As we close the calendar on 2024, we come to my year-end ritual, the one where we look back at the past 50 columns, at the trials, tribulations, tips and takeaways, and pull one bit of advice from each month that strikes at least me as noteworthy. Here are some highlights from the first six months.
In JANUARY, the month we’re supposed to take a wide-eyed inventory of our lives, I asked you to ask yourselves a few core-shaking questions: Am I living where I should be? Should I stay or should I go? Have my home and I outgrown each other? Is this the year to make a change? See, I had personally confronted all these topics in my book, “Rightsize Today to Create Your Best Life Tomorrow,” which came out that month, so I wanted to make you uncomfortable, too. Grappling with questions of how and where you live and why isn’t easy but grapple we must.
Lesson: A new year smacks us with the fact that, whether we keep pace or not, time moves on. To make the most of our lives now and of the months and years to come, we must face what is standing between us and our ideal life (stuff, fear of change, complacency) and move through it.
In FEBRUARY, My friend called me for an emergency decorating intervention. Her single, 29-year-old son needed an apartment makeover stat. His place was a disgusting den of neglect. Now he was interested in someone. He couldn’t invite a date over if he wanted to impress her, so he called his mother. She was on the next plane. “We were made for this moment,” I told her. Over FaceTime, we assessed the problems: a horrendous color scheme of dark gray, black and khaki, an old mattress he’d had since college, and a dirty sofa he got for free from Facebook Marketplace. We got to work. By the time we were done, the place was date bait — just in time for Valentine’s Day.
Lesson: Gentlemen, if you want to attract a lady, heed the following domestic don’ts, which all ranked high (or low) on women’s ick list: Dirty towels, beds on the floor without a frame, holes in comforters, blankets or sheets as curtains, and club lighting (i.e., lava lamps, neon signs, black lights). If you need help, call your mother. We know stuff.
In MARCH, I logged my 20th year of writing this weekly column. That makes 1,040 columns, but who’s counting? I recounted how the editor who first assigned me this column said he wanted the antidote to the insufferable, pretentious content found in so many home magazines. “In other words,” I paraphrased, “you want a reality column.” “Exactly,” he said, “Be the girl next door who has the same problems as everyone else but is two steps ahead because you’ve made mistakes and know who to call.” And off I went.
Lesson: If I have learned one lesson from 20 years of writing this column — from the calamities (the custom sofas delivered with underside of the fabric facing out), the many moves (10 in 20 years), and the life changes (empty nest, divorce, remarriage, downsizing, upsizing and rightsizing) — it is this: To live beautifully, you do not need a big budget. You just need the desire and drive. A beautiful life doesn’t happen by accident. It’s designed on purpose.
In APRIL, I found the animal within. Christopher Grubb, a wonderful interior designer and friend, gave me the creative confidence I needed to reupholster two stodgy, tapestry-covered armchairs in a bold zebra print and to paint the arms and legs glossy lacquer black. It was a wild move, but every time I look at these chairs, I think, “Heck, yeah!” And “Thank you, Christopher.”
Lesson: Take a risk. If you think bold design moves are for other people, grab your creative courage and go for it.
In MAY, I toured The Mustard Seed, a Central Florida furniture bank that helps those who’ve lost their homes to disaster or other tragedy furnish new dwellings. There I met a woman who had been living in her car with her three children, but not anymore. As she walked the furniture-filled aisles, I asked what look she was going for. “I want a house full of color,” she said. Thanks to a lot of thoughtful donors who had let go of what they no longer needed, she was about to get just that.
Lesson: Cleaning and clearing out our homes can make a meaningful difference to those who have nothing to decorate their homes with. You can help by donating unwanted household items to a furniture bank near you: https://furniturebanks.org/furniture-bank-directory/.
In JUNE, I visited my new grandbaby in Colorado. My role was to cook, clean, wash and fold miniature clothes, and shore up this new little family — which includes my daughter, her husband, and their two dogs — while doubling down on my efforts to not offer unwanted advice. As I have been gently reminded: “Things have changed in 30 years.” So they have.
Lesson: We’ve come a long way baby. Today’s parents have smart-sleeper bassinettes, which rock babies back to sleep when they start to stir; rocking chairs and gliders that have built-in USB ports; and app-controlled noise machines that make white noise mimicking the sounds of the womb, or a laundromat. New parents also have baby-butt spatulas for applying diaper cream. (Now there’s an advancement.) How did we ever manage?
Join me next week for a recap of highlights from the second half of 2024.
CAPTION: Creative courage — Repurposing old furniture by recovering and repainting it so it better fits your style is so much more satisfying than taking it to the curb, as these armchairs pictured before and after illustrate. Photos courtesy Marni Jameson.