Queer Design 104: Putting It All Together

Spaces & Places is a three-week series focusing on the private and community areas we occupy, the ways we personalize them, and the meanings that we assign to them. Organized and edited by Meg Jones Wall.

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Spaces are more than just physical places that we occupy. They give us room to dream, to evolve, to connect, to rest, to entertain, to work, to play, to be our full and complete selves. Our spaces don’t have to define us, but they can help us understand ourselves more clearly — and in putting our personal stamp on a place that we call our own, no matter how big or small that place is, we can see ourselves reflected back. We can establish reminders of the things that matter to us, can allow our hobbies and loves and desires to take up space in a tangible, meaningful way. And as we wrap up our Spaces & Places folio, I hope you’ve found inspiration, joy, and a sense of empowerment for figuring out your personal style, understanding what your space needs, and sourcing pieces you love.

Yet sometimes this process feels easier said than done. Sometimes we might have all the right pieces, have maximized the space, love the individual elements, but still feel like something isn’t quite coming together. What’s a queer to do?

It can take time for a space to settle, to come together completely, to feel like it’s ours. Especially if you’re someone that moves a lot, that has been dealing with a lot of upheaval, or that has undergone a recent transition like moving in with someone, moving to a new place, living alone for the first time, swapping rooms, going through a breakup with a roommate or group of roommates, or something else that has left you feel off-balance. Sometimes even when it feels like everything should work, something still feels off. And if that’s the case, there are a few things that you can try to get your reality to align with your vision.

Pay close attention to whatever is catching your eye, feels off balance, or is rubbing you the wrong way. Is there a blank space on the wall that you find distracting, or alternately, is a piece of wall art not quite working the way that you’d hoped? Is your couch comfortable, but not quite as cozy as you were anticipating? Is that table you ordered a little too big, the rug a little too small, a bookcase a little too short? Even when we measure and research, sometimes a piece that we thought was perfect turns out to not fit, or not feel right. And that’s okay! Returns or exchanges can be a hassle, and reselling isn’t always an easy process — but it’s worth the effort if a piece really isn’t working for you. You deserve to have what you need, and to like what you have.

If changing a piece that isn’t working isn’t an option, consider ways that you can rearrange a room or switch out pieces from other spaces in order to make everything work. Even if something seems a little odd, don’t be afraid to give it a try. What if that dining table actually would work better as your desk? What if that chair you bought for a reading nook actually makes more sense in your bedroom? What if that gorgeous piece of art that you were sure would pull your bathroom together actually seems more at home in the living room? Don’t be afraid to experiment, to try something unconventional, to test out a theory.

Atmosphere can also play a big role in making a space feel more complete. Adding candles, incense, or speakers for music may have a bigger impact than you realize on how you feel in a space, and can help you utilize one space for multiple functions. My apartment is cozy, and I’ve managed to get the layout to a place where it’s very functional for me — but with only a few small windows in my living room, all of which face an interior courtyard, it often feels dark, cool, and closed off. I can’t do much to add natural light, but I’ve got mirrors tucked into a number of corners and walls, which helps the room feel both bigger and brighter, and I have about a dozen white pillar candles that I light in the evenings to lean all the way into my desired witchy aesthetic. (Sometimes I even run my weirdly powerful cool-mist humidifier, which really turns the Scorpio up to 11.) I have several speakers around my house that I utilize throughout the day, with different playlists for different moods. I pair this music with scents in candles and incense, sometimes even combining room fragrances with specific teas. In the winter I like to play YouTube videos of crackling fires on my television, while in the summer I’ll play ocean or lake sounds — and if I’m working, I love to add coffee shop or library background noise. It might seem cheesy, but it really does make my space feel brighter and more inviting.

Also: plants. I know, I know, you killed the cuttings that your friend gave you that one time and now you’re convinced that everything you touch will wither and die within weeks. But keeping plants in your home not only cleans and purifies the air, but it also can really make a space feel more welcoming. I committed to houseplants during the pandemic and while a few have definitely not survived, my snake plant is growing so well that I had to buy a larger pot! If you’re skeptical, we have a beginner’s guide to plants, answers to your biggest plant questions from Cee the plant doctor, and a roundup of the easiest houseplants to keep alive. And if you’d rather just buy flowers from the market and call it a day, check out these arrangement tips.

If you’re struggling to figure out what might help you feel more at home in your space, try letting your imagination run wild in a different way. Make a vision board of your ideal home or space, gathering images that reflect the kind of place you want to spend your time in — Pinterest is a perfect tool for this, but you can also look at magazines, home decor websites, or find images of your favorite tv or film spaces. Let the sky be the limit, and just save anything that resonates with you, that speaks to the heart of what you want your space to feel like. Once you’ve got a variety of images, look at all of them together, and find the common themes, the elements that keep appearing. Note the colors you gravitate towards, the textures and shapes that you like, the overall aesthetic. How can you bring those elements into your space?

Still need inspiration? Pull some tarot cards. Watch some queer HGTV episodes. Explore old Design*Sponge pieces. Check out our community galleries, including kitchens, bedrooms, and libraries. Browse the archives, especially tags like This Queer House and This Is How We Do It. Build a blanket fort, or a sexy fire, or a very queer craft. Autostraddle has so many incredible resources on home, decor, and organization, and it might be that a DIY project or flea market find can help you take your space to the next level.

What is something that you’ve been wanting to do in your space? How have you made small (or major) adjustments that have transformed the ways that you live in your home? Where have you found new inspiration in shopping guides, community galleries, or personal essays? What is next on your home to-do list? I want to hear all about your spaces in the comments, and thank you so much for being part of Spaces & Places!

Spaces & Places Community Gallery

As part of our three-week Spaces & Places series, we asked you if we could see your favorite spaces — and wow, did you deliver! With brilliant design choices, innovative solutions, and kickass elements, there are some truly incredible rooms and areas here. Check out your stylish and creative spaces:

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Emily / she/her / 30 / Brooklyn

This is the kitchen in our apartment (“our” being mine and my fiancee’s). Early in the pandemic I had a heart murmur while cooking, and upon returning from the hospital was too freaked out to use the kitchen. My fiancee suggested making it the cutest place in the house, thereby divorcing it from the scary experience. It worked! She painted the cabinets, added the peel-and-stick wallpaper, and I pulled it all together by cooking in there every day. It’s a little testament to our love, and sticking by each other during a hard year. 

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Bina / she/her / 26 / Sydney, Australia

My room is minuscule, but I’m in love with this window desk. The moment I saw photos of it I knew I had to rent the room. I end up doing most of my work from bed, and look out at the greenery when I need a break – I feel like I’m in a treehouse from here. ❤️

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Kerri / she/her / 37 / New York

Everything was shut down and I was furloughed during the spring and summer of 2020, and one of the things I missed most was going to the climbing gym. So a couple of friends helped me design, build, paint, and install this wall in my living room. Every few months I change out the holds and keep it fresh for myself and anyone else who comes over!

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Nicole / they/them and Sadie / she/her

We found this 106 year old fireplace behind a fake closet made of wood paneling in our bedroom. Sadie very carefully restored the plaster on the walls and ceiling and preserved the patina above the fireplace.

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Nova / she/her / 16 / Butte, Alaska 

I still live with my parents and our living environment can be a little hectic (and suffocating) at times so my room, although small, is kinda my safe space. I’m a cinema/book obsessed maniac and besides that I often live in my own head. My room feels a bit like a dreamland sometimes away from everything. I hung tutus from the ceiling that I used to wear when I was little and I have doodles and little trinkets all over the place. I’m glad I can have this little place of solace to help me make it till I graduate high school. 

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Mary / she/her / 24 / Pittsburgh, PA

I’m a yogi and I like to move around on the floor as much as I can, so this is my floor couch! The couch itself is composed of a futon I bought online and an assortment of large pillows. The low table on the left was handmade by a local furniture refinisher from reclaimed wood, and the rainbow blanket was crocheted by a friend. I love this couch because it’s completely “something I would do” – I have other seating for guests just in case, but they are often surprised by how comfortable it is! It also doubles as a comfy spot to meditate, a massage mat, and a guest bed (and no one has to worry about falling off the couch in the middle of the night). 

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Laneia / she/her / 40 / Phoenix, AZ

I haven’t been able to put this much care and personality into my bedroom since… high school? I wanted this room to feel like I was sitting inside my own universe, comprised entirely of me: my grandmother’s antiques, my hula hoop, my art, my love notes, my books. The window is south-facing, so plants do really well in here, and usually you’ll find Winona (cat, but also not just a cat, you know) tucked into that soft blanket piled onto the foot of my bed. 

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Eli / she/her / 22 / Savannah, GA

This was the 2020 quarantine advent calendar I made for my love, displaying only the queerest holiday cheer. I have an affinity for Christmas in general, advent calendars in particular and all things queer and embroidered, so this was a joy to make, hang and admire all throughout December.

(And yes, Eli, a nook absolutely counts as a space! 🖤)

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Arielle / she/they / 31 / Portland, Oregon 

I moved into my own apartment during quarantine, and the first space I made beautiful was my Zoom therapy office. I put a ladder that my mom found for me at an antique store when I moved out here: I think it’s from 1911! I use it to hold rocks from my travels, statues, my lanterns, and the one plant I haven’t killed. I’ve collected art and made some of it: the woman is from Oaxaca, where my parents used to live and I made two of the collages. A friend drew the hawk as a graduation present, most of the rest was thrifted. I love that there’s visual interest, without making clients focus on any one thing, and I can rearrange the art if I want to. 

My 2.5 year old kid’s bedroom nook. Her space was the second space I set up and I’m really pleased with it. The garlands are from Trader Joe’s and the green naked lady painting I bought from an artist in China. Her dad is Mexican and Indigenous, and I wanted her to have some representation of that with the tin hand, the blanket, and the painting of the Grand Canyon. The zebra and Rosa Parks prints are from an artist on Etsy, and Milan is a local PDX artist. The tiny bees, bike print and llama are from art fairs in Atlanta. One day I’d like her to have her own space when she’s staying with me, but for now, she has her own corner carved out. 

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Sarah / she/her / 34 / Portland

I’m still working on it, but I’m well on my way to making my bedroom the sexy sanctuary of my dreams! I honestly love everything in here, but some of my favorite things are the iridescent glass orb I had a queer electrician install above my bed, by giant Voluspa Moso Bamboo candle, and the dried uunnaamm bouquet I ordered for myself on Valentine’s day. It’s hard to see in this photo but I also installed removable wallpaper which adds a whole other ambiance.

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Joanna / she/her / 44 / Columbus, OH

A garden queer’s queer garden.

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Jess / she/her / 27; Emily / she/her / 32; and Hazelnut the cat / ageless / San Diego, CA

The bedroom is our oasis from daily stressors. To keep the space feeling open and inviting, we use light-colored linen textiles, warm wood tones, and accents of ceramic and brass. The bedroom set is an amalgamation of thrifted IKEA pieces and someone else’s homemade bed frame that Jess modified with a saw, sandpaper, stain, and new hardware. Hazelnut seems to appreciate our efforts and spends most of her time sleeping on our bed or inside the dresser drawers.

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Stephanie / she/her / 32 

When my wife’s job was permanently made work-from-home, we made our office nook off the kitchen hers so that she could enjoy the company of our four dogs during the work day. That meant I lost my reading nook. We ended up converting our guest bedroom to my lady lair, and it’s my favorite spot. I have a giant library corner for books and knick-knacks, a desk I made, some framed memorabilia from my favorite musical artist Brendan James, and all of my triathlon/cycling stuff. It’s definitely my happy space!

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Allison / she/her / 32; and Jules / she/her / 34 / Toronto, Ontario, Canada 

Jules moved in with me at the beginning of the pandemic as just a “two week trial run” (we were so naive!) but we made it official in December. Since then, we have spent a good chunk of this pandemic doing various DIY and home improvement projects. The latest is our kitchen, which we just spent 2 weeks painting! Before, the cabinets were all a boring mid-tone wood, and now they are a gorgeous blue-green called Beau Green from Benjamin Moore! We also spray painted all the handles and pulls gold, and you’ll see a few other gold touches if you look closely. This took two full weeks to accomplish, just the two of us. There were so many steps in the process, and a few days of simply waiting for paint to dry while everything in our kitchen was strewn about the rest of the apartment. But in the end we are SO happy with the result! By the way, all the shelving is IKEA, including the two Billy bookcases in the corner that serve as our pantry. The white cart, black barstools, and the gorgeous glass hanging lights were both found on Facebook Marketplace. 

There are a lot of pieces in this kitchen that we love. The poster of the Segwun, a steamship that I used to watch pass by my grandparents cottage on Lake Muskoka a few times a day, which used to hang in the dining room there, was salvaged when my family sold it in 2017 after my grandpa died. The paddle was a gift from my parents last year. The painting is by Samuel Gagnon, an artist I found on Instagram who does these amazing live landscape paintings. It was supposed to go in our living room but it matched the colour of the cabinets so well that we had to put it there. And of course I can’t forget the KitchenAid stand mixer, which used to be silver until Jules painted it that gorgeous rose gold! It goes well with the lavender Always Pan, which I bought Jules for her birthday earlier this year. Pink is her favourite colour, and she’s the cook, and the baker, so that’s why all our kitchen gadgets are pink! 

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Taylorlyn / she/they / 26

I spend almost all of my waking hours in my living room/reading nook (my desk is out of frame). I love the bright colors; all of the cozy blankets (which also serve as a cat scratching deterrents…); and the art: especially the bear and rabbit wood block print created by my college roommate and the subtle™ lesbian flag. My girlfriend was the one who pushed for the basically floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and she was absolutely right that 1) it makes the space look so much bigger, and 2) it is a perfect display for most of our book collection/the fun objects that don’t fit elsewhere. Yes, almost all of the furniture is from IKEA, but they make really sturdy stuff if you build it properly and add cozy accents.

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Stef / she/her / 37 / Brooklyn, NY

I moved into my very own adult apartment in April of this year, following a very long pandemic displacement. I was lucky to find a place to land, but I had been living as a roommate in other people’s homes for years and I was ready to make something officially Mine. I’d spent a lot of time on Pinterest beforehand so I knew I wanted to do some kind of velvet couch/jewel tone situation with a rose gold coffee table and a disco ball; the rose gold disco ball was an auspicious discovery. Luckily, I also inherited a few great pieces of antique furniture that had been my beloved grandma’s (you can’t really see it, but on the back of that table on the right there’s an antique radio that belonged to my great great grandfather!). Beyond that, I framed some memorabilia from concerts I’ve worked at and scoured Etsy for weird artists specializing in creepy art. My favorite pieces are the three gold-framed prints from thelittlechickadee and the gorgeous framed scorpion and butterfly from DevineRituals. I did not hang any of these very carefully and refuse to fix it. This room is my sanctuary, and it’s where the cat and I spend most of our time.

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Dana / she/her / 34

I really like the confluence of colors in this space. The way that the green plants (one rescued from my metamour, who loves plants as much as me but is much better at killing them) and the poppy painting (purchased at a yard sale from the teenager who painted it) interact with the blue wall. The little bit of bright green striped rug you can see in the rosy watermelon hallway. The way my teal gray-green couch magically goes with all of it even though I bought the couch for cheap from a neighbor and therefore didn’t pick the color at all. I’m always thinking “oh, I’m a full-grown adult now, maybe I’ll paint my wall some sort of calming and fashionable off-white” and then I’m always like NOPE give me ALL the colors. 

Other things I love: The top of the bookshelf and space above it is a little altar of sorts with lots of treasures and cards gifted to me by my friends, and I love having my friends be part of my space, especially since I live alone. I love the piano as a display — it’s the family piano that my dad used to play, and it overflowed with cards this past winter after my dad died. Now a friend and I have taken up watercolor painting again (now that we are vaccinated and can go in each other’s houses and hang out) and the piano is holding my own art and reminding me that I can Make Beautiful Things. I love that sheepskin on the couch so much, as does my skeptical but snuggly dog. I bought it from a local farmer who is also one of my graphic design clients and it was expensive as heck but makes me feel so luxurious and pampered and cozy every time I sit on the couch. 

Anyway, I could probably tell you a million more stories about all these things in this picture, and that about sums up my aesthetic: A happy jumble of beautiful and brightly colored objects that were thrifted or gifted or randomly acquired and that (mostly) all have a story. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to appreciate my sweet space a little more by seeing it with fresh eyes!

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Erin / they/them, ey/em / 23 / Michigan

I move about every six months, sometimes more, so my space is always very impermanent. This also makes it difficult for it to truly feel mine, both since I’m going to be there for such a short amount of time and because I’m usually not in full control – it’s from my employer, or it’s a friend’s spare bedroom, or the landlord is sketch, etc. Things I love about my bedroom now are: my rug, my sewing machine, all the art on my walls, the furniture layout, my houseplants, the comfort, and how it’s styled to fit my needs. Many of my art pieces remind me of my friends, and the rest just are pretty and/or meaningful and make it feel like home. Some of these I’ve had with me since I initially moved out of my mom’s house, and have put up in nearly every home I’ve had. My rug ties the room together in a way that I love, connecting all the different parts of the room, and making it much more comfortable and luxurious. My sewing machine was my grandmother’s and I am using it to sew my wedding dress. Additionally, the cover she made is really cute and has a bee and hexagons on it, and I work with plants and insects for a living and have studied bees! When I first moved in I made sure to rearrange everything to suit me, rather than trying to get myself to like the (bad) arrangement everything had been in.

I love my lifestyle of moving so often, but something that makes it a lot better is all the strategies I have to make my space feel like home, even if I have very little real control over it.

My Gender is Maximalism

Spaces & Places is a three-week series focusing on the private and community areas we occupy, the ways we personalize them, and the meanings that we assign to them. Organized and edited by Meg Jones Wall.

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I’d purchased a three-bedroom, one-and-a-half bathroom, first floor unit in an unassuming brick building with the money I’d received in my divorce. I was decorating this new condo when I started questioning my gender. You know: switch up your wall color, switch up your pronouns. 

Even as my ex-husband and I shared a similar taste in decor — quirky, tacky, unexpected — there were limits to what he’d indulge me. My decorating decisions still had to be approved by another person, which meant some things I’d really wanted were vetoed. Nothing too queer (he was straight, after all), nothing too reminiscent of Florida (he hated my home state), and nothing that was a priority to me but not equally important to him (so: hanging new wallpaper in the home’s entryway never happened, but wiring the entire house for surround sound did).

