On redecorating: How I’m thinking about my home as we head towards winter

If you walk into my old house, climb the staircase to the upper storey, and follow the creaky wooden floors to the end of the hallway, you’ll come to my office. It’s a tiny room in the northwest corner of the house with two windows, and if you’re here at the right time you’ll catch the sunset streaking pinks and purples across the sky. Both windows peer over different parts of our yard, and in the winter you get a bird’s-eye-view of all the tracks from the little animals that call our yard home.

The office is where I’m sitting right now, as I write this on a chilly Sunday evening. It’s only 5:30, but the sun is set and it’s almost fully black outside. From where I sit at my desk, I can only just make out the shapes of the naked walnut trees outside as they stand against a deeply indigo sky. Mike is tinkering away in his own office at the front of the house, and I’ve turned on all the lamps so every room emits a soft orange glow. 

I’ve spent a lot of time in this office lately, not only because I went back to work last week after a month of holiday, but also because both Mike and I seem to have both instinctually turned homeward in the past month. There have been obvious outside reasons for this—the biggest being that Mike has taken a new job that’s allowed him to move home after spending a year working in Toronto—but it goes deeper than that. We’ve both been in a mood of redesigning, rearranging, reexamining our living spaces and how they work for us.

I’ve always loved home decor (probably something I can blame on my Pinterest addiction), and I’ve always put a lot of importance on loving where I live. The old house that we live in now has been good for us—she’s just the right size, and though the years have been hard on her in many ways, she still retains her beautifully honeyed wooden floors and deep window sills and inherent coziness. But I’m a firm believer that it takes years to really settle into a house and make it your own. We’ve been here for three years now, and I finally feel us stretching our lives into every space of this house, little eddies of it gathering in the corners.

Which brings me, then, to my office.

Last week, I rearranged the furniture in here for the first time since we moved in, creating a new relationship in the space and new corners to work with. I’ve been on a mission to re-embrace my creativity this year—this blog being a big part of it—and for me, that means having a small, safe, comfortable space to work out of. This office wasn’t quite giving me what I needed in terms of quiet nooks to hide in and write, so I set out to fix it: I moved the desk to another wall, moved some furniture out to create more space, and ordered a new rug and bean bag chair (a childhood dream!) to build a small reading nook.

The work in here isn’t done, and I have a few key items still to be delivered, but it’s been good to shake off the cobwebs (sometimes literally) and think critically about the space we inhabit. It’s been healing to go through things and decide what I don’t need anymore, and acknowledge what factors really make a home—not just physically, but also spiritually. With the cold coming in, what’s needed to make this space warm?

I haven’t quite been able to put my thoughts about “home” and all it entails to words yet (if this rambling post hasn’t already clearly demonstrated that failing). But I’m thinking a lot about the corners of my home, and the safety we find there, and how we live in relation to space. I’m thinking about building a home that feels like walking into a hug, and turning on the lamps to chase away the dark. I’m thinking about nurturing the small flame of creativity even in the darkest night, and the gift of cozying up under a blanket while it snows outside. And this new office is making me happy, and that’s a good start.

Until next time.