7 Rings
Hello! Thank you so much for tuning in today. I love this holiday time of year. It's my favorite, I love cold weather (I know I’m in the minority on that one), I love the hot beverages and scarves, being with family, but it's also a time of dichotomy because on the one hand we are told to slow down, be grateful, and celebrate with loved ones. On the other hand, we are encouraged to run around town to 20 different Christmas parties, and buy lots and lots of gifts for people. It's really easy for this time of year to feel chaotic and out of control, and what's worse is it's really easy for it to feel like it's about stuff. The season of good will and gratitude is in contention with the season of glittery wrapped gifts. I love stuff, obviously I'm an interior designer my whole job revolves around objects. I love seeing gift guides and favorite things, it can really make me feel like if I just get the perfect gift for everyone, then my life will finally fall into place. But I've taken a step back from buying lots of gifts for lots of people in the past few years and it's been really liberating. So today's episode is an anti-gift guide, specifically for the home and home goods. I'm here to take the pressure off of you, I'm going highlight three major categories of gifts for the home that you can skip getting someone all together and I'm going to tell you exactly why. But don't worry because this is a two-parter, and next week we will go into everything that makes great gifts for the home, and exactly what to look for.
First, let's take a look at the color of the week. Many places around the country were seeing their first snow falls over the past few days, including New York where I am. Snow can completely change the visible landscape of the outdoor area around us, whether it's a light dusting that makes everything shimmer or a solid coating that makes it hard to see your outdoor furniture. Few other things in nature demonstrate the power of color more than a good snowfall. When there’s snow on the ground, the world doesn’t get quite as dark at night with all that light bouncing and reflecting around, and thank goodness because daylight hours are slim during these winter months. To bring this concept inside, nothing replicates the color of snow quite like Sherwin-Williams paint color SW7006 Extra White. This frosty, cool toned paint will bring a refreshing blast of Nordic modernism into your space. If you want to make a room I feel just a little bit bigger than it actually is, bringing this electrifying white can do just the trick. Just make sure to ground it with other shades of darker neutrals.
One of the most helpful practices I have found not only as an interior designer, but also as a person living in the world, is having an active gratitude practice. I've talked about this on the show before, and I know it can sound a little hokey and it can be really challenging to think about things that we are grateful for during difficult circumstances. I don't know about you, but my mind is hardwired to search for problems, issues, and challenges. This is totally natural because as a human, I am naturally trying to survive by preventing complications in my life. I don't fault myself for that at all, but I do find that actively practicing gratitude helps combat the fatigue this can cause. So what I do is, at the end of the day, and this can be every day or once a week or whenever I'm feeling uneasy, I’ll write down a few things for which I am grateful. Having a minimum of three items is good, but I often keep going, and for me the simpler the better. I have a journal that prompts me to do a list of 10 grateful items every month and that's a good one. I especially like to do this around issues in my life where I’m feeling a level of dissatisfaction.
So for me, it's really easy to pick apart my home because I'm an interior designer and I know that there are incredible, lavish, amazing homes in the world. Sometimes my home feels a little pale in comparison to the deluxe projects I see and work on. So even though my brain is telling me that my kitchen cabinets need to be replaced, my bathroom needs to be retiled, I have so many unfinished projects, all these things; what I'll do is I'll list everything I love about my apartment. So for me right now that is I have a good color scheme going on, I have multiple pieces of furniture like a dining room table and an armoire that bring me so much joy, I have a decent collection of house plants that bring a lot of vibrancy into the space, and everything in my home works. Plumbing, heating, and cooling all of the comforts that are so easy to take for granted, work so well in my home, and I’ve lived in places where there were issues with all of these. So even though things like that might feel basic or easy to dismiss as “givens” or “minimums” I just go ahead and add them to my gratitude list. What this does for me overtime is it helps rewire my thinking. Even though my brain still naturally looks for problems, since I know I'm going to have to make a gratitude list at some point, my brain also naturally starts to look for things that are working, things that bring me joy. Even if it’s little moments like catching a glimpse of a full moon on my walk home or seeing someone with a pair of shoes I love on the subway. I find this really helps improve my quality of life, and it takes my focus away from things and stuff that I think I need to be happy. All this to say, this anti-gift guide is meant to give you a break. This holiday season isn’t always about more and more stuff. You are enough.