Letting go of the house I thought I’d spend the rest of my life in was a grieving process. I mourned not only the life I walked away from but also the home I lovingly poured myself into. It was filled with flea market finds and Craigslist deals and Facebook Marketplace purchases. A Tiffany chandelier I’d found for $350 from a couple gutting their newly purchased Victorian; a beautiful dining room table with chairs with high wicker backs and rust-colored velvet upholstery we’d purchased from an elderly woman in the richest part of town who was downsizing from her mansion. I said goodbye to the chartreuse-colored dining room and the geometric, mod-futuristic-tiled floor in the bathroom we’d just finished redoing months before I moved out. 

I’d worked so hard to make that house mine and now it never would be again.

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There are no rules to maximalist design. I tried to find some, but the only rule I ever came across was that there were none. It can generally be thought of as “too much:” pattern and color and texture mixing in whatever way suits your fancy. Is there a point when maximalism reaches the point of being “too much?” Too much too-muchness? I never found an answer for that, either. It seems that the limit does not exist.

To me, maximalism also feels inherently queer in that it is entirely extra. Maximalism is supposedly trendy now, a response to the minimalism and bland sameness of all the homes on Instagram and HGTV, the decorating equivalent of a mayo and white bread sandwich. I suppose coming out as non-binary is trendy now, too. Merriam-Webster did name the singular “they” as the Word of the Year in 2019, after all. But I’ve never cared much about being on-trend; being trendy just means that mainstream, dominant society has finally deemed something desirable, and all too often those trends are borrowed (read: stolen) from the marginalized groups the mainstream had demeaned and ostracized for such aesthetics in the past.

When I think of minimalism, I am reminded of the images that documented the AIDS epidemic: the empty bath houses, the dwindling crowds in the clubs, the starkness of the hospital rooms, the sterility of it all. I think of Tony Just’s 1994 photography project in which he cleaned and photographed public restrooms and tea rooms that were closed in New York City during the AIDS epidemic, which José Esteban Muñoz described as “the ghosts of public sex” in his book Cruising Utopia. Just’s project is a commentary on the memory of what was, but also the potentiality of what could be.

“What could be” is what comes next, what comes after the emptiness and starkness of the minimalist aesthetic. The absence allows the space for the potentiality of once again being “too much,” for the exuberance of taking up as much space as possible.

After the epidemic, after the marriage, after a lifetime spent performing a womanhood that never existed. 

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Maximalism, while currently trendy, is not new. It has existed for centuries, evident in the Baroque and Rococo aesthetics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, or the Hollywood Regency styles of the 1930s, or the Pattern & Decoration movement of the ‘70s: opulent, ornate, excessive, busy as fuck. In historical times, it symbolized the luxury of wealth and status. That maximalist aesthetic is evident, too, inside the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts, my adopted hometown. The museum is known for the infamous, still-unsolved art heist that occurred there, but I think that’s the least interesting thing about the place.

Gardner was a socialite who purchased land in the Fens in 1899, which was essentially a swamp at the time. In the mushy, marshy landscape, she envisioned something glorious and grand. Unassuming on the outside, full of treasures on the inside. The star is the courtyard at its center, visible from every room, a garden Gardner once described as “riotous, unholy, deliriously glorious.”

To walk through the Gardner Museum is to have your sense of sight assaulted with so much color and beauty that you are never quite sure where to look. The walls are papered in shiny brocade fabrics, trimmed with intricate carved wood borders. There is art hanging on almost every inch of every wall, and each surface is exquisitely detailed. Doors are covered in carvings, floors are tiled in beautiful patterns, and the pairings of the items seem to make no sense at all, though they did to Gardner. She acquired and arranged every single item in her museum, and then put it in writing that if anyone ever moved anything, the entire place should be shut down and her collection donated to the Museum of Fine Arts down the street.

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Like maximalism, there are no rules when it comes to gender. But our cissexist society would have us believe otherwise. It wasn’t just my interior design instincts that were constrained within the confines of my marriage; my ideas about my gender were, too. 

I knew I was queer before I met my husband, but I had always identified as a cis woman. In a marriage to a straight, cis man, I felt pressured to conform to a certain idea of womanhood. Even as a queer femme with decidedly offbeat wardrobe sensibilities, there were limits to where I felt I could go. 

One day, after sliding on a pair of knee-length, black denim cut off shorts, I walked downstairs, where my husband was cooking. He was an avid cyclist, and I thought my shorts were reminiscent of the ones he wore to bike around town.

“You look like a lesbian.”

I thanked him, pleased.

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

Oh.

Another time, he walked into the bedroom while I was getting ready and watched me put on a floral sundress.

“You look great!”

The “compliment” curdled as it hit me. 

Then I stopped shaving my legs. 

“Being in bed with you feels like laying next to a man.” 

In a marriage to a man who saw me as a woman, I was trapped in a box that was much too small. My forays into gender expansiveness were often quelled: the lesbian shorts sitting in a drawer, reminding me of what I was missing, not unlike the empty frames remain hanging on the walls of the Gardner, remnants of the still-unsolved heist, reminders of stolen beauty. Out of spite, I kept my leg hair, though I continued shaving under my arms. A compromise. A shrinking. My version of minimalism.

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Any woman or feminine person—regardless of gender—will be familiar with the concept of “too muchness,” which has been used to police feminine expression for centuries. Hell, Rachel Vorona Cote recently wrote an entire book on the Victorian constraints that seek to shame women for their excesses, that criticize them for being “too much” (Cote’s book is called Too Much).

As pop icon Carly Rae Jepsen sings in her song “Too Much” (an absolute banger), “I live for the fire, and the rain, and the drama too,” embracing the trope of being a woman that is “too much” for the society — and the men — around her.

Isabella Stewart Gardner was also “too much.” Set aside, only for a moment, that any wealthy white woman who collects treasures from around the world is likely obsessive, self-indulgent, and probably engaging in an unhealthy coping mechanism (Gardner once compared her compulsion for acquiring paintings to a whiskey or morphine addiction, and she began collecting art to escape her grief following the death of her young son). Access to money creates a sense of entitlement, one which allows someone to collect masterpieces from other cultures and keep them in her personal collection.

Focus instead on the fact that she is also a person who leaned into her too-muchness, relished her reputation as an eccentric, and refused to conform to the ideas about what a woman of her time and status should do with herself. Her privilege afforded her space not usually available to those who traditionally are required to shrink themselves.

She was an early champion for gay rights, as Douglass Shand-Tucci argues in his book, The Art of Scandal: The Life and Times of Isabella Stewart Gardner. Shand-Tucci paints a picture of Gardner as a Victorian-era Grace Adler; in place of Will and Jack in Grace’s television world were essayist Logan Pearsall Smith and art historian Charles Loeser, among others.

Gardner “lent sympathetic attention to their struggles with the pressures of heterosexual society,” Diane Wood Middlebrook wrote in the New York Times. Like the men in her company, she also strained against the constraints placed upon her by a patriarchal, cisheteronormative culture.

Gardner filled her life with queer, effeminate men, the same way she filled her home with things she loved — both things made her happy. Gardner surrounded herself with beauty as she saw it: screw what anyone else thought.

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In my new place, the only limits were financial ones. I had no one to answer to and could make whatever decisions I wanted. I wallpapered my bedroom in flamingos with human legs that were wearing high heels (my nod to Florida), I brought back the chartreuse I’d loved so much in my old home by painting the trim in my living room, accenting a deep teal on the walls. I hung the queerest artwork I could find, creating gallery wall after gallery wall of misandrist prints and queer and trans people joyously existing. Artwork painted by my children hung side-by-side with vintage photographs, sculpted ghost women who appeared to be exiting a mirror and entering my hallway, and the work of professional artists.

As I let my household decor expand to the places it naturally wanted to go, seeping and oozing into corners and crevices I didn’t know existed, my ideas about myself started to expand, too. As these queer and trans bodies took up space on my walls, my queer and trans body felt free to take up space in the home itself.

I was drawn to a painting of an androgynous person, breasts bare, one arm behind their head, revealing pit hair, the other hand shoved into their white boxer briefs with the word “handsome” across the waistband, standing in front of a background left streaked with color by chaotic brush strokes. I purchased it to hang in my bathroom, and then purchased several pairs of boxer briefs for myself. 

I hung a print of two transmasculine merpeople at the other end of my bathroom gallery wall, and then I asked my transmasculine partner to begin calling me “good boy” instead of “good girl” in bed. I purchased a shirt with the words “pretty boy” across the chest.

I took selfies—something I had never wanted to do before. I used to look at photos of myself and not recognize the person staring back at me. 

Who is that? I would wonder. That’s not what I look like, I’d think, embarrassed that maybe that was how other people saw me—unsure of myself, awkward, never quite comfortable in my skin.

But as I started to play with not only my gender expression but my own understanding of my identity itself, I couldn’t get enough of photographing myself. Maybe it was the fact that it was Leo season, but maybe it was that something inside me had clicked into place.

I photographed myself in various states of dress and undress, staged boudoir shoots on my bed, learned all my best angles, purchased a ring light and a tripod so I could take photos of myself in even more places and positions, my home’s interior always serving as the backdrop for the pictures.

I sent more thirst traps than I ever had in my life, which is not saying much, because thirst traps were not something I’d ever really felt comfortable sending lovers or friends in the past. But when I photographed myself now, there was something different in my eyes, in my body language, in the way I carried myself.

I am hot and I know it, my photos seemed to say. It radiated from within me. Look at me. I’m fucking fantastic. 

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Throwing off the gendered expectations that were placed on me, the word “woman” began to feel limiting. So, too, did restricting myself to shopping only for “women’s” clothing. I wanted to look like the femme who would step on your neck before calling you “Daddy,” but I also wanted to look like the androgynous sports queer who rocked jerseys and Jordans, while sometimes I wanted to look like the twink I saw on a Netflix reality show, and still other times I wanted to look like Adam Lambert when he is performing on-stage as the frontman of Queen. 

It became clear to me that I was creating a home that was reflective of who I am at my core, and one that was an expression of not just my decorating taste, but of my gender. I began to understand my gender as its own form of maximalism, a response to the minimalist idea of “womanhood” that had been placed on me for far too long. My gender is entirely too much. Too many colors, too many textures, too many patterns, too many truths. It is expansive, limitless, spilling out so that it cannot be contained.

My gender is a contradiction, rich in its insistence that it can be everything it wants to be and nothing that it does not. That it can choose to shrug off the prescriptions and expectations that other people put on it and instead try on the pieces that fit, that feel like they were always meant to be there, discarding them again when they no longer do. Rotating them like the art that adorns my walls, changing them out when I am tired of them and am ready to move on—but never again letting someone else dictate the aesthetic of either my home or my body.

If maximalism is the yes, and of decorating, my non-binary identity is the yes, and of gender. 

Trans maximalism is a politick, one which Kay Gabriel described as “something that has a really expansive imagination, maybe an extensive appetite, that proposes a formal maximalism as a mirror of an actual, political maximalism, which demands the world for everyone.” We want it all, we want it fucking all, Gabriel and Andrea Abi-Karam write in the introduction to their radical trans poetry anthology of the same name.

I, too, want it all—on my walls and on my body. My home and my gender are both explicitly political, they break the rules of what I’ve been told is acceptable—and respectable. I just want to layer everything I love and not have to choose. I want to surround myself with beauty as I see it, screw what anyone else thinks.

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I recently went back to the Gardner Museum for the first time since I was in college. It had been nearly 15 years and, this time, I went with two other trans people, both of whom had witnessed my transformation over the previous year. As we walked from floor to floor, I was struck this time by the many portraits of Gardner scattered throughout the museum, each showing a different side of her. The paintings are her versions of selfies, showcasing her through different lenses and at different points in time. 

In one, she is wrapped in a white sheet like a mummy, her face staring out from the cocoon that otherwise entraps her. In another, she wears a salmon-colored dress, looking regal and rich. There is one that obscures her entire face, but her posture still commands attention, and another in which her face is covered by a veil while she reads a book.

But most of all, I was drawn to the two most famous portraits of Gardner. The first was painted by Anders Zorn in 1894, while the two spent time together in Venice. It hangs in the Short Gallery, a small, narrow room in the museum. In the painting, Gardner’s body fills the frame with its presence, not with its size. She is staring straight ahead, relaxed, in a white flowy dress and a long string of pearls. 

The second was painted in 1888 by John Singer Sargent. It is incredibly large, larger than life-sized, and hangs in the corner of the Gothic Room, which is otherwise filled with artwork portraying mostly Catholic imagery and themes. She holds court over the space, standing tall with her hands clasped in front of her body. The painting was scandalous at the time, due to the amount of flesh Garner displays in her black dress, though to our current sensibilities it would be considered a fairly conservative garment. Gardner rejected eight versions of the face until she was satisfied, not unlike the dozens and dozens of selfies I take before getting one I like.

Though the two paintings differ in so many ways—style, tone, color palette—there is something about Gardner that doesn’t change. Her confidence and self-assuredness comes through in each painting. Her eyes have the look of someone who knows who she is. Her pose conveys the sureness of someone who completely owns her domain.

She peers back at the viewer as if to say, “Yes, I am fabulous. And everything in this place? I chose it, I placed it. Maybe it doesn’t make sense to you, but it all makes perfect sense to me. It is entirely too much, but so am I.”

So am I.

Which Iconic Queer TV Space Are You?

We’ve been thinking about Spaces & Places with Meg Jones Wall‘s magical series, and it got us thinking about iconic fictional places, specifically, places from popular queer TV shows. When answering these questions about your “space,” you can interpret that however you want. Your literal home, your ideal living place, your metaphorical ~*~space~*~ that people experience when being part of your life. And then I’ll tell you which TV show’s iconic space you share a vibe with, to the best of my ability.

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Making Accessibility Part of My Home

Spaces & Places is a three-week series focusing on the private and community areas we occupy, the ways we personalize them, and the meanings that we assign to them. Organized and edited by Meg Jones Wall.

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One of the biggest arguments my wife, Stacy, and I ever got into was the night we negotiated moving my stuff into her place. Her stuff had been accumulating in her apartment in New York City since she’d moved here right after college. My stuff had been pared down and split between Goodwill, my grandparents’ basement, and the handful of boxes that’d made the trek north with me from my house in small town Georgia. We cried over inches of bedroom territory, huffed in and out of the room over suggestions from each other that we didn’t even use what the other person was demanding they needed within reach, shouted stories of our most sentimental possessions, and sat in opposite corners glaring at the floor for a ridiculous amount of time.

Because, of course, we weren’t actually fighting about physical space; we were drawing boundaries around who we’d been before we shared a lease; about our fear of losing ourselves, together, in a bedroom hardly big enough to fit a queen size bed; about the fact that neither of us had been at home in our homes growing up; and about all the things we were compromising and promising to each other with each shift of a shoe rack or a dresser.

It’s funny for me to think about that now, all these years later, because today our house looks like someone ran both of our personalities through a paper shredder and tossed around the confetti of our individual and combined hobbies and interests and accomplishments and senses of humor to decorate every room. From where I’m sitting in our bedroom right now, I can see framed prints of: The Golden Girls dressed as DC superheroes, our cats illustrated as elite athletes, all the flowers from Super Mario Bros., a rendering of Stacy’s favorite cassette tapes, and more baseball caps than you’ve ever seen in one place outside of a Lids store. You could follow the prints through the house and down the stairs and find: retro pop San Junipero, Peggy Olson on canvas, more drawings of our cats, abstract Adventure Time, Spirited Away, maps of the solar system, a positively enormous Carol movie poster, the poster for Stacy’s college band, and the poster for the first music video she professionally edited.

Or, well, that’s what I see. Over the last 16 months, I’ve become increasingly convinced that’s not what you’d notice if you visited my house at all. Where I see modern industrial furniture, reclaimed wood and old pipes lovingly crafted and reverently chosen at the Brooklyn Flea Market, I worry all you’d see is walking canes propped against walls. Where I see pops of 60s color and style — a chartreuse armchair and orange waist-high filing cabinet — I worry all you’d see is my blood red sharps containers placed in convenient locations for the intramuscular shots I have to give myself every day. Where I see a black and white shower curtain with two dozen styles of cats Tetris-ed together, I flinch at the thought of you glancing into my bathroom and seeing only the stool I have to use to take showers and sit on to wash my face and brush my teeth every morning and night.

We designed our home for the able-bodied me, and now I’m the disabled me, and I need help walking, more places to sit where I used to stand, and options to carry out most of my daily tasks — including working — while lying down.

It was Stacy who noticed my self-consciousness about the ways we made our space more accessible. I used to take one or two (max) photos of something before I shared it on the internet, but after I got sick, I started taking dozens of photos. I’d snap a few, check to see if any mobility aids or other glaring disability devices were in the background (and they always were), move them out of the frame, and take the photos again. If that wasn’t possible, I’d move the photo to an entirely different place in the house. Same for Zoom calls, even if they were with the doctors who treat the disorders that cause my disabilities; or FaceTime, even if it was with my family. Room Rater made it so much worse; every time a tweet came across my timeline grading someone’s Zoom background, I found myself literally looking over my shoulder to see if, like, my sleeping ramp was visible.

It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling — a mix of insecurity and uncertainty, fear and shame — but I hadn’t felt it in a very, very long time. In fact, the first time I felt it was when AJ Johnson, the most popular boy in second grade, the spelling bee and kickball champion, asked me to be his girlfriend in front of the whole class. I said, “No!” which seemed too harsh, so I repeated myself and said, “No, thank you!” and, then, to soften the blow even further, and because I’d been watching a lot of British period dramas after Sesame Street, I added, “No, thank you, my good man!” Then I had the idea that I could let AJ know it wasn’t personal while warning off anyone else in class. “No good men!” I announced. “Never!” I was already the weirdest kid at school, and I knew there was something different about me, and I knew the other kids sensed it too. I also knew I had to figure it out before they did, so I could get my feelings settled on it to protect myself from their feelings, which were inevitably not going to be good news. Rejecting AJ Johnson got all of us one step closer to figuring it out.

That’s how I feel about anyone seeing proof of my disabilities before I’ve wrapped my head around the fact of the disabilities: like I’ve reached a fragile peace with it, and any harsh comment, any misguided sentiment, any gawking could wreck my growing understanding and acceptance of how much I’ve changed.

