The large living room was supposed to be a luxury. More space, more light, more room for the furniture and the life that happens around it, that was the idea when we chose the house, when the estate agent walked…
My bedroom had been white for six years. Not white in a considered, deliberate way, white in the way of rooms that have never been decided about, rooms where the landlord’s paint is still on the walls because repainting felt…
For most of us, the garden starts with good intentions. We look out at the patch of outdoor space attached to our home, and we feel, briefly, inspired. Then the weekend passes, the tools stay in the shed, the grass…
The kitchen windowsill had become a graveyard. Three terracotta pots of basil, mint, and something that had once been parsley sat shrivelled and defeated on the ledge, proof of my fourth consecutive failed attempt at growing herbs indoors. The basil…
For years, the living room was the room I could never quite get right. The freestanding bookcase was too narrow to hold everything and too bulky to look intentional. The TV was mounted on the wall but floated there without…
Every morning started the same way: products crowding the counter, a towel half-off the rail, toilet paper balanced on the windowsill because there was no rack to speak of. My bathroom was small, genuinely, stubbornly small, and for years, I…
My living room was the first thing guests saw and the last thing I wanted them to notice. A loveseat that was technically the right size but somehow filled every sight line. A floor lamp that had to live behind…
The bathroom had been tolerated for years in the way that functional spaces get tolerated, not broken, not uncomfortable, not worth the disruption of renovation, but quietly unpleasant in a way that is noticed every single morning and evening. The…
The terrace was approximately two and a half meters wide and felt like it. A narrow strip of outdoor space between the back wall and the garden boundary, it had accumulated the particular kind of neglect that happens to outdoor…
The backyard had been on the list for three years. Not the growing list, not the composting list, not any of the active, productive lists, the other list, the one titled something like “eventually” or “when things settle down.” It…
