I woke up not too long ago in someone else’s house. At first I felt completely panicked, imagining myself shlepping home from a date gone wrong where the guilty party has woken up next to Archie Bunker rather than the hunky Beckham type she went to bed with, but whew. No. I was actually in my own bed and no walk of shame would be necessary to get me back to where I belonged. It’s not that waking up in someone else’s bed is all that weird for me since we air bnb it pretty frequently (What? Did you think I was going to admit to some juicy indiscretions?), but this time the problem was that I was actually in my own house… it just didn’t feel like my own and that kind of worried me.
I looked around and was momentarily proud of what I saw. Everything seemed to be pretty on trend. No orchids were to be found, but there were stark white walls, a shock of black, and a designer table from Normann Copenhagen. Then a sinking feeling hit me at the bottom of my stomach. There were no personal photos to be found to verify that I actually lived here with my husband and kids. When did I stop putting photos of my kids on my walls, I wondered? I always liked having pictures of my family on the walls. And, I thought, absently, I always liked orchids.
As I stumbled from room to room, my musings continued. Why was my living accented with bubble gum pink? I didn’t remember liking that shade of pink. And why was every wall white? I always liked having colors on my walls…
I had created a home that was perfectly magazine ready, complete with all the latest trends, the right shade of the most recent Pantone color, but it didn’t represent me. Maybe it was a novice mistake, the result of someone not knowing how to design a space that reflected herself, or maybe I had been lost for a very long time and it was time to come home.
Either way, I was determined to create a home that felt like myself and my family. It would require a little bit of introspection, digging out a whole bunch of souvenirs I had cast down to the shadowy depths of the basement when they didn’t suit the latest trends, and not taking the whole house thing so freaking seriously.
It didn’t occur to me at the time that if I found my own way home that I might be able to help others find their way home as well…
I just felt compelled to go home, wherever that might be and however that might look.
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