My wife, and a few close friends, are the ones who have facilitated my delicate truce with my body. It started with a second chair in the kitchen. I had to put the first one in there to sit on while I chop vegetables, wait for my tea to steep, microwave leftovers, rest while doing dishes, and tidy up the fridge. One day Stacy brought a second chair into the kitchen and sat it beside the first one, and she started sitting beside me and chatting while I prepped fruit for smoothies, sitting beside me and resting her head on my shoulder while our morning coffee brewed, sitting beside me and pressing her knee against my knee while the pasta boiled. Then she positioned them directly in the morning sunbeam, so when she’s not sitting with me, there’s always a cat there to keep me company. The kitchen chair went from a seat of defeat to just another place our family hangs out together.

When that was a success, Stacy bought me a new shower chair. I’d thrown 15 dollars at a flimsy plastic and aluminum metal-looking thing when my cardiologist told me I needed to give up standing in the shower. It looked like cheap hospital equipment in a room I used to love to relax in. I hated showers and I didn’t even want to take baths anymore. I despised that stool. And so Stacy made the investment in a hand-crafted spa-type shower stool made by a woman-owned small business. Suddenly my naked bum was cozied up on a sturdy rustic pine bench, and sitting in the shower felt like a luxury, instead of a punishment. But there was a catch to that plan: If I was going to be comfortable spending money on quality accessibility furniture, I was going to have to come to grips with the fact that my disability wasn’t going anywhere. The main reason every disability thing in our house looked like it was a wobbly, hastily-constructed piece of furniture made from a pair of CVS crutches is because, well, it was. I bought it all begrudgingly, without even a bit of thought, in the hopes that I wouldn’t need to use it for very long. But it’s been a year now, and while I’m learning to manage better every day, my chronic illnesses are not going away. We followed the shower stool with a better bed set up for my work day, and a bright new bespoke cane.

My friend Valerie handed me one of my other biggest successes. She’s the only person in my family I’ve seen in real life, besides Stacy, since the pandemic began. The first time, we sat on my front stoop, all masked up. The second time, she came to my house to walk me to my polling place to vote, because it was too far for me to walk alone. When I stepped outside to meet her that morning, I was wearing compression socks pulled up to my knees, a cervical collar from my recent spinal surgery, and leaning on my cane. It was the first time anyone I loved had seen me like that in real life. I studied her for any sign of alarm, of fear, or even of pity. But her face lit up like it always does when we meet up on the sidewalk in New York City. She said, “Gooood morning!” and I kissed her on the forehead, through my mask. She walked right beside me the whole way, not a single step in front of me, and when we talked about my cane it was because she was complimenting it, because it is cool, because it looks like a cobalt blue lightsaber with a mustard handle. And we hardly talked about my cane, because when Valerie and I are together we always just pick back up on whatever it was we were talking about last, in real life, or over text, or on Twitter, or Slack. I was a different person from the last time we walked somewhere together in the city, but our friendship hadn’t changed a bit. It was as comfortable and warm as a hug in a well-worn t-shirt, like always.

When I came home that day, I hung up my cane — for the first time — on the coat rack Stacy bought with little accessibility hooks on it. Like the way Thor hung up his hammer in Jane’s entryway the first time he visited her house. Like it was a tool that deserved a nice place to wait until I needed it again.

Because the thing is, of course, that my feelings about all the accessibility stuff aren’t really about the stuff at all; my feelings are about the disabilities themselves.

I’ve never been happier than I am in the house I share with my wife. It’s our place, and every space in it has been lovingly put together with each other and forever in mind, from the cushiness of our couch, to the way our books fit together, to the framed print of the popsicle teaching anatomy hanging over the light switch in the kitchen. What started with fleeting hope and buried fear and lots of tears has evolved into a shelter full of shared experience that has deepened our love beyond anything I believed possible. Being disabled has changed me, and some of the stuff inside my house, but it hasn’t changed my home.

Queer Design 103: Where To Find Original Wall Art That Fits Your Style and Budget

Spaces & Places is a three-week series focusing on the private and community areas we occupy, the ways we personalize them, and the meanings that we assign to them. Organized and edited by Meg Jones Wall.

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Finding the special home decor pieces that fit your style and budget is a large task encompassing many ideas about who you are as a person and also about genres of objects: plants, rugs, lighting, art, candles, wall decals, stuff my mother would call “dust collectors” and not allow me to purchase as a child, small tables, vases (?), throw pillows, tiny shelves, etc. Today we’re focusing on WALL ART, and where to find affordable pieces online and offline.

If you’re on a tight budget, the main thing to remember is that you don’t need to decorate your entire apartment right away. You can set aside a little bit of money each month and gradually build — especially if you have gallery wall ambitions. You can do just one patch at a time — a cute three-item arrangement that gradually grows to encompass the entire wall. Some strategies:

• Mix new pieces with photos, prints and other ephemera that you already own. I’ve been poster-taping the same things onto and off my walls and carefully removing and re-pinning since literally the late 90s.
• If you’re not confident in your design skills, it can be good to stick to a theme (all black and white photography, all 19th century vibes) or a color palette. I use this website to generate a color palette and I made it the background on my laptop so that whenever I’m shopping online it’s right there to access
• When I buy new pieces, they tend to either: just look good with the color palette, be stuff I am drawn to in a manner that feels spiritual but important, or be stuff that is personal to me even though I didn’t make it (e.g, a big-ass photograph of of the Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan that I visited as a kid or a collage portrait of my dear imaginary friend Joan Didion)

I’m 100% a maximalist — I like my space to be clean, organized and cohesive, but I like bright colors and busy shelves. For inspiration I follow a bunch of design accounts on instagram. Some of my favorites are wiltshire wonderland for colorful poppy interiors, perfect homess for cozy earthy layouts, Urban Jungle Bloggers for plant-focused rooms, workspace goals for office ideas, designer Home Ec and interior design publications like Vogue Living, Apartment Therapy and Elle Decor.

Where will you find your items? LET’S BEGIN.

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Where To Buy Unique and Affordable Wall Art Online

Society 6

This is where most of my art comes from, and there can be a LOT on their site to wade through. But if you know what you’re looking for — it exists at Society6. It remains the best online shop for original art from very indie artists, printed on literally anything you desire. Prices range from $15 for a mini-art print to  $167 for a framed 26 x 38. They frequently do 20% off sales and often do 30%-40% off sales, so wait for those. If you want to frame your art, I’d suggest using S6’s in-house framing option as it’s very challenging to find the right-size frame for their prints, which don’t seem to conform to traditional frame sizes (even when they claim to!). Their app sucks.

Society6 isn’t the only indie artists print-on-demand game in town. RedBubble is the other biggie. Their audience skews a bit younger and has more of a geeky vibe (vs Society6’s aggressive trendiness), and RedBubble’s main focus is stickers.

iamfy

An enormous marketplace for all kinds of quirky, trendy, colorful home goods, but the main event is wall art. Iamfy’s focus is its “intuitive shopping app” that makes it easy to shop emerging brands right from your little pocket. It’s cool. iamfy is aggressively cool. It’s also aggressively affordable, but I’m not sure what that means for its artists. Their prices are fairly standard, from $15-$20 for a small print to $98-$150 for 28×40 framed prints.

Etsy

Etsy has gotten very crowded and it’s not as easy to browse art in the same way you can on Society6 — there’s a lot of crap in the way that appeals mostly to humans desiring custom portraits of their toddler and wooden signs that remind them to Live, Laugh and Love. I usually navigate by finding an artist I like and then checking out related stores, or searching for specific . I got a few prints from the same artist — Jazzberry Blue, who does retro-style prints in bold colors with a ’70s vibe. Some of my other favorite Etsy artists are in the graphic above.

Some Indie Printers and Marketplaces

Buy Olympia‘s brick-and-mortar presence can be found in Portland at the Land Gallery, but their online shop is stuffed to the brim with hipster-friendly independent artists — painting, photography, screenprints, gay shit, funny infographics. Black owned-and-operated Philadelphia Print Works has prints by Black artists at incredibly reasonable prices. Signal Return is a community leterpress print shop in Detroit’s Eastern Market focusing on local artists. Pop Chart specializes in infographic posters. Wolf & Badger is a London-based marketplace for sustainably and ethically produced products. Danger Prints is an Atlanta-based press.

Ripping Photos Out of Magazines and Putting Them In Frames

I often find wall art in magazines I’ve collected from the ’90s or in back issues of artsy magazines like Frankie Magazine and Flow: The Magazine for Paper Lovers. (They also do periodic books for paper lovers.) The former had an ongoing column with a similar photo every month. I got a 8-pack of frames at Target on sale for $12 and stuck em in there for one of the cheapest wall decor situations I’ve ever experienced, pictured above.

eBay

Once upon a time I got high and bought a print of a scene from Gia starring Angelina Jolie on eBay and I have never regretted this choice. eBay’s great for movie and music memorabilia and other vintage finds. Despite being an auction site, most low-ticket items can be snagged with a “buy it now.”

Online Art Marketplaces

There’s no shortage of websites and apps selling “art from independent artists,” usually in a print-on-demand capacity — Instagram will advertise every single one of them to you if you so much as google the word “poster.” Most of them are pretty similar, but here we go:

Artfully Walls: Thousands of options for beautiful, sophisticated contemporary art. Contains a wall designer and Gallery Wall sets. Currently doing a partnership with Anthropologie. Prints start at $24.The vibe is “Southampton Beach Mansion.”

Minted: Limited edition art prints by independent artists. Sophisticated, West Elm, Kinfolk, muted. Starting at $24 for an unframed 5×7. The vibe is “damn this house is both very nice and very clean.”

Drool Art: Bold, vibrant, super-fun illustrations and graphic design. Manages to present myriad options while also reflecting deliberate curation. Offers an “Art Finder Quiz” to match you with the best art from emerging artists to fit your space and style. Includes section of grouped prints for gallery walls. Prints tend to begin at $50, and 60%-90% of that price goes to the artists. The vibe is “open-concept loft in DUMBO.”

Artfully Walls: Thousands of options for beautiful, sophisticated contemporary art. Contains a wall designer and Gallery Wall sets. Currently doing a partnership with Anthropologie. Prints start at $24.The vibe is “Southampton Beach Mansion.”

20×200: With the motto “art for everyone,” 20×200 aims to deliver an authentic art collecting experience for novices and experts for every budget (from $24 to $10k!), building exclusive collaborations with talented new artists and selling prints from well-known names like Dorthea Lange and Berenice Abbott. They regularly partner with libraries and museums to restore art for their Vintage Collections and have a blog and a podcast. They’ve got robust search features and imagery that truly runs the gamut.

Saatchi Art: The “world’s leading online gallery” has classic and contemporary pieces from established artists, often at prices you and I cannot consider realistically fitting into our lifestyles.

Better Shared: Better Shared is also quite expensive, but if you can afford it, it’s a great place to invest — focusing on artists from the African diaspora, Better Shared gives up to 70% of its profits to its artists.

Also… Consider Wrapping Paper?

The absolute cheapest way to get some vintage imagery on your wall is buying fancy wrapping paper from art supply stores or bookstores: the Cavallini Celestial Print is a classic (I got one at Scout, a cute shop in Royal Oak, Michigan) and I have no idea why these are considered wrapping paper? This is a print! But it cost $3!

Beyond Prints

Especially if you’re doing a gallery wall, it’s good to mix up your prints with flat or 3-D objects like small planters, fake taxidermy, mirrors and clocks. I found a tiny ceramic mounted deer head with gold horns at Goodwill and I tell you what it was like winning the g-damn lottery. Plants make everything look better, that’s the rule. Like just put a bunch of plants everywhere honestly.

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Where To Find Affordable Art IRL:

Creative Reuse Centers: Many cities have stores that sell used school and art supplies, mainly for teachers and kiddos, but there’s plenty to be found for all. Usually there are bins of photos, prints, greeting cards, and postcards as well as super-cheap books, calendars andmags holding treasures within them. Two that I have visited and loved include Oakland’s East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse (ETA: Just kidding, the East Bay Depot sucks now and you shouldn’t shop there.) and The Scrap Creative Reuse Network stores in Ann Arbor, Portland, Baltimore and Richmond.

Goodwill & Other Thrift Stores: One of my favorite pieces came from my local Goodwill, which is a trove of … unique finds! You can also bid on Goodwill items online!

Flea Markets: I think the first-ever things I bought to hang on my wall came from this little postcard shop that’d set up in Union Square on Greenmarket days. Now I’m in Los Angeles and love the Melrose Trading Post! You can usually find literal buckets of old photos and postcards as well as original art.

Antique Malls and Antique Stores: Antique Malls have booths for often hundreds of vendors selling one-of-a-kind vintage items at every price point, and they exist all over this fine country, not just in cities!

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Finally, let’s talk about frames

You know how you can get a cheap-ass printer and then when it’s time to ink it up, doing so costs more than the actual printer? Frames are the printer cartridges of home decor. Frames seem like such simple concepts! And yet! So expensive!

Brand new cheap frames exist at Ikea and also at the Dollar Store. Elsewhere it can be pricy!

Used frames are hit or miss, but your wallet will appreciate a solid attempt at a hit. Furthermore, after months of waiting for items to arrive, measuring them, ordering frames, etc etc — I would highly recommend just ordering pre-framed art when the option exists. When your print is of unusual size, Frame it Easy and Framebridge make custom frames and sometimes Magnetic Wood frames will also do the trick.

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Stay tuned for Part Two when we will discuss vibes and parts of home decor that do not involve the walls!

Into the A+ Advice Box #40: Spaces & Places

Welcome to the 40th edition of Into the A+ Advice Box, in which we answer all the queer and lesbian advice questions from A+ members who submitted their queries into our A+ ask box! Here, we answer your questions in a space just for A+ members, safe from the general public. (No guarantees regarding your ex, however.) Here, the Autostraddle team’s doling out advice on everything from sex and relationships, to friend and family dynamics, career questions, style, and more! We’re doing this column TWICE a month, now, with the second A+ box of each month on a theme.

This is a special, extra edition of Into the A+ Advice Box, in line with our Spaces & Places folio. Spaces & Places is a three-week series focusing on the private and community areas we occupy, the ways we personalize them, and the meanings that we assign to them. Organized and edited by Meg Jones Wall.

August’s theme is MAKING ADULT FRIENDS!Send us your questions about meeting people, initiating friendships, and navigating the wild world of making friends as a gay adult! Try to get your questions in by MONDAY AUGUST 9 so they can be included.

And just as an FYI, you do in fact look fantastic today ;) Let’s dig in!

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Q1:

I just bought a new house after a divorce and want to FINALLY have my space reflect me. I don’t know where to start? How do I pick main pieces and move on? Should I begin with a sofa, table, bed frame or rug?

A:

Vanessa: I personally would begin with a bed and everything that goes along with it. To me, where I sleep is such an intimate, special thing, and especially after a major breakup (I’ve never been married so I’ve never been divorced, but hopefully my perspective is useful regardless) I find myself wanting to recenter my sleep space as somewhere just for me. A close friend just got divorced and when she moved into her new place she promptly bought herself the most gorgeous sunbeam-shaped headboard, and even before she was ready to really take on the world again, making her bed such a sunny and powerful space helped her heal. I also think there’s no shame in going slow. Find pieces you love love love and build around that. If everyone has to sit on the floor for a while because you’re not sure which sofa really says THIS IS ME, that’s fine! Take your time. You’re rebuilding your life. Start literally wherever you want, and then go from there. And: congratulations! I’m really excited for you.

Meg: Hi, I just did this and I totally understand how overwhelming it can feel! Vanessa’s advice is really great and I absolutely second beginning with an anchor piece or two and building a room around that. For some people that will be a large focal point, like a bed, a headboard, or a sofa — but it can also be artwork, a cushion or throw, a rug, or even a collection of crystals or books or trinkets. What sparks joy in you? What do you love to look at? Get inspiration from that piece in terms of color and shape, then play with texture and size, layering in different kinds of decor and furniture that all ties back to those anchors. I understand the desire to see the space come together as quickly as possible but if you give yourself permission to be choosy, to take your time and invest in pieces you absolutely love, the end result is going to be a space that you adore spending time in and showing off.

I highly encourage you to check out Queer Decor 101 and 102, which offer some great advice on the process of designing and organizing your space. We also did a big shop roundup of queer-owned housewares that can help you find that hero piece of your dreams and give you a place to start. Congratulations and good luck on building your house of dreams!

Kayla: This is a big question that can be answered in a lot of different ways! I like what other folks have said so far, and I just want to offer this very specific (but I think helpful) piece of advice: Start with the sofa. Of course starting with the bed is important in terms of making your place really feels like yours, but since the sofa is (presumably) living in a different part of the house, it’s fine if your bed and sofa aesthetics don’t perfectly match. The reason I think you should start with the sofa is mostly logistical! Sofas have notoriously long wait/shipping times—pretty much regardless of price point and style. They take forever. They require a lot of time/planning in terms of how to physically get it into your space (a house is easier than an apartment though!). And almost everyone I know has had some sort of bad sofa experience? It’ll be a little easier if you’re not necessarily picky about the style of the sofa, but if you have a certain look/fabric/color in mind, get started ASAP. If you don’t have a specific look in mind, I recommend window shopping at a big box store like Ashley or IKEA and actually trying some out. Even if you don’t go with one from any of those places, it’ll give you a sense of what you like (leather vs vinyl vs cotton vs blend; sectional vs one piece; etc). Also measure your space to know what size will be best! Sofas really set the tone for a living space, and if you’re the kind of person who likes to get cozy on the couch with some pals, maybe something squishier and wider is your vibe! Once you have the sofa figured out, it’s easy to pick cozy home decor and additional furniture to match it.

Ro: I’ve never been married or divorced, but I have ended multiple long-term relationships that included cohabitation. When decorating a solo space after a breakup, here’s what I’ve prioritized: all of the pieces and colors that I love and my ex hates. This might sound petty, but stick with me: anytime you share a home with someone, whether that’s a partner, a spouse, a family member or a roommate, you have to compromise on some things. And one of the best parts of living on your own is not having to compromise at all. Have you always wanted to paint a wall black? Do it! Do you want a whole shelving unit dedicated to your Pez dispenser collection? Make it happen! Are you a maximalist at heart who begrudgingly styled your former home to fit your ex’s minimalist aesthetic? Fill your place with color and curios. It’s yours and yours alone.

Q2:

How do you make your rental home feel genuinely you? How do you welcome to your trans and queer friends, especially if there’s financial differences between you? Am I overworrying about other people’s imagined feelings about my place being too fancy? (Probably – my friends usually aren’t as worried about this but … as the one friend who makes WAY more money, I want to be thoughtful). TBH most hgtv design, decor and supporting suggestions are for people who buy their homes – the divide between friends who are buyers and renters can be hard. Please help me find a way to straddle this divide, I like my friends and want them to be comfortable, and want me to stop feeling guilty over making good money. The better choice would be to donate to supporting groups for sex workers, latinx, disabled and trans peeps.