One of the hardest elements of gift giving is the surprise factor. We want to give excellent gifts to our loved ones and spoil them rotten, but we also want them to be completely and utterly shocked. This tradition, particularly in the instance of buying gifts for the home, must die. If you have had a highly specific, clear, precise conversation with your gift recipient; and you feel completely sure that the gift you’re going to get them for their home is planned for, fits with the home’s style, and is meeting a need for this person - then buy all means, get the gift. But if these things haven’t happened, let’s play the tapes through on exactly what the outcome maybe for a few circumstances. And I just want to acknowledge, understanding other people’s personal taste is tough. It can be hard enough to identify our own personal taste when it comes to interiors in the first place. Believe it or not it’s a big part of the field of interior design - understanding the likes and dislikes of our various clients is not a simple process.
The most common gift for the home is in the knick-knacks and decor category. This includes vases, throw pillows, decorative bowls, entry mats, even giant geodes for the coffee table. Part of the reason we gift these items is because we are bombarded with them in the retail-sphere. Everywhere from Target to Flea Markets loads up on small, delicate, precious items that are typically within a reasonable price range, easy to carry home with you, and have some clever wow factor that catches the eye when browsing. But if you’ve listen to this podcast before, you may have heard me talking a little bit about the idea of using a concept. Every well-designed space has a unifying concept, tying everything together. Whether it's a time period, a color scheme, a philosophy, or a story that ties into your life - a concept helps drive our decisions for our spaces, from big picture things like floor plans and layouts, to the tiniest detail like the types of silverware we choose. No matter how cool the clean/dirty dishwasher magnet at Target is, if it doesn't fit into your loved ones overall concept it has the potential to not get used, or worse, end up in a donation pile somewhere. And if you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen my post about how many things we donate to various charity thrift organizations, go to the landfill. So if you visualize yourself buying that cute little thing that you absolutely can't leave the store without, and dropping it directly in your trashcan, it can be a little easier to walk away.
Another habitual present for the home is a gifter giving a giftee something that they think they need. So let me be more specific with that. If I have a friend, and I think their apartment could use a little help, I might buy them a few pairs of curtains and curtain rods so they could hang them up on all their windows and start to make the place look a little bit more finished. This may even include getting rid of someone's beloved-but-worn piece of furniture and replacing it with something else without telling them. Surprise! The problem with this is the same problem, just from a gift giving etiquette standpoint, with giving someone a self-help book or a weight-loss cookbook or anything about self improvement. These are backhanded gifts and just as backhanded compliments don't feel good these types of gifts don't feel good to receive. It's important to check your motives anytime you are giving a gift like this. Gift season is about celebrating of the people in our lives, not about unhealthy fixations with trying to fix those around us. It's important to remember that if someone's home does not meet our standards, that is the other person’s right to have a space that may very well be meeting their own standards that we don't understand. Live and let live.
Last but not least, we have the almighty gift card. I have been guilty of using this far too many times not just for things for the home but just as a general gift. And I think if it's someone you don't know very well, or if there's a Secret Santa at work and you’re getting something last minute, then sure, as a back up gift - who doesn't like affectively getting cash. But, if you know someone who is interested in elevating their home and you want help, getting them a gift card to a specific store is not necessarily the best way to do that. One of the main reasons is that you may not know exactly what store they want to go to and by getting them a gift card you are limiting them to that store for a specific item. If you get someone a Target gift card, with no real intent behind it other than they can just go to Target and have fun buying whatever, that's one thing. But if you get them a gift card to West Elm, it can be a little tricky because a gift card actually may paint the giftee into a corner. They may not have intended to buy something at that particular store, and then they have to do the dance of trying to find something they like that’s right on the nose of the amount for the gift card. It goes back to my original point, if you’ve had a clear conversation with the person about what they want, this can work, but if you’re just taking a shot in the dark, you’re better off giving your nearest and dearest something from my list of great gifts for the home, which we will get into next week. Until then, happy holidays, take amazing care of yourself, and I’ll talk to you next time.