Home Stories

Bite-sized tales from life in a lived-in home

Last weekend I was home with my family celebrating my dad’s 70th. We were sitting in the family room, swapping stories from decades ago, and I was struck by how this space set the stage for all of it. I just remembered this is the whole point moments, a trend I hope we don’t beat the life out of because it helps reclaim something real.

I was recently featured on Rachel Schwartzmann’s Substack, Slow Stories (you can read my post here!). Rachel is a writer and the author of Slowing, a beautiful book that invites us to sink into the many delights of slow living. In Rachel’s Chapters series, she asks people to choose from a list of prompts (Love Story, Our Story, Scary Story, Spring Story, Travel Story, etc.) and tell the stories of their lives in whatever way they’d like. Rachel’s storytelling format inspired me to write a few more stories of my own, with the lens narrowed toward home life. I love this creative approach for exploring how design and life mingle in our most personal spaces.

Today, I’m sharing a few of my personal home stories: bite-sized tales that illustrate how life is actually lived in a home. I found that writing these totally flipped the script in the way I viewed my childhood home. When we look back, we tend to use broad brushes to make neat and tidy judgements about a specific time and era; in doing so, we miss out on all the nuances that make up the fabric of our story. This storytelling format doesn’t tell you to do anything specific to your home. It just invites you to remember. It’s about life unfolding.