A:

Kayla: I do think this is stemming from a place of guilt or some other deeply personal factors. I kind of doubt your friends are going to judge you or feel bad about themselves if you have nice things. If you feel guilty about being able to afford those things, I do think you could redirect that energy into tangible reparations/redistribution of your wealth. Because buying cheap things for your home in order to be thoughtful toward folks who can’t afford pricey things…doesn’t actually do anything. I say buy the things you want to buy. I personally LOVE to spend time in the homes of friends with super fancy shit. If you’re comfortable in your home, it’ll be easier for you to make others feel comfortable in your home, so start with you. Think less about how much stuff costs and more about creating a cozy, welcoming space with ample seating and homey touches like plants and candles. Your friends probably just want a place where they can chill, hang out, and connect. They’re not looking at the price tags.

Nicole: Another thing to think about is that, if you have the budget, you can be intentional about purchasing items for your home from small businesses. We just did a Round-Up of 30 Queer-Owned Houseware Shops and you can also look locally for lists of Black-owned, women-owned, queer-owned, etc. businesses that you can buy from. Then, you’ve directed your money back into your communities and the people and kinds of businesses you want to support (which is not the same as donating, because you are getting things, just to be clear), instead of just upgrading to a more expensive big box retailer (Where does the money go? To billionaires who go to space?). Like, buying all of your plates from a local potter (who then likely also puts that money back into local stuff) is going to have a positive impact on an artist, and also, you get really unique nice stuff. And then, yes, as a completely professionally biased person, I think it’s always a good idea, once you can afford it, to have money regularly budgeted (monthly, biweekly, however you budget) for donations.

Q3:

Wow I have two:

How can I make vacuuming less the total worst?

Are there any tips for making couch-type furniture cat-proof that don’t involve changing the behaviour of my cats too radically, because they are perfect angels who have dominion over my apartment?

A:

Riese: Splurge on a Dyson Cyclone v8 or v10 — you can usually get one deeply discounted during sale periods of time (like Black Friday, post-Christmas, Labor Day, Memorial Day, etc) if you shop around enough. It’s cordless and light and beautiful and SUPER easy to use. It will make vacuuming not the worst. You will feel powerful and in control of your life and your choices.

Meg: I can’t help you with the cat, but I also really deeply truly hate vacuuming and put it off for as long as possible. My best tip is to put your headphones in, play a song you love to dance or move to, and make the vacuum your dance partner. Sometimes I also give myself a reward afterwards, even though vacuuming takes literally five minutes because I live in an apartment in Brooklyn — but hey, it works.

Kayla: Maybe others will have a different opinion, but I actually do not think “pet proof” furniture is really a thing. Sure, there are sprays out there that supposedly work (but I think you have to spray your furniture like every day??). Leather is expensive but much harder for cats to tear up than softer/woven upholstery (they’re also easier to keep hair-free). Microfiber is cheaper but harder to get hair off of and even though it’s also difficult for cats to shred, it’s still possible they can mess it up. I’ve put double-sided tape on a couch before to discourage scratching, and it technically worked but also looked ugly and had to be reapplied regularly. I do honestly think you’re better off with a behavioral approach. It’s harder with older cats but still possible, and it doesn’t require punishment or treating your cats like anything other than the perfect angel babies they are! I’m a big fan of the redirection approach: If your cat starts clawing at the furniture, move them to a scratching post. In the beginning, keep the post close-ish to the problem furniture. Have scratching pads in addition to posts. Cats will be drawn to their own smell on the furniture, so use a pet-safe room spray on the furniture until they gradually become more used to the scratching posts over the furniture. You can gradually move the scratching posts away from the furniture once they get more used to it.

As for the vacuuming thing, my partner is the one who does the vacuuming in our household, but she absolutely swears by having an expensive vacuum and has pretty much said it changed her life lol. You can often get ones on sale/with significant coupons at Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Best Buy. They get very pricey, so keep an eye out for those deals. The expensive vacuums work faster, are lighter weight, and are more powerful. Cordless ones are great because you don’t have to worry about unplugging and moving between rooms (if you have a bigger space). For pet hair, the robot vacuums are also a gamechanger. Robot vacuums won’t get EVERYTHING up, but they make it so you have to physically vacuum a little less and they find pet hair in all the nooks and crannies of your home.

Nicole: A slightly lower-priced step down from the Dyson is a Bissell. We have a version like this one, and it works pretty well for picking up malamute-mystery-mix (Mya’s) hair, and she is a 75lb arctic breed so you know this vacuum works hard. While not as light and cordless as more expensive vacuums, it does detach from the bottom so that you can more easily go up stairs.

Himani: Seconding Riese’s Dyson Cyclone v8 recommendation! It is truly the game changer in vacuuming. It’s light and it comes with a pretty incredible upholstery attachment which means getting cat hair off a couch has never been easier.

Also seconding Kayla that I don’t think there’s such a thing as pet proofing furniture unless you own furniture that is not upholstered at all, which would probably not be very comfortable. That said, there’s a whole market for Ikea sofa covers on Etsy that may be worth giving a shot so that your cats are ripping up the cover and not the actual sofa itself and the covers would be easier to wash and replace after they are completely tatters. If you don’t have an Ikea sofa, I’d still poke around Etsy because I’m sure someone has created a cover for whatever sofa it is you do own.

Q4:

How would you arrange your plants, coffee/tea supplies, and dog treats in this corner of my kitchen? I hate that the plants are sorta hidden by the dog and coffee stuff but those are super essential to be easy to access. Any tips? Thanks!

A:

Meg: How do you feel about putting the coffee, teas, and treats into pretty containers? I always like to have a million kinds of treats for my dog but those bags take up a lot of space and are rarely attractive. And tea boxes get out of hand so quickly! If you got some glass or ceramic canisters, or some mason jars, and consolidated the tea and treats into them, they would likely give you a better view of your plants while still being easy to access.

Kayla: I know this is a big change, but my suggestion is to get rid of all those small shelving units and instead get a large vertical shelving unit to go against the wall on the right of this photo. Maybe the picture isn’t giving me a totally accurate view, but it looks like there’s plenty of space for a large cabinet/shelving unit there. That way there’s nothing in front of the windows and your plants can instead be the center of attention there. I do feel like a lot of what is on these small shelves can be consolidated. I’m a fan of the Ikea Kallax, which might be a good size for that wall. You can buy all sorts of different kinds of inserts for the Kallax that basically work as baskets/drawers so that everything is not visible but still easy to get to (I like leaving some of the shelves open and some with the inserts. Also, Target has the same kind of cubed shelving units for half the price and you can probably find lookalikes elsewhere. I just think one bigger shelving piece is going to create a cleaner work versus having several small ones (and probably actually give you more space!).

Carolyn I agree with Kayla on getting rid of all the units and replacing them with a single intentional one, except that I recommend horizontal shelving wall-mounted under the window. Still at IKEA, I like the Besta line, which comes in various widths, heights, and depths and which you can customize to be exactly what you need. Specifically, I’d suggest a mix of closed and open shelving, so all the smaller supplies that you decide to keep are tucked away behind a cupboard door and you’re free to admire the things, like plants, that you actually want to see.

Q5:

Hi Autostraddle!

I’m having some trouble creating a space that’s truly my own because of my neighbors. My space sometimes doesn’t feel safe or my own at night because of noise or pot smells invading it from below. This has kinda turned me into an insomniac because my body can’t relax enough to sleep. Wondering if y’all have any guidance on how to talk to neighbors about problematic behaviors. I’m always afraid of coming off as too demanding or rude, so then I don’t say anything and just remain unhappy in the long run.

Best,
M

A:

Ro: When you live in an apartment building, you’re signing up to deal with other peoples’ sounds and smells within reason. If you think your neighbors are making an unreasonable amount of noise or if they’re making lots of noise when you’re sleeping, then it’s totally ok (and not rude at all) to talk to them about it. They might have no idea how loud they sound and will be happy you told them.

When you talk to your neighbors about their noise and pot smoke, keep your request doable and specific (“Could you please turn down your TV/ music after 11pm on weeknights?” or “Could you please smoke on your back porch instead of inside?”, etc.). There are certainly unreasonable demands (I once had a neighbor demand that I stop walking around my apartment after 8pm), but it sounds like you’re being really thoughtful about this, so I think there’s a strong chance that your request will be well-received.

Of course, some neighbors are assholes and they might refuse to change their behavior. If that happens, ask your management company for support. Most apartment buildings have rules about smoking and have designated quiet hours, and a formal email from a landlord can remind your neighbors of those guidelines. If all else fails, get a cheap white noise machine and earplugs and start planning to get out of your lease. You deserve to live in a home where you feel comfortable and happy.

Kayla: It’s indeed okay to make reasonable requests of neighbors, but it’s also true that apartment living usually means having to deal with other people’s lives and behaviors. If you do want to make a reasonable request of your neighbors about noise levels during certain times, it’s best to have these conversations in person. I know that can be anxiety-inducing, but leaving a note almost always seems passive aggressive. Be respectful and understanding and have a conversation with them. If the noise is affecting your sleep cycle, say that. I also recommend getting a white noise machine and diffuser for your space to mitigate some of the issues!

Nicole: Yes to all the awesome info above about talking to your neighbors! Also, if the floors / walls in your apartment are thin and you’re sensitive to sound, you can try some basic sound insulation. A few extra throw rugs (an expense, I know) might help dampen sound from below, and you can also use white noise machines (or honestly, a really loud fan) to help take the edge off things so you can sleep. If the noise drifts in through windows, it’s ugly, but honestly putting sheets of styrofoam in your windows at night might help absorb some of that. Also, more soft things on your walls will help absorb sound and keep it from bouncing around as much. What are these things? It’s up to you, but they can range from curtains to tapestries. I love looking at all the curtain options on Society 6. Also, ”here is this AS arcticle by Carolyn on soundproofing your room for kinky sex that contains some helpful tips about soundproofing your doors (like if sound is leaking in through a hallway). These tips don’t cover situations with, like, egregiously loud noises that are inappropriate and inconsiderate on your neighbors’ end, but are solid, general things you can do when you’re just near people. Of course, if your apartment is filling with smoke / pot smells, I think the only real solution is for you to talk to them about that. And finally, while every apartment situation includes neighbors and their lives and noises, you can also consider a move to a different apartment, but there might be noise there, too!

Himani: We had an issue in our building of someone who smoked pot constantly. I mean literally like 24/7. It was a problem, and no amount of reasonable conversation with him or his landlord changed the behavior. In the end, the woman who lived above him and really bore the brunt of it ended up moving. It sucks, but if you’re finding the situation untenable and if you talk to your neighbor and/or the management company and the behavior doesn’t change, moving may (unfortunately) be your best option. As others have said, there is some amount of dealing with noises and smells that comes with communal living, but everyone has their own limits around what is sustainable for them. If this situation is turning you into an insomniac then it sounds like you’re approaching your limits around this and so, in addition to trying to resolve this with the neighbor, it might also be worth looking into new housing options for whenever your lease is up.

Q6:

In the last year, I have figured out that it’s very, very hard for me to be fully relaxed and feel like I can have “me time” when I am not fully physically alone in a space. I live with my best friend, whose job until recently had them traveling half the time, home half the time, which was a great arrangement for both of us. Now that their job has changed and they’re home all the time, I struggle to make the physical and mental space to let myself chill out even with another human around. Luckily they’re someone that I feel very comfortable communicating with, so we’ve had conversations about this and it’s gotten easier. My friend is moving out for unrelated reasons in a couple months, but in the hypothetical future I would like to be able to live with a partner and to feel like my full self while doing it. Outside of open communication, do you guys have practical tips for introverts/people pleasers on sharing living spaces with other humans? The most helpful thing we’ve figured out has been making a designated space for me outside of my bedroom, but I’m sure there are more approaches to tackling this challenge!

A:

Kayla: Obviously, if you have to live with another person due to financial reasons or other circumstances, then you’ll need to develop some ways to be more comfortable with cohabitation (having a designated spot outside of your bedroom is def a good move!). But I also just hope that you know it’s totally fine to want to live alone. Cohabitation is not a requirement for partnership. There are plenty of people who live separately from their partners. It’s an option! That said, if you do want to live with a partner one day and just want to know some tips for how to best deal with that as an introvert who needs lots of alone time, there are plenty of options for that, too! I think it’s good to be upfront with anyone you’re living with about the fact you need alone time and space. Whether it’s a potential partner or just a new roommate, it’s good to establish these things from the start and come up with a plan. In fact, if you do end up looking for a new roommate, you can even seek out someone who either similarly needs time alone (so they’ll understand your point of view) or who has a job that keeps them out of the house a lot (this is more tricky with the ongoing pandemic, obviously). You’re your own best advocate, so vocalize your needs and expectations! Living with someone else always requires compromise, work, and communication. It’s likely going to feel different with different people, so go into these conversations with the understanding that you’ll have to work together to create the ideal home environment. The more honest you are, the better!

Ro: I second Kayla’s advice — you don’t have to cohabitate with a partner, and there are plenty of long-term couples who live separately and are happier that way. That said, if you decide to shack up with a partner, here are a few ideas from a fellow introvert:

1. Get a two-bedroom home if you can afford it. That way, you each have your own designated space with a door. This is also a great setup for partners who work drastically different hours and/or have different sleep cycles.

2. Schedule your alone time like it’s an appointment. Then put it in a shared google calendar and agree to get out of the house during your partner’s alone time and ask them to do the same for you.

3. If you and/ or your partner have flexible work schedules or get to set your own hours, arrange your work schedules so that you each get some time at home alone on a regular basis.

And finally, make sure you’re dating someone who respects your needs. Some of us need more alone time than others in order to be our best selves, and that’s ok! We just need to be with people who understand and support that.

Carolyn: I completely and totally understand not feeling like you have alone time unless the total living space or possibly building you are in is physically vacant of other people – not in a different room, but totally gone. Communicating around this early and often is part of being successful, but communication only goes so far when it comes to, say, sharing space in a pandemic. In a shared living situation, I accomplish this by pretending, with love in my heart, like the other person simply does not exist when they are in their part of the space. I also love a white noise machine or fan, incense or another way to fill my space with a smell that feels like mine, and taking a long shower with my phone blasting in the (turned off, dry) sink followed by an even longer moisturizer routine when all else fails.

Finally, I also check in with myself around why I want total alone time, because for me I need it far more when the person or people with whom I’m sharing space are pushing my boundaries in some way and I need to course-correct.

Q7:

I’m moving to Europe next month, and will be living with my girlfriend who is in medical school there. I’ll be moving into the apartment she’s lived in for a year. We lived together in NYC for part of the pandemic, but this is the first time we’re doing a longer term, more intentional cohabitation. How can I feel her apartment is now /our/ apartment? How can I create alone time in a one bedroom space?

A:

Kayla: It’s tricky but not impossible to carve out alone time/personal space within a small apartment. Does the apartment have a bathtub? One really nice way to treat yourself is to buy a nice bathtub tray to elevate the bath experience—especially one with a place to set a book! I use mine all the time. Bath bombs, candles, etc. can also make it feel really nice and luxurious! And it’s something you get to enjoy completely alone. If you don’t like baths/there isn’t a bathtub, is there a corner of the apartment that can be turned into a tiny nook? All you need is a cozy chair or even some floor cushions to make a little nook. I suggest taking a look at Pinterest for some ideas. If alone time is important to you, talk about that with your girlfriend (if you haven’t already). If you’re able to create a nook or a sick bathtime setup, then tell your girlfriend that when you’re in those spaces you’d like to be left alone for a bit. If the apartment doesn’t have its own designated outside space, is there a nearby outside space like a park you can go to sometimes? Be intentional about seeking space within your own home, too. Maybe one night your girlfriend wants to go out with friends but you just want to stay in—listen to yourself! There will be times when your girlfriend will be out of the apartment, and you can make sure you use that time to do whatever it is you like to do alone and reset.

Now, as for making the space feel like it belongs to both of you, that’s always a struggle when it comes to moving into someone else’s home. If you haven’t already, this is another conversation to have with your girlfriend. Make sure she understands that while you’re respectful of the fact that this was her home first, you want to work with her to make it feel more shared and less like you’re intruding. Sometimes just naming that can help right off the bat! But my other recommendation would be to actually get some things together for the apartment. Obviously she shouldn’t be expected to replace all her furniture or anything like that. But maybe y’all could buy new bedding together or new sets of towels. It sounds small, but those are things you see/use every day, so they’re important to a home. And buying them together will allow you to have some say in the look and feel of the place. Getting other things like plants and art together is also great! Make sure you feel like you have space for your things, and if it doesn’t feel that way, have a conversation.

Ro: I love Kayla’s suggestion to get some items for the apartment together. I also recommend putting up some of your art or photos of your family and friends. Wall decor can really make a place feel like your own.

Finding alone time in a small space can be tricky, but it’s totally possible — sometimes you just have to schedule that time in. Figure out how much alone time will make you feel like your best, most comfortable self and ask your partner to do the same. Then schedule your alone time in a shared google calendar and make your plans around that. Maybe you can schedule some of your alone time while your partner is at school, and maybe your partner can schedule alone time when you’re out with friends. If you find yourself needing more space outside of those scheduled hours, a long solo walk can be rejuvenating, too.

Q8:

Hi there, AS crew! I am so grateful for this special edition of the advice box, since this theme really resonates with the situation that I’m in. I’m 21 years-old, and back in December 2019, I was illegally evicted from my home. I had already been living on my own since I had just turned 17– during that time, I had taken in a friend of mine who was homeless already (I’ll call them Shay!) and was supporting both of us financially when my family found out where we lived and successfully got us turned out of our home. We had two days to throw away all of our belongings, surrender our pets, and flee the city in the middle of the night so that my family couldn’t trace us again. Shay and I were homeless through the pandemic, bouncing around place to place while I worked overtime in unsafe conditions to secure and keep a roof over both our heads. It has been two years, and we are in a place of relative security (I mean, we have houseplants now! Sweet victory!). We share a single room together, but recently I was given the tremendous opportunity to move into a place with my partner– and the biggest benefit of the new place is that I’d have some financial relief for the first time in years. Shay has not been able to find stable employment in the three years that I’ve known them, for multiple reasons, including the fact that he is visibly black, trans, and autistic in a major city that wants to erase his existence.

