April 27, 2023

House In Transition

Not Just 2020

It’s likely a considerable understatement that the last couple of years have been doozies. I don’t know about you, but for me it started years before the panini thing. 2018 and 2019 were chaotic whirlwinds of business and panic and fear. We will save those stories for another day, but those years were intense. In 2020 I put blinders on to just maintain some semblance of life and livelihood. So it wasn’t until February of 2021 that it all came to a crumbly, crashy halt. I lost a job for which, only four months earlier, I had moved to a new town, in a new state. I bought a house there in said medium-sized, rural California town. There I was, all by myself, in the central valley with a house payment and no “good” job to pay it with. 

Here began the life transition. What were my options? What did I want to do? What could I do? Who did I want to be? How different was that from the person I was? Could I be that person here? Or should I go somewhere else to be that person? Does our place define us? Or do we become certain people based on what is available where we are?   Just your basic, run-of-the-mill existential questions. And at that time in 2021, I literally had nothing else to do but answer them. I had a million tiny decisions to make and they swirled around me like bees. 

A natural systems thinker and someone who tries to get to the root problem. I thought, “What was the one decision I could make that would make all the others fall into place?” Unfortunately that put me right back in the cycle. The perfect world where the questions were perfectly weighted and therefore answered in order didn’t exist. And so I spiraled deeper and deeper. I’ll spare you the bottom of that spiral. (Yet another story for another day.) 

Our Homes

But all through these last two years at the crux of things was my house. This beautiful thing that housed me, and held me during this eerily quiet time. The thing that would have been my dream at this time in my life, but with the income gone that was meant to support its renaissance it had also been a twingey reminder of what timeline was cut short. The train that was intended for this house and this life in this town jumped the track and stalled out. Truthfully it’s been creeping along ever since. 

We often focus on our homes in times of hardship or transition. It’s a widely known fact that Home Depot had record sales while we were all in our homes in 2020 and 2021. This is also a place where I have met many of my interior design clients. In the last two years I have worked with a couple who decided to double down on their home as they transition to an empty nest. Two separate clients retired, looked at their home and considered how it would usher them into the next phase of their life. And earlier this week I met a young woman moving into her first home that she had anticipated doing with her partner of 10 years and instead was left to enter this milestone solo.

These life transitions and the home remodels that sometimes accompany them are special times. I am honored to work with people as they consider what their tastes are, while they wrestle with financial commitments, and the process through which they ultimately give themselves the incredible gift of home. Not just a house to live in pieced together from pinterest and Home Goods’ sales. A home, with objects they love, colors that feed them and well-considered function that reduces stress and adds peace. While I’ve been working specifically in interior design for homeowners in the last few years, I have long supported people through some of the most intense transitions of their lives. For particular reasons, I feel called to this work and in many ways having mindfully navigated through the last several years of my own life  I feel more prepared to do it than ever. It’s not just about our building you a home in my style or that I think will wow the neighbors. It’s about helping you build a home that lets your heart rest, your family gather and your life unfold. 

*Featured photo was a client’s home in the afternoon approaching sunset. We did the drapery in this and several other rooms.

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