lack of sunlight in the middle two rooms). (I can’t tell you how much time I’ve spent looking at lamps—shoutout to Troye Sivan’s AD tour, one of the best and particularly because that boy loves a good light!) You know how golf is an unwinnable game so you just keep working and getting better infinitely? I think home design is my golf. It’s exciting that I live in a city where stooping exists, my favorite desk is one that I literally stumbled upon while going to get coffee (one of the drawers didn’t fit but the Superintendent who had put it out told me the wood was just swollen from being in a hot basement and it took like a month but the drawer fully fits) and I love that thing so much, my typewriter—one of my favorite gifts of all time—now sits on it and I bought new ribbon for that thing the other day and I have ~plans.

It’s an escape, it’s something that immediately reflects the effort that went into it, and it’s my way of unwinding from the stress of the world these days. (Besides when it makes me extra grumpy about budgets and money and being smart about debt, ugh, lame, wish I was less money literate and owned an Eames chair already.) It’s been a way for me to get to know myself, my actual taste, and not the one that developed while I was compromising. (Why did I buy boring grey towels for the bathroom in an attempt for neutrality? Unclear!) There’s no give and take, it’s all mine, and I’m being selfish and making it in my image. It’s my life, I’m the one that lives here! My journey to untangle myself from projected expectations of others continues and I grow stronger and more self-confident every time I push the couch around. It’s a trip!

Anyway, shoutout to my drill for returning agency I had unknowingly given away and thank you to the one person on the internet who loved the PB Teen catalog as much as I did and uploaded the only picture I can find of those rotary-inspired phones—they are so ugly and I still deeply want one!