I have been the sole earner of income for the both of us since we lived together, and this is something that we have had to navigate through the lens of our experiences of being homeless together. We have a very healthy relationship, bolstered by communication and understanding (any other badass Virgo/Virgo pairs out there??), and we have had a lot of discussion up until this point about how to effectively transition ourselves so that I can leave the apartment and Shay can become financially self-sufficient, and this includes me paying rent for an extra month or two so that they can build some savings on their own. We are very excited about this new development, for both of us, as it’s a point we have been hoping to get to for a long time! But with this new chapter coming in, I have come to a heartbreaking realization on my own. For the past two years, in all of the different places we have drifted through, I have worked overtime hours for multiple jobs in multiple cities just to scrape by, and I’ve realized that I’ve spent so much time fixating on our survival that I have never really settled into our space. Most of my time in the apartment is spent eating in-between shifts, or maybe sleeping in our shared bed once or twice a week. When I look around our room, Shay’s side looks lived-in and a part of themselves; on mine, it’s a folded up comforter with a pillow tucked into one corner of the bed. When I leave, it’s going to be with only the same things I brought with me, but even more than that… it’s apparent that when I go, it will be like I was never there to begin with.

When you’re homeless, you understand two things: 1) Space is a resource, and those who are privileged to hold onto it get to have that space as part of their self-understanding, their identity. 2) When you’ve gone through housing insecurity or have to travel between temporary shelters, your presence within a space is forced to be non-existent. I have not had the privilege to have space, nor to fully exist inside it, and this has been the case for a long, long time. I wish I could say that the experience itself of this emptiness is enough to take with me, but the truth is, I’m only 21. I lived all my late teenage years without feeling a sense of place, and even before that, the story of my Japanese-American family is that of being forcibly moved into a space that we were told was not our own, and that we must exist as something else in order to live, or to not exist at all. Even more than that, there is a rift in that identity from being queer and disowned from my family and culture.

There is so much space in me, or around me, and very little which I can tether myself to understand who I am or where I want to go. All of these things ask the question: how can I grieve the space that is not my own? How can I find ways to inhabit new spaces that are unfamiliar to me, that don’t have memories or family or experiences attached to them? I’ll be living in a new city with a new person, bringing very little with me and probably finding a totally new life while I’m there. Usually, people get the privilege of bringing all the experiences with them from their previous chapter into the new one, but what if my past is void of those things, too? Thank you so much for your time! I will say that I’ve been an avid member of AS since I was 17, and this community is one of the few things that has come with me in all of my time drifting. Sending you all as much joy as you have given me!

A:

Himani: First, I want to applaud you for everything you’ve already done by the age of 21. I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult and scary it must have been to be 17 and completely on your own. And then on top of that, to have the strength to support another person in addition to yourself? You’re truly a remarkable person. I really, really deeply mean that. I can’t speak to the experience of homelessness, at all, and I really appreciate how much of yourself and your experience you’ve shared. Your points in your third paragraph about how the experience of homelessness has shaped your perspective on space and place have honestly given me a lot to think about.

Honestly, I don’t know if what I’m about to say will be helpful to you or not, but here are some thoughts I have on what you’ve shared. When I think about the sum total of everything you’ve written and the questions you’re asking at the end, the main thing I’m left wondering is how much time have you had to process your experiences and everything that’s happened in the last few years? I’m guessing not a whole lot, given what you’ve described about working overtime to keep things going. One of the luxuries of having a little more financial security that I hope you’ll be able to take advantage of is having the freedom to just sit and reflect on your life, uninterrupted by thoughts about making ends meet in the day to day right now.

When it comes to your final question — that you’re unable to bring the experiences from your previous chapter to the next one — I wonder if this is perhaps a matter of framing? It sounds a little like you’re saying that because you have no physical possessions from the previous chapters and no family connections that you have nothing to carry with you into your next phase. But, you have yourself and all the memories and experiences you carry with you, the good and the bad, the ones that have shaped you all along the way. I’m sure that sounds really corny, but I absolutely believe it’s true. Perhaps, after you’ve had some time to reflect on it, you’ll find that you’re able to frame this differently for yourself, or maybe you’ll find that there is no other way to look at it. Either way, I think there’s a real grief tied up in all of this, and I hope you’re able to give yourself some time to really process that. You ask about grieving for a space that isn’t your own, but I wonder if part of your grief is about having been in that situation in the first place?

Also, I don’t know if this will be possible for you or not, given the circumstances, but I hope you’re able to maintain your friendship with Shay and, if so, that relationship will be another connection between the present you are leaving and the future you’re stepping into.

If you haven’t already, you might consider looking into whether the city you’re moving to has an LGBTQ+ center, or even a general community center, and whether they have any kind of mental health services or group counseling. Given everything you’ve gone through, that may be a helpful place to just share and process some of your experiences. I know this is far removed from your questions around taking up space when space itself is such a luxury in the first place, but I personally have found that part of taking up space is about being able to do that from an emotional and mental place, in addition to having the financial resources to do that. Sometimes, after we’ve gone through long experiences where we’ve been told that we can’t take up space, that space isn’t something we can lay claims to, it can be really helpful to give voice to how those experiences have shaped us and start to examine the ways in which we’ve internalized them so that we can decide how much we want to continue to carry forward. That process in and of itself can be very useful in laying some of the groundwork of starting to feel comfortable taking up space.

That said, there are some mundane things that can be difficult to navigate when moving to a new city. Common small talk often involves asking people about where they lived previously and why they moved. You probably already know this, but I just want to remind you that you have no obligation to answer these questions or share more than you feel comfortable sharing in new settings. I personally find it helpful beforehand to practice responses that are honest but within my comfort zone about sharing how much I want to say about a particular situation so that I’m prepared when people ask. I also find it helpful to redirect conversations into directions where I don’t have to talk about the past if I don’t want to — for instance, talking about things that are happening in your new city or questions you have about the new city, things you want to explore and so on. You are, of course, also well within your rights to take up space in those conversations and speak openly about your experiences as much as you would like, even if it seems like it’s a “heavy” topic or that people might not want to talk about it; if you want to talk about it, then I would say it’s fair game. But you get to set the terms of that in any way you’d like.

At the end of it all, I’m not really sure that I’ve answered your actual questions and maybe I’ve said things you’ve already thought about or are already planning to do. I think sometimes when we come from a particularly painful and difficult past that has involved a lot of severing of ties or even a lack of ties where we thought there should be, it can feel like we have nothing from which to move forward in our lives. But part of the beauty of growing up is being able to build things in the places we didn’t have them when we were younger. I sincerely hope this new move for you is one of those opportunities — to build relationships, to build memories, to lay claim to a space as your own. Even if you feel like you have nothing to bring to it, you still get to make it your own by trying out new things and imprinting it with the things you like. I hope that you have some freedom outside of work to explore your city, try out new activities, join social groups, volunteer, just meet a lot of people and start to build your own network of friends and expand on your interests. In all of it, I really truly wish you all the best.

Q9:

Any tips on how to make a place a little more calm and grown-up with a two-year-old running around? Almost all of our home projects are left in some level of not-complete/not-started, and all shelves or surfaces the toddler can’t reach have become catch-all junk drawers. It may just be the pandemic, but most days I’ve lost all motivation for making my home the recharging place I want it to be, and I know the clutter-funk impacts my mental health (it’s a bummer cycle). Any tangible tips to address the (endearing and exhausting) chaos of my space? Thank you! The picture is of a neighbor’s old TV cabinet turned office/seed storage/craft supply/game closet/toy spot. This is kind of a microcosm of my life.

A:

Kayla: I apologize if this is an annoying answer, especially since I don’t have kids, but in my experiences with younger cousins and other little kids in my life, a two-year-old is always going to make a household pretty chaotic. It’s hard to avoid! There’s no easy solution! Maybe those home projects don’t get finished until your kid’s a little bit older—and that’s okay! Most people can’t afford consistent, long-term childcare, and short of that, it’s really hard to get things done in the house! That said, your mental health is important. And if clutter impacts your mental health, then something needs to be done. It seems like you’re already on this based on the pic, but baskets are your friend. The more you can simplify the clean-up process, the better, so being able to just throw things in baskets is great. But also, as I’m sure you know, it’s hard to keep spaces clean and organized for very long with a little one running around. Cleaning as you go throughout the day might not be the best approach, because you’ll end up re-cleaning too much. Picking things up/cleaning at the end of the day could limit the amount of times you’re having to tidy up. Also, toddlers can totally learn to clean up alongside you if you haven’t begun that yet. It’s not like they’ll perfectly clean up lol but it’s a way to feel like you’re still hanging out with your kid while also getting some things picked up. Again, not a catch-all solution by any means but just something to think about and to include your kid in the clean up process. I do think things will get easier, especially when your kid is of school age because it means more time in the house without them. Remind yourself that it won’t ALWAYS feel this way. Remind yourself that sometimes the chaos is unavoidable. Make sure you have a space within your home that does feel like yours and focus on maintaining a lack of clutter there. If your kid has a separate room, then make your own room that space. Also, the times when your kid is asleep or otherwise occupied, I know it’s probably tempting to only use that time to clean up/do household tasks, and you should def do that stuff when you want to get it done, but also make sure you occasionally use that time to do the kind of recharging you’re talking about.

KaeLyn: As a fellow adult living with a child whose stuff is everywhere. EVERYWHERE. EVERYWHERE!!! Ahem, what was I going to say? Oh right, I share this challenge and I’ve read many articles on how other, more accomplished parents and adults with kids, have figured this out. Some suggest just overall reducing the number of kid things. A popular one on the mom blogs is to take all your kid’s toys, sort them into tubs, and then store all but one tub at a time, rotating the tubs occasionally to provide variety. It all sounds very cute and nice. Maybe it will work for you! That said, I can not. On a particularly frustrated day, I crowd-sourced the many parents in all stages of life (littles to empty nesters) and asked them when the house would not feel like I am operating a disorganized daycare facility everywhere in the house. The answers ranged from, “It gets a little better when they get a little older,” to “You will never have a space not cluttered with kid stuff until they move all the way out to their own place.” So, if the question is really what do you need to be able to regain some sense of mental calmness, I’ve found that what works for me is claiming my own space. Dedicate some time one day when you’re not also working and/or solo taking care or kids or whatever and clear off a spot just for you, a little nook or even just a spot at your kitchen table. I put an additional work desk in my dining room for this. It’s currently covered in clutter, but it is definitely my clutter and my space. Frankly, I’d also suggest going outside as you’re able and taking in fresh air and naturally open space. Sometimes temporary escape is the best option. If you’re really able to put the time into it, the toy rotation people seem pretty passionate about the method and I’m sure it can work! If you’re more of a chaos monster yourself, like me, it may be time to just…relax into it and let go of the guilt about it and curate different ways to recharge your batteries.

Q10:

How does one go about asking their girlfriend to move in together?

A:

Kayla: This is maybe a frustrating answer, but there isn’t really one set way for how to go about this! There are so many variables here, including but not limited to financials, emotions, boundaries, personal needs/expectations, etc. If you’ve never broached the conversation at all with your girlfriend, start with that! This isn’t a situation that has a simple script; it’s not like you simply ask someone to move in with you and they say a simple yes/no. It’s usually an ongoing conversation and one that should include discussing logistics (location, budget, etc.) as well as the more internal/interpersonal things like why do you want to live together and how do you see this changing the relationship? Because it will likely change the relationship. But that’s a good thing! Relationships should change and grow. Do you want your girlfriend to move into your existing home or do you want to find a new home for both of you? Those can be slightly different conversations. Is your girlfriend happy/unhappy with her current living situation? Have you had any prior conversations that touch on things like home? It’s good to get a sense of where you both are. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to make this THE Ask. Understand that it might take time, multiple convos, and some compromise to figure out what you both want. It’s not a totally straightforward process, but if you’re wanting to move in together, the only way you’re going to make any progress is to get that ball rolling.

Vanessa: I would probably say, “hey babe, do you want to move in together?” I’m kidding but I’m not kidding — you’ve gotta ask her! I think, like all big life choices, this is probably a series of smaller conversations (does your gf like the idea of cohabitating, do you both feel comfortable losing the autonomy of having separate spaces, have you figured out what finances will look like if you move in together, do you eventually want to own a house together in the same city you live in or do you have dreams of traveling all over the place and not settling down, etc etc etc etc etc) that culminate in a series of decisions, but the only way to do it is to do it. Basically per always I agree with Kayla. Good luck!

Q11:

I feel like I’m exiting the phase of early adulthood where I feel great about everything I own being acquired haphazardly with no real central identity pulling my stuff together. But every time I try to look for some cool art, or furniture, or other decor it is all so damn expensive!! How have y’all navigated wanting to support local/independent artists & craftspeople and creating a space that reflects you while short on funds and basically building from the ground up? Help me transcend the Ikea/Craigslist aesthetic!

A:

Meg: This is so real! I think the biggest thing for me has been being patient with myself around budgeting for these unique and special artistic items. I work as a creative professional myself so I feel really strongly about paying for art, and I can hear that you feel the same way — and unfortunately what that means is that sometimes you’re just following artists that you like, buying pieces one at a time, and making a slow and gradual investment in your space. Sometimes artists will do sales or fundraisers when pieces will be less expensive, but other times it’s really worth saving up for something that you absolutely love, and knowing that it was worth the investment.

I put together a queer-owned housewares shop roundup as part of this folio, and while there are absolutely some expensive pieces in these stores, there are also some brilliant items that aren’t quite as pricy. Collections of postcards or smaller prints look great when framed and hung as a gallery wall, and small sculptures or objects in groups can have a major impact without costing quite as much as a single larger piece.

Riese: Sales and second-hand things! I’m doing a post for this series about how to find stuff that’s cute within your budget so probably the answer will be there, but in short: flea markets, goodwill, thrift stores, buying shit on black friday, labor day, etc.. I get most of my art from Society6 or Etsy and just give myself time — like I’ve been gradually decorating my living room since December, I probably won’t get to my bedroom until 2022 tbh. So it’s just a little bit of money every month until it all looks nice.

Kayla: I agree with Meg and Riese: It’s going to just take time probably. Take things slowly and also prioritize getting just a few pieces you really want vs. getting too much stuff. Less is more, ya know? Especially when it comes to a budget and wanting to support independent artists and businesses. Also understand that you might have to do a mix of buying small and buying from bigger stores to make it all work. Sometimes when it comes to bigger pieces like a table or bookcase, it might make sense to stick to the Ikea, Craigslist, etc stuff but then have extra money to be able to spend on art, ceramics, etc. Creating a balance can make it so that you actually have more $$$ in your pocket to give to local folks. Follow your fav artists on Instagram and support them in non-monetary ways whenever you can (boosting their posts, spreading the word about them, etc.) and then if you see a piece you really want and have the money to get it, go for it! Sometimes following artists on socials can also alert you to when they do flash sales, sell products that might have small blemishes, etc.

Ro: I love all of these answers! I also want to add that you can fix up the second hand things you already own. If you’re sick of your boring kitchen table, a coat of paint on a single piece can really transform your space!

Q12:

Moving gives me SO MUCH ANXIETY. I’ve only done it a few times in my life and they were big, cross country moves at times when I basically jettisoned all my possessions, but I’m coming up on my first normal, within the same city, needing to hire movers move, and like… how do people DO this? How do you handle packing in a tiny apartment where taking books out of a bookshelf just doubles the volume of the bookshelf in your tiny space? Do I let movers pack everything? How do I handle the loss of control that is strangers touching and possibly breaking my stuff? What do I do with my cat while it’s happening so he’s not stressed out of his mind? I know, in my rational brain, that people do this ALL THE TIME and it isn’t necessarily going to be a disaster, but even googling moving guides doesn’t soothe me because they all seem to be for nuclear families moving from one large suburban house to another, with plenty of time and friends and family support to help them, not for me, a single queer in a city where I know no one, with a tiny apartment and a cat.

A:

Riese: We actually have a great post about this: Moving 101: From Point A to Point B With Minimal Crying. There’s also good tips in Home Sweet Homo Moving Tips (including pet guidance!) and How to Move During a Pandemic. That last one might be helpful for you as someone who is moving on your own, even if the pandemic isn’t what it was when that post was written, it’s a good reference for moving with zero help.

Kayla: I was gonna link to those posts, but Riese beat me to it! Totally give those a look though; they’re thorough! Some specific tips I also have: Pack your own things. Most moving services (unless they’re hella $$$) do not include packing stuff up. They expect you to have everything in boxes, and then they move those boxes from point A to point B. I know boxing stuff up sounds like the hard part, but it’s best for you to do it yourself, because it helps you keep things organized and gives you the most control over how things are packaged. Uhaul stores have lots of packing materials to choose from (I highly recommend the “dish saver” kits for plates/bowls/basic dinnerware). But if you’re on a budget, one trick I’ve used before is getting free boxes from liquor stores/bodegas/basically anywhere that does a high volume of beverage sales. They’re almost always willing to give those boxes away for free, and sometimes the divider thingies for bottles can come in handy! It’s definitely hard to box things up in a small space—I feel ya on that one. I think you’re just going to have to understand that you and your cat might be a little uncomfy for a few days. On that note, do it in piecemeal. It means having to navigate around boxes for a longer amount of time BUT it also saves so much stress rather than trying to do it all at once. When looking for movers, Uhaul has a database for finding local help (it includes some of the nationwide businesses but also more mom and pop options specific to your area). Don’t forget to tip your movers!!!

Ro: I agree with Kayla — piecemeal packing can be annoying, but it’s totally worth it! That way, you won’t have to pack up your whole life under a strict deadline. If the whole idea of packing stresses you out, you can also invite a couple of friends over for a packing party. Grab some free boxes from your local liquor store, stock up on newspaper, order a pizza, put on some music or a movie and power through the piles together. Having a friend there on a moving day is also a great idea! They can provide you with some emotional support, they can transport your cat and help you communicate with movies.

Himani: Chiming in about the cat — your cat will be stressed out during your move. There are no two ways about that. There are a couple of things you can do day of to make things a little less hectic. Plan to have a place your cat can be shut into uninterrupted on the day of the move (like, for instance, a large closet or even your bathroom). Make sure there’s nothing else in that space that would require the movers accessing that space, and let your movers know that you have a cat who is shut into xyz location and to not open that door. If you’re worried that your cat is going to be especially anxious, you can try the Feliway stuff (sprays, wipes, collar, etc.) that’s supposed to reduce cat anxiety, though I honestly haven’t found them to be particularly helpful. My one cat was always incredibly stressed out during moves so at some point I went to the vet and they gave me a medication I could give him that would help him be a little calmer during the 24-hour period of the move, so that’s another option to consider.

