Slow Housekeeping: Our Love Affair with Home

What to do when the waves keep rising and daily life feels like a shipwreck?  Last night, as I watched the news, I felt like I was drowning in a sea of fear.  Mail-bombs had been addressed to  two former presidents and those who had served as vice president, secretary of state, head of the Justice Department, and director of the CIA.  Today there were competing theories of who sent them and why. When things get this bad, I feel helpless.  Paralyzed.  I don't want to venture out.  I want to pull the covers over my head and hunker down at home. We all need a safe haven to grapple with our fear and anxiety, to get used to the fact that we're living in uncertain times.  While there's much to be said for activism, signing petitions and supporting causes, sometimes we need our small domestic comforts. A self-styled retreat to restore our sanity.  While our first impulse may be to  take to the streets and join the clamor of the cro...

--> What does slow housekeeping mean in a culture that feeds on instant gratification?    How does home provide a safe haven--in  a world that moves too fast and demands too much?  On social media, we record our public triumphs—the tantalizing meal, the perfect vacation, the pack of smiling friends—trying so hard to be special that we  cease to value ordinary life.   If you're bored with your persona, or with endless competition, spend a few hours cleaning up the living room.  My tip of the day: Household chores are the quickest antidote to personality overdrive and digital fatigue.     The psychiatrist C. G. Jung believed caring for the home was deeply therapeutic, a kind of slow medicine that gave people a rest from their ambition, connecting them to age-old patterns of restoration and renewal.   In the 1930s, he built a good portion of his country house by hand,  using tools designed in the Middle A...

--> We devour books like  The Magical Art of Tidying Up   because they teach us how to groom our homes and keep them free from clutter. Yet we want much more than a spanking clean closet and a living room that's easy on the eyes.  We hunger for a rich and sensuous rapport—an ongoing love affair with home that makes us want to hunker down and never leave it.  My goal is to help you discover the Eros of the house. The sweet comfort of your belongings. The joy of creating a warm and welcoming space.  The whimsy of dancing with a broom or mop.          Over the years, I've lived in a variety of homes, from a Manhattan apartment to a white-washed bungalow on a Greek island, from a colonial farmhouse in the Hudson Valley to a magical cottage in the California redwoods.  I’ve learned how to put a home together quickly, unpacking the kitchen and putting pictures on the walls within two days.  Not to s...