Q13:

Hiya! My question has to do with making a space homey, cozy feeling, and comforting when you live alone. I’ve been blessed to become part of a polycule this year with three lovely folks who live together, and I feel so safe and nurtured and happy when I’m at their place. Every so often though I get really sad when it’s time to go to my own (fairly new) apartment- like homesick? While I’m working on my family/abandonment issues in therapy and getting support from my partners to help with the psychological side of this, I think it would also help to make my own place give me some of the good feelings I get at theirs. How can I make my apartment feel nurturing and familial when I live alone?

A:

Meg: I love that you want to invest some more time and energy into making your personal space feel more cozy and comforting! I’m personally a huge fan of cushions, throw blankets, candles, and soft lighting for making a space feel warm and inviting — playing music that you love, using home fragrance that reminds you of relaxing times or places, and adding plants or objects that you love can go a long way towards making you love your space. Since you’re spending time with your polycule at their space, it might also be worth looking at your favorite items in their home, and perhaps getting something similar for your own place. Do they have a really comfortable blanket that you love to use when you’re there? Specific items or lamps or decor pieces that you could get your own versions of? Scent can go a long way towards linking places or emotions, so particularly if their home smells a particular way or they tend to favor certain candles, buying the same items may help your own home feel familiar and comforting.

Kayla: I second all Meg’s suggestions of candles, throw blankets, etc. as well as copy-cating some of the things you like about other spaces. Another homey touch that I think is super underrated: Printed photos! No one ever gets photos printed and framed anymore!!! What if you had framed pics of your polycule in your home? Framed photos either in frames that have stands or that can be hung on a wall have such a nice, familial look and feel to them. It doesn’t have to be corny! It can be so cute! You can use online printing services that are a one-stop shop for frames as well. Or you can get creative and get a Polaroid camera and start taking photos with your polycule and friends. There are frames specifically for Polaroids or you can get Pinteresty with it.

Ro: I love these suggestions from Meg and Kayla! Here’s another idea: get a pet (if you have the capacity to responsibly care for an animal and if your building allows it). Having a furry (or feathered or scaled) friend who’s happy to see you when you come home can make your space feel extra inviting. If caring for an animal isn’t an option, you’re never too old to have a stuffed animal or two.

Himani: In addition to making the space a little homier as Meg and Kayla described, you might also consider having some activities at your apartment that you really enjoy (this is a broader version of Ro’s suggestion re: pet). Try having copies of some of your favorite books, movies, TV shows, board games, snacks or whatever your interests are at home so that when you’re home you have activities you can do that you really enjoy.

Q14:

I recently moved and now commute two hours each way by bus, a few times a week.

I need tips for being productive during the bus ride! My brain equates “bus” with “zone out, scroll instagram, listen to a podcast” but i absolutely cannot budget four hours a day to zoning out. I open my laptop intending to work on a document and it’s just so hard to focus.

Tips?

A:

Kayla: I would like to gently suggest you maybe rethink “productivity” here. Yes, I totally understand you not wanting to just scroll your way through four hours a day. But it sounds like you might be putting too much pressure on yourself to make the most of this time when, let’s be real, long commutes suck! Does listening to a podcast not seem productive? What about listening to audiobooks? Or what about listening to music and doing some mindfulness exercises? Those all sound like pretty good uses of time to me even if they don’t perfectly fit your idea of productivity. What about a crossword puzzle app on your phone? Or if that makes scrolling to tempting—a physical crossword book? Do you like to read? Could you bring a book or an e-reader along? I think you should ultimately do whatever feels best for you! Maybe prioritize feeling relaxed and comfortable on your commute vs. feeling “productive.” I think taking care of yourself and entertaining yourself can be perfectly productive!

Himani: Seconding Kayla about rethinking “productivity.” I’ll also add that working on a laptop on a bus or train or airplane has just never been comfortable to me. The seats are too tight to have the laptop comfortably on my lap and at an angle that makes it easy to see and use. If you’re really committed to trying to get work done on your commute, you might try old fashioned pen and paper. This requires having made a plan beforehand about what exactly you’ll be working on during the commute so that you have the printouts handy or whatever other resources you need readily available without a laptop. And then after, of course, you’ll have to type up whatever you wrote out during your commute, so there’s some added work there. When I can motivate myself to do it, I’ve found this to be a helpful way to get the “thinking” part of a task done while traveling. But also, not all down time has to be “productive” time.

Nicole: This is all great advice and I second it! Going along with what Himani said above about productivity, this is a different kind of environment than your home or workplace. For one, you don’t have to be traditionally productive (think of the reading time!), but if you want to be working on things, here are some thoughts. Your brain’s in a different place during your commute, and in terms of “productivity,” one of the things I’ve found most helpful is to meet my brain where it’s at with tasks that match. If being in a public transport situation saps you and makes you feel like you can only concentrate for limited amounts of time / do more passive work, that might be a good time to get caught up on industry research / news and to answer emails or other correspondence. If the distractions of the situation fuel your brain creatively, on the other hand, it might be a good time to jot down ideas, plan your day, think of people you need to get in touch with and what about. Is it time for digging into that complex spreadsheet or busy document? I’ve definitely seen it done, but it’s also very okay if that’s not for you! Finally, as someone who once wrote a whole novel during my commute times on the subway, I do heartily recommend the pen & paper method (for writing, drawing, doodling, jotting down random thoughts you have while listening to podcasts), a good pair of headphones, finding your favorite seat when possible, and maybe working on a passion project that is of high interest to you so that this helps you to tune out some of the distractions. Good luck!

Q15:

Can you recommend plants that are…

Safe for cats
Work well with light from both sides (would be in a corner with windows on both walls)
Easy to take care of

(Reference: PNW location, no air conditioner in home, if that matters for plant health!!)

Thank you!!!

A:

Himani: First, the ASPCA has a searchable guide to toxic and nontoxic plants for pets that I recommend bookmarking. In terms of specific plants that do well with a lot of light, African violet and Christmas cactus are two plants that I think are relatively easy to care for that I think both like a lot of sunlight. Spider plants seem like they can’t be killed either, though one thing I read said they prefer indirect light (I think it’s still worth giving the spider plant a try). Also, I’ve never grown Pilea peperomioides but I’ve always wanted to; that one is not on the ASPCA’s guide but other sources show it is nontoxic to cats and that it does well in a bright spot.

Q16:

My long-term girlfriend and I live together. She is messier than I am and tends to leave small messes before she goes to work (I work from home). Not majorly bad, but things like empty water bottles, scraps from making her lunch on the counter, etc. She’s also a bit of a packrat (and admits these things!)

I don’t want to be a “maternal” force or a “nag,” but I’ve nudged her about these things and she hasn’t changed the behavior. Anyone have recommendations on how to talk about her being a little more proactive about cleaning up after herself so the labor doesn’t fall on me? (She grew up with a nanny and house cleaner and I think it just doesn’t click for her, I don’t think she does it intentionally or to mess with me, to be clear!)

A:

Kayla: I guess I’m wondering what exactly you mean when you say you’ve nudged her about these things before. Does that look like just saying “hey can you pick things up more often?” While that does seem straightforward, sometimes people need a more significant nudge than that. It does sound like your girlfriend’s past informs these behaviors, and you don’t have to necessarily bring that up, but I do think it would be helpful if you can tell her WHY you’d like her to pick things up more often and how it makes YOU feel when she does not. So something like “hey, it affects my day and mood when I have to pick up after you.” Make it clear that her actions don’t really happen in a vacuum—this is your shared space, and for you, it’s also your place of work. It’s not nagging to express how this affects you. If you feel like that’s an imbalance in the household labor, it’s perfectly reasonable to say that. I don’t think your girlfriend will feel attacked if you’re like “hey, I spend time cleaning up after you and I’m wondering if we can change that.” She should be able to build time to clean up into her morning routine without making any major changes.

Q17:

My new-ish roommate is a good person but really annoys me. I think the pandemic has made me less tolerant since I haven’t been rubbing shoulders with a range of people not of my own choosing the way I usually might be. I don’t really know what my question is here, but – aaaagh! What’s the main move here, trying to bond with the annoying person so you become fond of them, trying to become generally more accepting and chill, or just trying to organise your live so you don’t have to share space with people whose company you don’t enjoy?

A:

Kayla: You definitely don’t have to be friends with your roommate if you don’t want to be. Some of my best roommate situations have been with people who I only interacted with when it was necessary. If this person annoys you, I’m not sure you’ll be able to force a friendship by trying to bond. That said, this situation could become really bad really fast—for both of you. You might become resentful of this person in your space, which could lead to passive aggression and other tensions. Maybe reminding yourself you don’t have to be besties with them will help? If the annoyances are small, keep that in mind, too. So many roommate situations are HELLISH, but dealing with small annoyances is also really common. Don’t go out of your way to spend time with this person if you genuinely don’t enjoy their company. You might start to feel more accepting if you just accept you’re not socially compatible. Address genuine issues as they come up so resentment doesn’t form!

Ro: There’s a difference between behavior that’s annoying to you (like the sound of someone’s laugh) and behavior that’s crossing your boundaries (like making lots of noise while you’re trying to sleep or refusing to do dishes). If you determine that there are certain things about your roommate that are just annoying to you, then you’ll have to live with those things, and like Kayla said, you don’t have to be friends with this person. If you determine that your roommate’s behavior is more than just annoying and needs to be addressed, then talk to them about that. Establishing working agreements with roommates is essential for a comfortable, well-functioning home environment, and it’s best to make those agreements sooner rather than later.

Q18:

Any advice for first time homebuyers? What should I NOT do?

A:

Riese: We have some good guides for that! Home Sweet Homo: A Guide For Buying Your First Home and Home Sweet Homo: An Autostraddle Homeowner Roundtable. Lots of first-time advice in there!

My home-owning experience is kind of as bad as it gets and I doubt you’ll run into any of the problems I did but! Personally, I wish I hadn’t bought a house with a partner who I couldn’t rely on in a town that I didn’t want to live in without said partner. And I wish I had not rushed the process — it was deep winter when we were home-shopping and so the entrance crawl space under the house was caked in snow so the inspector didn’t go under there. I wish he had somehow like blasted it open because then we would’ve learned that the house was on a sinkhole with the worst plumbing in the history of plumbs! That was um, a very expensive mistake.

Himani: The guides Riese shared are really great resources to prepare yourself for the process. Really do spend some time figuring out what it is you actually want out of your home. One thing that I think is worth keeping in mind as you’re budgeting for what you can afford, is that even after you buy a place, you’ll want to have some money set aside for unexpected repairs that you’ll find out about only after you’ve lived there (as in Riese’s experience, though that sounds like an extreme and truly awful situation).

Nicole: The above is great advice! First, make sure you know what you actually want out of buying a house. Are you looking to do major fixes? Less so? Live close to work? Don’t care about commuting? Need quiet? Need to be near your doctor’s certain schools, what-have-you? Make sure you have these things defined so that no matter how hypnotizing and perfect a house seems, if it doesn’t actually serve you, you won’t be tempted. (House-shopping can get emotional for a lot of people.) So, what not to do: choose a house because you fall in love with it but some things are fundamentally not going to work for you.

Also, very important: Do your research on real estate agents! Also, get an agent. This person will be your advocate and is the one who will help make sure you aren’t taken advantage of and just all-in-all have a managable experience with what is kind of a hellish experience. Some tips for finding one who might be great for first-time and also gay home buyers: 1) Ask around! Do you know other people who bought houses? Who were their agents? What was the experience like? Did they stick up for them during negotiations and help explain the process? Will they recommend them? 2) Check out the people who are out there in queer / feminist spaces teaching people about home-buying. My agent teaches classes on first-time home-buying at a feminist maker space and is personally really committed to helping to get people into homes they can afford. This was a really great green flag! She did not mind showing me houses that were really at the bottom level of what was on the market (we looked at one with a barber shop in the living room which unfortunately had a basement best described as a “termite cave” — also have seen some houses which only had unfinished bathrooms in the basement as the only bathroom, to give you an idea) before we found the one. She helped me negotiate the price and walked me through the mortgage process, too. Of course, the market is apparently going wild right now, so it’s also a good idea to figure out your comfort level with buying right now (there’s a whole other conversation about the 2021 housing market), but either way, you’ll be better off if you have a good, trustworthy person helping you look! So, don’t: go it alone or with an agent who you don’t trust.

And yes, that part about making sure you have money budgeted for unexpected repairs is totally, very good advice. Things will happen! No matter how careful you are! Good luck out there!

Q19:

I’ve spent a lot of my life living in a rural area, where there’s a lot of poverty and not a lot of jobs or opportunities, but the natural landscape is beautiful. When I’m there, I spend a lot of time outdoors, in green space, in quiet and solitude because there just aren’t that many people around. Feeling connected to nature, spending time alone like that and seeing the seasonal changes passing over the same landscape again and again is something that I really care about, and it’s played a huge part in managing my recurring bouts of depression over the years, spending time in nature is one of my favourite types of informal mindfulness and it’s one of the coping mechanisms that I’ve relied on very heavily at times.

But I keep needing to move away into cities, for education and then for work. And I’ve always ended up stuck renting shoeboxes with barely enough direct light to keep shade-loving pot plants alive, let alone outside space. I hope one day I’ll manage to find secure employment in the country, but with the way things are playing out with the pandemic, a lot of rural businesses just haven’t survived the last two years, and the “tree-changers” leaving the cities are massively driving up the price of rent in the country. So I expect I’ll be stuck mostly in cities for a long time yet.

I don’t know if I can articulate a really specific question here. But I think I struggle with feeling “connected to place” and to nature in an urban/suburban setting. Something feels disconnected and I end up feeling like I’m mourning. I think I have trouble finding ways to pay attention to the nature that *is* around me in cities, because there’s just so much less, it very acutely feels like a loss. I don’t think I have trouble making an indoors living space feel like home, but I really want to find better ways to feel connected to nature and the landscape while living in a city, where there’s light pollution and traffic noise, and people everywhere to push past and disturb the peace, and the deserted places don’t feel safe. Does anyone have things they can share about coping with city living as someone who’s used to the country? Or just about ways to bring connections with nature into your daily life when living in a really built environment?
Thank you.

A:

Ro: If you can choose which city you live in, opt for a city that’s within driving distance from places where you can hike, swim and/ or generally get away from people and visit those places often. You also find some solitude in the city if you look hard enough. I live in Chicago, where I’ve found less populated parts of the lakefront and regularly go for walks in our local cemeteries, which have lots of trees, ponds and even coyotes (plus, unlike our local beaches, cemeteries aren’t filled with people grilling and blasting music). It’s definitely not the same as living in a rural environment, but it helps me stay grounded in a crowded place. If you have the time and financial means to take a yearly vacation in a remote place, make that happen for yourself! Hopefully, you can replace some of your mourning with planning.

Himani: Totally seconding Ro’s suggestion about (if possible) opting to live in a city that is near places where you can hike and do outdoor activities. If you live in the city without a car, look to see if there are places that are accessible by public transit, although that can be really limited. (For instance, there’s a bunch of hiking trails accessible by Metro North from NYC; not sure how many other cities are connected to hiking trails by public transit.) Taking a yearly vacation to a remote place is a great suggestion, but if that feels out of reach at the moment or if you want to have a little more greenery in your life on the regular, maybe try to budget for shorter one- or two-day trips to places near where you live that you can take every few months.

Nicole: You mention growing things, but often not having enough light. Does your city have community gardens where you can rent a plot, or urban farming / food sovereignty  organizations you can volunteer with, or even botanic gardens looking for folks to volunteer? I suggest planting things deliberately or engaging in volunteer work as a way of cultivating a practice of getting into nature, where you’re participating and also helping to make the city more green for others. Most people live in urban areas, and the more we can connect them with nature, the better they are for everyone.

Q20:

What advice do you have about designing/decorating a space with your partner? I’ve been living with my partner for a few years but we really struggle when it comes to making decorating decisions together!

A:

Kayla: Is the struggle that you have very different design/decor aesthetics? That can be tough! I don’t think it totally works to have a compromise where BOTH of your aesthetics/styles are present in every room. That can make a space feel overwhelming lol. But I think it’s still possible to compromise! If your place has multiple rooms, maybe one of you decorates the bedroom and one of you decorates the living space. Again, not a perfect solution, but it allows you to both have some control and creative expression without clashing with each other. Find ways to both have your tastes reflected instead of just the same person sacrificing their style for the other. That can cause some resentment! The home should feel like it belongs to and reflects BOTH of you, even if you have different visions/styles.

If the struggle is more that you’re both indecisive or feel overwhelmed by decorating/shopping for your home, that’s a bit of an easier fix! Make a shared Pinterest account together, save the things you like, and then commit to actually executing them. Looking/window shopping together can sometimes be easier when it’s over the internet/on an app versus the pressure of having to make these decisions on the spot in a physical store.

Nicole: When we’re trying to make decisions about a specific project, my partner and I usually make a shared Google spreadsheet, rank our favorites for anything (a ceiling fan, a paint color), discuss, then ruthlessly narrow them down until we have something left that we both liked a lot — or two options left that I like a lot and she makes the final call, for example. This may not be for everyone but if you find that trying to talk through design decisions out loud is a lot and takes a lot of time, or that you forget about options as you look through, finding a way where you can keep things organized and work independently during designated periods may be a help! Other non-spreadsheet ways to do this are taking Kayla’s awesome suggestion above and creating Pinterest boards, or creating drawings and designs of how you’d want to arrange a space, showing them to each other, and discussing, etc. The point is to give yourself and your partner space to be creative and dream of design on your own, and then be able to show a complete picture to your partner for their input (and the other way, too), which I feel is just more organized? Good luck! You’ve got this!

Q21:

Hello!

Do you have any advice on how to make my room a room, instead a floor where I drop my things at random? I live in a huge bedroom that takes up the whole floor, but don’t have a layout or plan for it. I want to have significant space to dance and maybe somehow entertain?!) and I’ll probably move the desk downstairs. I also like creative seating; I have one pouf I like using, and have been thinking of getting some more. I have tons of clothes and an incomplete clothes storage system. I appreciate any advice or plans you have; my room has looked like this for a couple years now.

A:

Nicole: Wow! You have so much space to work with. I’m not sure what your wall situation is in terms of how much you’re allowed to / able to update, but the first thing that strikes me is that if the room feels monotonous to you, you can try and break up the space by decorating the walls a little differently to help break up the room before you even add furniture to help with this! You could try removable sticky wallpaper for your green, painted walls to add areas with patterns. Or, (after priming) you could repaint the walls, not necessarily all white, but with a few accent walls to designate different stations in your space. If you’re allowed, you can also scruff up the wood panelling a little with sandpaper, prime and paint that, too. Then, I think what what everyone else has shared are all really great ways to consider breaking up the space. Other ways to visually demarcate spaces where certain activities take place that don’t require furniture include throw rugs, changes in artwork themes, and the books that are shelved in one space vs another (work books by the work station, sewing books in the craft station…etc.) that will help give the space a sort of sense of its purpose.

For the stuff on the floor. It might help to work backward from the stuff you have –> storage solutions. So, like, if you’re going through a bunch of craft supplies for example, you would say “okay, I have a lot of yarn and this yarn needs a home” and you write that down, then you note “and my knitting supplies also go with the yarn, so the storage needs to account for that” and then you find a box and you open it and you say, “and I have a collection of zines that I’ve had in a box forever, but I want them to actually be displayed, so they need a home that does that” and then as you plan and shop, you’re not creating spaces and then shoving things into those spaces, your storage situations are chosen and designed to house the stuff you have.

Also, that outdoor balcony space is so great! Don’t underestimate the power of good lighting (some string lights, probably!). Add a couple of thrifted outdoor chairs and a table, a little outdoor rug for color, a citronella candle, and other decorations of your choosing and you have an outdoor sitting space.

Meg: This looks like a fantastic space! I’m a big fan of rugs for dividing spaces up, particularly if you want to set up a little seating area with armchairs and a side table, a reading nook, a dining area, or a place to work. Think about how you’d like to use the space, what kinds of areas you’d like to establish, and then experiment with different portions of the room. Don’t be afraid to play around! You might think that one corner will work really well for a reading nook and then realize that you don’t actually like sitting there, and that’s okay! Give yourself the freedom to try a few different configurations and you’ll learn more about how you’d like the different areas to function, and what doesn’t actually work for you.

Riese: If you feel lost on how to decorate your space, I’d browse sites and instagrams like apartment therapy and just copy other people’s spaces that you like. It’s a great hack for when you lack that designer’s eye yourself.

Kayla: Another way to explore possible floorplans/ways to designate spaces within the same room is to literally go to Ikea and walk through the example rooms/apartments they have. A lot of their display rooms are specifically of studio apartments or other small spaces, and even though your issue is basically having a bedroom that’s too big rather than too small, you could get some ideas from how those display rooms create designated spaces/areas without walls. There are all sorts of creative things you can do to essentially add living/socializing space to your room. You don’t even have to commit to buying anything from Ikea—looking is free lol. You might get some storage/organizing ideas for your closet from looking at those display rooms, too. The Ikea sample spaces are always all about maximizing space!

Ro: If you’ve ever been to daycare or preschool, you’ve probably been in a space with multiple “stations” (a coloring station, a Playdough station, a Lego station, etc.). You can set up your adult space in the same way! Your bedroom definitely needs a sleeping station. Maybe you’d like to have a making station or cozy reading corner. When you start thinking about your space in terms of the activities you’d like to do in that space, it can be easier to divide up the room and decide what goes where.

Himani: It might seem counterintuitive, but buying a little more storage furniture might help you organize both the items in the space as well as the space itself. You can use the furniture to help with designating the different “stations” that others have mentioned in their responses earlier.

Queer Design 102: Figuring Out What Your Space Needs

Spaces & Places is a three-week series focusing on the private and community areas we occupy, the ways we personalize them, and the meanings that we assign to them. Organized and edited by Meg Jones Wall.

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We’ve spent some time thinking about how we want our space to look and feel, to consider what our personal style is and what kinds of pieces will help us feel comfortable, happy, energized, relaxed, inspired, or whatever else we’re hoping to feel in each particular area. But there’s another important piece to designing a space, one that’s a bit more focused on the practical: what does your space actually need?

I don’t mean this in a purely aesthetic sense, though if in your heart of hearts you know that what you really need is a greenhouse or a gorgeous bed frame or an old school Ms. Pac-Man arcade game, I highly encourage you to just go for it. What I mean is that by examining how you and anyone you might live with uses your spaces, you can make some major or minor adjustments that shift the way you feel about your home. By looking critically at our spaces and thinking about how we actually want to be using them, we can shift our perspective on how we organize and arrange things, and create more functional spaces for ourselves.

Some choices are driven entirely by design, but others are driven by efficiency. In an ideal space, you can meet those practical needs with beautiful items, making your space feel deeply you and also benefit how you live, work, play, and rest. If you feel like you’re struggling to figure out how to make a particular room, corner, or area work for you, take some time to look critically at the space itself. What already works, and what doesn’t? Which pieces or elements contribute to the space flowing well, and which ones get in your way? Where is there space that you aren’t taking advantage of, and which areas are you trying to force to work in a way that simply isn’t functional? Even if you don’t have the budget or permission to do full-scale renovations, there are so many small tweaks and adjustments you can make that will still create substantial change.

Think about how you actually want to use a space, rather than what a space was designed for, and you may find that new ideas start to flow. If you don’t actually cook but have a large kitchen, adding a table to the center for dining, working, or socializing can help you utilize that space in a way that actually serves your needs. If your living space is designed around a television that no one actually watches, don’t be afraid to just get rid of the TV and instead reorganize the space in a way that people will really use. If the overhead lighting in your bedroom gives you a headache, changing out the bulbs, adding a new shade or cover, or incorporating table or floor lamps can make it feel like a brand new space. What do you need, and how could reimagining the spaces that you already have help you meet those needs? Where could adding or removing things like shelves, storage, lamps, or mirrors change the way that a space feels or functions?

Break Your Own Rules

In thinking about how you utilize certain places and pieces, it’s okay to think outside the box, to ignore “design rules” for the sake of actually addressing what you need. When I first moved into my new apartment in Brooklyn, I knew that the small kitchen and the funky layout was going to be a hassle. I love to cook, and I needed a space for food photography as well as enough room to chop and blend. Counter space was extremely limited, so I purchased a baker’s rack for additional storage, along with a high table and bar stools for additional seating. My first plan had been to tuck the table into the back corner, in between a lamp with a daylight-toned bulb and my little wine refrigerator, making it a perfect place to eat, work, and occasionally style and photograph food. But after a few months of this configuration, I realized that I almost never sat there, instead just using it as an extra surface to leave projects on. I had wanted the space to be as aesthetically pleasing as possible, but more than that, I wanted to actually be using all of the things that I had purchased with my limited budget. Having the table facing the wall meant that it made a great photography space, but was a bummer to sit at, as the layout ended up feeling claustrophobic.

After arguing with myself for awhile, I pulled the table out, turned it at a different angle so that it would be parallel to the back of my small sofa, and immediately preferred the new configuration. It was a much more pleasant place to eat or work, and also functioned as a standing desk for when I got tired of sitting at my desk. Layout-wise, this new arrangement of furniture sometimes strikes me as a little bit odd — but the pure practicality of this setup, and the transformation in the ways that I now use this table that was once entirely ignored, makes up for it.

Consider Your Flow

It can also be helpful to observe how you move through a specific space. Pay attention to the paths that you take through rooms or areas, to the objects that you reach for the most frequently, to the things that you want to use or enjoy but don’t actually ever utilize. For example, when it’s time for you to make a pot of coffee, where do the things that you need to perform this task live? Do you find yourself walking back and forth through different areas in order to add water, grind coffee beans, find filters, get a mug, and add any extras to your cup? It doesn’t have to be about maximizing efficiency in everything — but if you’re constantly moving several boxes of tea that you don’t even drink out of the way to get to your coffee beans, there might be a solve for that.

My front door opens in an awkward way, and without a coat closet or obvious place to leave shoes and keys, I found myself constantly leaving mail, headphones, and other objects on my extremely limited counter space after coming in from outside. (New York City apartments really do train you to solve any number of bizarre layout and functionality problems.) I barely had the space to add anything that would help, but I decided that a small set of shelves would give me a small, designated place to hang masks and keys, store an umbrella and hand sanitizer, and would also create a natural area for me to leave shoes. After measuring the wall and scouring the internet for a shelf that would fit the wall without taking up too much precious space, I finally found an inexpensive piece that worked perfectly for the area. I added a few candles, hung up a mirror, and created an oddly perfect little entryway nook that solved the clutter problem by my front door.

Not every issue in your place may have such an obvious solution. Sometimes, addressing these kinds of problems requires some trial and error, a little experimenting in order to see what will actually help you address the issue. But as with so many things, observing what you do naturally in your space can help you accommodate those needs — and sometimes, it’s worth prioritizing what will actually serve you, instead of worrying about design rules.

Create a Balance

The last thing to keep in mind when solving space issues is to remember the principle of balance. Generally when choosing items, we think about a focal point for the room: a big sofa, a comfortable bed, a desk and a chair. We start with the biggest pieces and build around them. And when it comes to design and style, that’s exactly right! But every single room or space doesn’t have to be dominated by one particular piece — sometimes, choosing smaller items allows for a space to serve multiple functions, instead of limiting an area to only one use.

I showed you images earlier of the dining and cooking space that I created in my apartment, but in truth, the entire living space is one that I tweaked to allow it to serve multiple purposes. The additional space that I made for storage, food preparation, coffee making, and dining/working was carved out of my living space, resulting in two distinct areas in one room. By putting the couch in the middle of the room and anchoring it with a rug, I created a dedicated living space with storage for my camera equipment, books, and linens. And by separating the room with the couch, I gave myself a mini kitchen expansion, with space for my table.

Again, it might feel a bit unconventional to people that don’t live in NYC, or who would have preferred to keep the largest room a full living space in order to have more guests. (And yes, I know that if I changed the way this room is laid out I could absolutely make space for a Peloton — please don’t @ me, I have already grieved.) But since I was moving in a pandemic, since I like to have multiple spaces to write and work in my home, and since cooking and food photography are important parts of my life, it made sense to sacrifice a bit of my living space in this way — and it has turned out to be incredibly functional for me. If I ever want to have more people over at once I’ll need to rearrange some things, but as a person living alone, it functions beautifully for my daily needs and the ways that I move through my space.

Where can you try out new configurations of furniture or other objects, in a way that might give you more options for your spaces? How have you found creative solutions to issues with your current place? Let me know in the comments, and stay tuned for Queer Decor 103, where we’ll look at budgeting!

Spaces & Places: Team Fantasy Wishlist

Spaces & Places is a three-week series focusing on the private and community areas we occupy, the ways we personalize them, and the meanings that we assign to them. Organized and edited by Meg Jones Wall.

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Designing a room or a whole home so often leaves us at the mercy of budget, space restrictions, and the preferences of other people we may live with. But sometimes we just gotta dream big and indulge our wildest fantasies. So I asked our team — if you could have absolutely anything in your home, what would you choose?

Kayla Kumari, Writer

1 / Combination Hot Pot/KBBQ Grill ($142)
2 / Outdoor Cooler Table ($181)
3 / Massive Wall Candle Holder ($199)

Maybe this is my freshly vaxxed brain talking, but I am DESPERATE to host more dinner parties. I’m destined to be a Dinner Party Bitch! So I decided to pick three things that would really take my fantasy dinner parties to the next level, starting with this at-home KBBQ grill that has an attached, dual-divider hot pot! See also: this hybrid cooler/table that I absolutely do not have space for on my current balcony. Just think how cute it would be for pre-dinner drinks and apps! And even though I also do not have the wall space for this (mainly because an entire wall in my apartment is one big mirrorwall), I’ve always been obsessed with this simple but gorgeous tealight wall piece that YES my mother owns but NO I’m not turning into her!!!!!

Riese Bernard, CEO

1. Stairmaster 4400PT Free Climber ($800 – $3,000)
2. Quincy Bed ($1,198)
3. Modern Cabinet Bookcase ($699)

All I want in this life is a 90s era Stairmaster and I am not going to apologize for it while also acknowledging that I will never be able to afford it?!

I haven’t had an actual bedframe in years and sometimes I think, wow it would be cool to like, lean back in bed onto a beautiful headboard, you know? My bedroom is the room in my house that has gotten the least amount of attention so far, and it shows.

Lastly, I’m already running out of space for all of my books and magazines and assorted paper items and this would be a beautiful addition to the ongoing attempt to handle the situation!

Meg Jones Wall, Spaces & Places Editor

1 / Peloton Bike ($2,495)
2 / Library Leather Chair ($3595)
3 / Cassiopeia Black Silk Robe ($565)

There is literally nowhere in my current apartment that a Peloton Bike could possibly live, but that hasn’t stopped me from lusting after one for nearly a year anyway. And while that fantasy is fairly new, I have wanted a big squishy leather armchair since I was a little kid, and that dream has never faded. Obviously, I need a gorgeous, luxurious silk robe to wear while I sit in that chair, drink bourbon, and plot revenge on my enemies.

Abeni, Writer

1 / HD Webcam ($199)
2 / Ring Light ($69.99)
3 / USB-C to Ethernet Adapter ($29.99)

Am I going to ever go back into Twitch streaming? I don’t know. But I do have to be in Zoom meetings for approximately 12 hours per day, so I’d love to upgrade my setup. My webcam was free; it’s decent (how are webcams built into laptops still so bad, so many years later?) but it’s not like, great, and I would like to stunt on all of my coworkers, so the HD webcam and the ring light are essentials. Also I have a Mac Mini, which doesn’t even have a built-in. I sometimes use my work PC, a Microsoft laptop that sucks and has a sucky webcam, and also it doesn’t have an ethernet port, which means it is slow because wi-fi sucks and is slow, especially if I ever want to play and stream a PC game. So I need to plug into the ethernet! Help make my stream dreams come true (or help me look cute in the 23 Zoom meetings I have each day).

Nicole Hall, A+ and Fundraising Director

1 / Blackstone Adventure Ready 17″ Outdoor Griddle ($84)
2 / 6″ Evil Eye Planter with Drainage ($180)
3 / Palram Snap and Grow Greenhouse ($616.55)

I’d like to say I’m also “adventure ready” — and maybe I am, but do you know what this is really for? That’s right. Cooking outside when it’s too hot to turn on the stove inside my kitchen. But also: cooking anywhere, cooking in the woods, cooking with friends, cooking while on adventures! Also, so, I really want an herb wall because it’s space-efficient. However, I know that for anything I can find in the range of pre-made herb walls, if I showed it to my girlfriend, Sadie, she would say “We can build that.” And she would be right! What I canNOT do, however, is create gorgeous and slightly sinister hand-thrown ceramic planters. I would like 13 of these, please, so that I can deflect any ill will while surrounding myself with tiny herb and flower babies all winter. Finally, also in preparation for winter (while it is July), while I would really love to make a greenhouse out of reclaimed windows, I am also not made of time. So, in this spendy fantasy, I’d go for an easy-to-assemble greenhouse. I just want to stand in it in fall weather and inhale the scent of tomato plants having an extended season. That seems nice.

Rachel, Managing Editor

1 / Vintage Hairpin Leg Card Catalogue Side Tables ($1,850)
2 / Azilal Rug ($648
3 / Cast Iron Plant ($79.99)

Most of my design dreams are sort of rooted in the fantasy that I live in a spacious sun-drenched loft with twelve-foot windows and a sexily dilapidated exposed brick wall; I very much do not, and none of these things will fit in my like 600-square-foot apartment, but we can dream. Maybe someday they will fit in like, the lower floor of a duplex with screened-in porch! Either way, we’re going for cozy but refined elegance, lots of textures and living plants, tiny tchotchkes on every surface, also plenty of room to lay on the floor.

Valerie Anne, Writer & Social Media Co-Editor

1 / Gaming Chair ($190)
2 / Portable Washing Machine ($408)
3 / Vintage Trunk ($152)

Looking at these three things together makes no sense, but neither do I. One thing I’ve learned about being an adult and living on my own means my furniture doesn’t have to make sense to anyone but me! Also in my defense they are for different rooms. I really want a gaming chair. It wouldn’t match my decor in my living room but I play Fortnite with a cute queer squad every Friday night and my couch is juuuust a little too far away to properly spot teen enemies and the dining room chair I sit in is FINE but it could be BETTER if it was PURPLE and also cushy. My bathroom is absolutely not big enough to house a portable washing machine but having to walk up and down three flights of stairs to get to the laundromat makes doing my laundry an even more annoying chore than it would be on its own. And I just need more storage in my bedroom, and what better thing to put my traysures in than a potentially haunted vintage trunk!! Bonus points if it comes with a skeleton key.

Heather Hogan, Senior Writer & TV Team Editor

1 / Ms. Pac-Man Arcade Cabinet ($1,780)
2 / Library Bookcase With Ladder ($5,800)
3 / Nike Air Mag — Back to the Future ($650)

I wouldn’t say that I have a “design aesthetic” as much as I have an “idea of perfect happiness curated from the design choices of my favorite childhood movie characters.” Luckily for me, my wife is fully on board with this because her personal design aesthetic is “cool stuff I like.” When people come to our house, no one ever says, like, “What a cohesive modern industrial style you have!” Instead they’re like, “Wow, your house is so you.” And it is. Full of soft things in the colors we’ve each loved most since childhood, the toys and treasures neither of us could ever afford growing up, and endless homages to our favorite movies, books, TV shows, video games — and also our cats. And so that’s why, for this fantasy design situation, I have chosen: Ms. Pac-Man, my all-time most played arcade cabinet game, something I have wanted in my home since I saw Tom Hanks’ Big; a set of bookcases with a built in ladder to start building out my own Beauty and the Beast-style library; and a pair of Nike Air Mag self-lacing sneakers like what Marty McFly wore in Back to the Future II, and which I would display on my Beauty and the Beast laddered bookshelf in a glass case, as I would with all my other priceless collectibles, such as my childhood teddy bear, Teddy Hogan. (I would, however, need easy access to remove Teddy in case of bad dreams, hard times, etc.)

I’m Finally Taking Up Space In My Own Place

Spaces & Places is a three-week series focusing on the private and community areas we occupy, the ways we personalize them, and the meanings that we assign to them. Organized and edited by Meg Jones Wall.

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The concept of taking up space is something I’ve always struggled with. From growing up in a home where being unnoticed was preferred to being a target of rage, years of half-hearted pity-invites to parties from friends who knew I probably wouldn’t be allowed, generally assuming no one wanted me around because of self-consciousness and anxiety, and internalized fatphobia, I am constantly aware of how much space I’m taking up, literally or metaphorically. I never want to be in anyone’s way in a physical sense, I never want to be anyone’s emotional burden. It all feels like other people’s space I’m borrowing, and I always want to be a perfect guest in that space.

For the first 33 years of my life, I never lived alone. Which is odd to think about, considering I’ve spent a lot of time alone. In fact, I’d argue I’ve spent MOST of my time on this Earth thus far alone. But I never truly lived alone until my most recent roommate moved in with her girlfriend a few months into the pandemic and I decided she would be my last roommate.

The first place I remember living in is the one my family and I moved to when I was three years old, where my parents still live now. It was two floors of a two-family house in Massachusetts, 5 miles north of Boston. My grandparents lived in the first floor apartment, and my parents, my little brother, and I lived on the top two floors. We had no backyard to speak of, just a slab of concrete that was only available for playing when my dad wasn’t parked there. We lived on a busy street, and I was more inclined to read books than play outside anyway, so a lot of time was spent in my room. When we eventually got a second computer in our house, the one we could actually play games on because it wasn’t mom’s work computer, it went into my room, meaning my parents had the power to give my brother permission to come into my room, no matter how I felt about it. And locking my door was not an option. I’m not sure what they thought I was doing in there. I didn’t do drugs in high school but even if I did I would’ve been smart enough not to do them in a house where I wasn’t even allowed to drink soda. Regardless of my spotless track record, no locks allowed, and my parents took advantage of that whenever they felt like it.

I had my own room, and between my books, TV shows, imagination and the internet, I had my own worlds, but I didn’t really have my own space. I did my best to make it my own, with baby teal paint on the walls, glittery glow-in-the-dark butterflies on the ceiling, a corkboard for my Spice World movie ticket stub and my Hanson CD liner and my quirky keychains from Spencer’s. I wasn’t allowed to tape things to the wall so I asked my mom to hang up an empty poster frame and I taped pages from magazines to it, like my Got Milk ad collection (Sarah Michelle Gellar, the Charmed Ones) or my JTT glamour shot from Tiger Beat. It wasn’t really what I wanted, but it was close enough.

Freshman year of college, I lived with three other girls in a two-bedroom suite. My bed was closest to the door that we kept unlocked, so luckily I never slept because I’m not sure how I would have been able to. I can’t count high enough to tell you how many mornings I woke up to someone sitting on the foot of my bed talking to my roommate, or how many nights I took my headphones out after finishing as much of The L Word as Megavideo would allow to realize my roommate and her boyfriend were having sex 10 feet away. That was probably the least a space has ever been mine, since it was basically our living room, but I tried to put my own touches on it. I had a towel with a bunch of musicals on it that I hung like a tapestry, and a few official musical posters that were the beginning of a collection I never finished. (I did get the RENT one signed though, so I felt pretty cool about that.) Plus, a Kim Anderson print my older cousin gave me and a Starry Night print I got at the gift shop during my first trip to the MoMA that made me feel very sophisticated even though they didn’t fit in with my accidental theatre nerd theme at all. These wall hangings would travel with me for years: BOTH of my sophomore year dorms, the first a six-person suite in a room so small it was a fire hazard to unbunk our beds (even though we did it anyway) and the second a room in a two-story suite shared with 7 other girls. They came with me junior year to another 4-person suite, and senior year to the suite of four single rooms off one shared kitchen and bathroom.

This art all came with me after college too, the poster edges starting to fray from being put up and taken down so many times; the towel starting to fade from hanging in various amounts of sunlight; the frame to the Kim Anderson print cracked in one of the many treks between New York and Boston. They came with me to the apartment in Inwood, Manhattan that had the best neighborhood but the worst roommates. They came with me to the apartment in Kensington, Brooklyn that had the worst neighborhood but the best roommate. And they came with me to Astoria, to the apartment I live in now, though they were first hung up in the small room I now use as a Study.

It never made sense to me to buy anything new. What’s the point? I’d think. I’m just going to have to take it all down and put it all back up again. I moved 11 times in six years, between my 5 dorms, summers in Boston, and three NYC apartments. What was the point of investing more time than tossing up what I already owned? Enough to hide some of the asylum-white walls, but not enough that it will be annoying to take down in a year when I inevitably move again.

Plus, I always felt like a visitor in these rooms. Like I was living in my roommate’s home, even when the rent was split fairly.

But then something strange happened: I didn’t move. My favorite roommate and I stayed in the same apartment for another year, then another. When she moved out to live with her boyfriend I just…didn’t. And suddenly it felt like MY apartment. I cycled through a few more roommates, eventually moving to the bigger of the two rooms, cycled through a few more. But I was the constant in this equation now. MY name was the only one on the lease, it was my second bedroom to rent out. It was MY space and I was the one sharing it, instead of the other way around.

I finally started to feel like my bedroom was a place that was going to be mine for a while. And when I looked at the posters that had traveled with me for over a decade, I saw them for what they were: safe. Sure, they did reflect some of my interests. But they were carefully curated for a closeted gay young adult trying to blend in at college after failing miserably to do so as a closeted gay teen in high school. This haphazardly hung collection said, “Hey, I like musicals and art but like, in a mainstream way.” But while RENT and Wicked were two of my favorite musicals at the time, so were Next to Normal and Tick, Tick…Boom! My interest in musicals wasn’t (and still isn’t) nearly as mainstream as I was projecting.

I started buying art prints of my own choosing at cons and from fandom artists I found on Twitter. Gay art. And not the kind of gay art that was like how everyone more secure than me in their sexuality (gay or straight) had that poster of The Kiss on their dorm room walls in the early 2000s. I’m talking Buffy/Faith fanart. Art of Critical Role‘s queer D&D characters. I made a gay nerd gallery on one wall featuring things like Life is Strange and Harley Quinn, a Wynonna Earp gallery on another. It was bordering on that “loser nerd boyman who lives in his mother’s basement” stereotypes from 90s sitcoms, but instead of Batman and Spiderman figurines, it’s Funko Pops of Shuri from Black Panther and the 2016 Ghostbusters.

While my room was starting to feel like home, it was the only place in the apartment that did. Between social anxiety and living with literal strangers I found on the internet, when I was home, I would stay in my room 90% of the time. I left it long enough to shower, which I tried to do when my roommate was seemingly in their room for the night. I would order food or make a very quick dinner when the coast was clear and take it back to my room and eat it on my bed. I had my own room, but I didn’t really have my own space. And every social interaction I had was so draining for my tired, introverted heart, even with the roommates I genuinely liked. Small talk in my own home! It’s only been a few months without it and I can’t believe I lived like that for over a decade.

It’s kind of ironic, that my world opened and closed at the same time. On one hand, we were in a global pandemic. I wasn’t taking my asthmatic lungs and shitty immune system anywhere. I went into self-isolation a few days before my work even sent us home for what would eventually be 16 months and counting. Those first few weeks were confusing; is this a long or short-term situation? Is this going to be over soon or what? But when my last roommate moved out for real, and I decided I wasn’t about to look for a roommate during a pandemic, my world got smaller while my home got bigger.

I turned the small second bedroom into what I have been calling the Study, where I could theoretically work and read away from the temptations of my PlayStation/TV or my bed. The room has a desk and two bookshelves: one full of novels, with the top shelf dedicated to Buffy paraphernalia, and the second is full of comic books and Critical Role merch. I shoved the futon I had been living on since the start of the pandemic in there, which I intend to be my reading couch once my brain calms down enough for reading for pleasure to be a thing again. I added a real couch (unfortunately purchased before I knew there were hilariously awful Pride-themed couches to inspire me) and a more modern dining set than the hand-me-downs I had worn ragged. I bought a new rug that matched my new curtains and got to make all the decisions on my own. The first time I stepped back and looked at my living room that looked the least like a dorm than any space I’ve lived in since my childhood bedroom, I was so pleased.

Prior to this, I thought “home” was more of an abstract thing. Some of my favorite people feel like home to me, watching my favorite TV shows feels like home. Belting musicals on a long car ride feels like home. New York City as an entity feels like home. This was the first time I looked around an empty room and felt like I was home.

I was surprised to feel a sort of…relief. A breath I didn’t know I was holding that I could let out. A back-of-mind waiting that I could put to rest. This space was all mine. No one else had a key and could stroll in at any minute, no one would care what time I showered. I could walk around in just a t-shirt and boxers, I could watch TV in the living room guilt-free. I didn’t have to worry about taking up space in my own space for the first time in my entire life.

Of course, there are downsides to living alone during a global pandemic, anxiety and asthma aside. I have a hard time self-motivating, so while I had once prided myself on keeping shared spaces clean despite having a messy room, I now find myself without shared spaces at all, and thus my mess has crept past the confines of my bedroom. And since I am lucky enough to work from home for both of my jobs, and to live in New York where you can get anything delivered at any time, sometimes a week will pass in the blink of an eye without me having to even consider leaving my apartment. I already experienced a sort of time oblivion and this certainly didn’t help. Somehow, without me noticing, the sink got full of dishes and the hallway filled up with empty boxes. The surfaces are all somehow full of random items — mostly cups? Why do I have so many cups?? — and even the couch has somehow shifted a few inches out of place.

But on the days I do finally overcome what TikTok has taught me is called executive dysfunction, I feel myself growing almost giddy as I realize that everything is where I left it, I know exactly what everything is and where it came from. I know whose food is whose (it’s all mine!). I know where everything goes, and, if I decide on a whim that something should belong somewhere new, I have the power to make that decision. I can light a scented candle that I like. I can listen to whatever weird playlist I want to (like one of my personal favorites for all-day cleaning binges, High School’s a Bitch: The Musical). I can dance around and sing into my freshly washed spatula.

And 90% of the time I love the solitude of it all. I love living alone, love being single. I love that no one depends on me, and that I don’t depend on anyone. I love that I installed my own air conditioner and cook my own meals. I can binge eight seasons of a TV show in two weeks because I don’t have to wait on anyone. I can stay up until 4am playing video games without bothering anyone. We don’t need to talk about the other 10% — that’s a different essay for another time. For now I’m just reveling in this new level of independence that my already-very-independent self is experiencing.

I’ve officially lived alone in this apartment for over a year, but we’re still in a pandemic, so I keep putting things off. There’s still a box of art in the Study that I have to hang up. I still have big dreams for a box of shelves in my bedroom, and some art that fell off my bedroom walls that need re-hanging. And I won’t lie to you, the only art in my living room were two paintings I made at paint-and-sip classes until I started this essay, which lit a fire under my ass to hang up the Valentine Smith prints I’ve had for months. (See what I mean about external motivation?) Even while I was planning out how exactly I would hang these prints I had a moment of, “Is this too much CWDCTV fanart for one wall?” And then I realized…there’s no such thing. If I’M okay with this wall that will be behind me in Microsoft Teams meetings and Zoom D&D games being mostly Supercorp fanart, then it’s perfectly splendid. If I like it, and I want it, then it’s not too much.

My childhood bedroom had posters of David Boreanez, J.T.T., and Hanson to try to balance all the posters of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Neve Campbell, and the Spice Girls, because I was queer but couldn’t quite wrap my head around it yet. My college dorm rooms had posters of mainstream musicals instead of Willow and Tara fanart, because it felt safer than showcasing what I was into at the time. I was realizing I was queer then, but wasn’t quite ready to admit it yet.

Now I’m 34 and have successfully queered up my life in a way that my teen self could barely dream of. I have a collection of cross stitches by a queer friend I met through Wynonna Earp, one of the queerest shows this side of The L Word. I have art from queer shows I’ve recapped over the years like Legends of Tomorrow made by a queer artist I met…also through Wynonna Earp. I have spooky Haunting of Bly Manor art (and a talisman) hanging up from a press kit, which I received for being professionally queer. My refrigerator is full of Autostraddle stickers that I turned into magnets, with a Haunting of Hill House themed card from a friend as the centerpiece.

And I didn’t have to run any of it by anyone. I didn’t have to worry if it took up too much space or if it was too nerdy or too gay. Every single change I make is MY choice, and the fact that it makes ME happy is all that matters.

Because finally, finally…I have my own space.

Be Part of Autostraddle’s Spaces & Places Gallery!

Spaces & Places is a three-week series focusing on the private and community areas we occupy, the ways we personalize them, and the meanings that we assign to them. Organized and edited by Meg Jones Wall.

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Hello, you beautiful queers! Even after nearly a year and a half of pandemic living, I’m still not quite used to being anywhere other than my own space — but it’s also meant that I, like so many others, have been paying very close attention to the things that make my place really feel like home. It’s what inspired me to put together this special issue focused on Spaces & Places: exploring what home means, how we use our spaces, and ways to make the places that you spend your time as functional and beautiful and individual and magical as possible.

But we don’t just want to talk about what we love — we also want to hear from you, to see your favorite spots, to know what makes your space feel special. What does your home look like? How does it feel? What do you love about it, and what do you wish you could change? For this community gallery, show us your absolute favorite part of your space. Whether it’s your reading nook, your bed, your garden, your patio, your office space, your corner of the kitchen, or any other space that belongs to you – we wanna see it! How have you made it your own? What changes, if any, have you made? Where did you get that incredible lamp / set of linen sheets / vintage couch / repurposed piping? How did you put this space together, and how do you use it? What does it mean to you? How long did it take you to get this space the way you wanted it? Why do you love this space so much? What are you still hoping to find or improve, and what do you love just as it is?

Gallery Theme: Spaces & Places

Instructions:

1. Take a photo of your favorite room, corner, or space — you can be in it if you like, but you don’t have to be!

Photos should be between 1024-3024 pixels wide so they’ll look nice on a full screen. Please don’t send anything smaller than 1024 pixels wide.

2. Send your picture and info to me at meg@autostraddle.com with the subject SPACES & PLACES GALLERY. Copy/paste this mini form into your email and fill in the blanks with your info!

NAME / PRONOUNS* / AGE* / PHOTO’S LOCATION

Details*: Tell me why this space is special to you, how you designed it, where your favorite pieces came from, and anything else you think it’s cool or interesting!

*Optional but lovely.

I reserve the right to edit your sentence/s for length or spelling errors. Your photo will appear in a full screen gallery on Autostraddle.com and might be used on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) to promote the gallery. If you don’t want your photo to appear on social media, please make a note of that with your submission. You reserve full rights to your photo. Photos will not be used to promote anything other than this exact gallery, and will not be used in any other future post.

Deadline: July 20th, 2021

Leave your questions in the comments, and thank you so much for participating in this gallery — I can’t wait to see your spaces!

Queer Design 101: Figuring Out Your Personal Design Style

Spaces & Places is a three-week series focusing on the private and community areas we occupy, the ways we personalize them, and the meanings that we assign to them. Organized and edited by Meg Jones Wall.

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I’ve always been the kind of person who knows exactly what I like. The kind of person who is ruled by an instant, immediate “yes, I love this” or “God no, never,” reaction. Like most personality quirks, it has proved to be both a blessing and curse over my 32 years on this earth. I have a good sense of my own style, true, but I can also get a bit stuck in a rut, reaching for things that feel comfortable and safe rather than new and interesting. (Yes, I am a Taurus.) So when I found myself facing the blank walls of my new room, I had a minor moment of panic. Sure, I can choose things, but that skill supposes that there are options, not…an expanse of nothing.

Has the same thing happened to you? Maybe you need a little help figuring out how your personal style transfers to designing a space, and that’s exactly what this 101 guide is for. I’m going to take you through my process, show you some pictures of the space in progress and now that it is (mostly) done, how I arrived at the energy I did!

Indulge me, if you will, in a few caveats. I moved from one room in my house to a different one, which gave me a really luxurious amount of time to do things like paint and put up shelves. Also, I live with a contractor, which…well, I gotta be honest, it rocks.

I knew that the majority of space would be my bed, and that figuring out what I wanted it to look like would help decide the vibe for the rest of the design. I have an office to do work in, so my bedroom is dedicated to sleeping, getting dressed and putting on my usual full face of makeup. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was ready to lean into all my bougie tendencies and invest in a linen duvet. I spent a long time debating between blush, a muted blue, and white, like the beach mom I am. After some prayerful reflection, I went for blush and a focal point was born!

You can do this too! Is there something you already own and love that you want to design your space around? Like, maybe it’s a bedroom and you’ve got a gorgeous headboard you want to showcase. Or maybe it’s a living room and you have a chair you absolutely can’t get enough of. Find the thing that sparks delight and work out from there! It doesn’t even have to be as big as a piece of furniture—maybe it’s a piece of art, or your favorite planter. Whatever it is, it’s going to be the thing that guides you and hopefully makes the process a little less overwhelming!

Once I had the bedding color nailed down, it was much easier to think about what paint colors I wanted to pair with it. I wanted something that would make the headboard pop and go with the blush duvet, but you know, grown up. After long time staring at paint samples, I landed on a deep, almost black purple.

Suddenly, I had a color palette! Sure, I didn’t know what else I was going to do at the moment, but I did know I was working with those two colors, and narrowing it down just that tiny bit helped immeasurably. If even finding two colors feels insurmountable, let me introduce you to the wonderful world of online color palettes. I love this one, you can let it generate random ones, you can pull from photos, you can start with one color and let it work out from there, it has a ton of possibilities.

Okay, so the next part is where having a friend who lives with you and is a contractor really came in handy. I love books. Like, an outrageous amount. And I weeded out a ton of them when I moved to Philly, but that meant that the ones I kept were special, and I wanted them to become a holistic part of the focal point of the room, the bed! So I asked my friend to mount them over the bed, and asked if they could match the headboard, to tie everything together. And you know what? She crushed it.

I am willing to bet you also have something meaningful that you want to display in your space, something that will make it feel like you. Maybe you tumble rocks, or have a dazzling array of vintage movie posters, maybe you’ve got a crystal collection to rival Goop’s. Maybe you have a ton of plants that you want to artfully hang from every wall you can find! Whatever your thing is, showing it off will help you feel like you are making a space for you and you alone.

I felt like a master of design! I had done it!

Rather, I thought I had done it — until I laid down. Then I realized the wall across from me was completely blank, save for a mirror. Also, I was missing curtains? Maybe I needed more shelves? Where did I get all this stuff, little things like lipstick and makeup and lotions, those things all needed a home too. And wow, I needed art, desperately, and maybe more color on the bed? Thankfully, I had given myself the tools I needed for success! And you have too! Whenever you feel overwhelmed, take a deep breath and go back to the thing you started with, let it be your guiding light.

I did some more color scheme generating. I thought about the things I already owned, and how they could fit into the space I had created. I found some incredible prints on Etsy. I rediscovered this gold lamp that I had found a couple of months earlier on Instagram that was all wrong for the office anyway. I found some white and gold floating shelves that felt exactly right for the wall across from bed, and a long console table for all of my makeup. I found this incredible throw for my bed. It all came together, bit by bit.

Of course, I’m still messing around, still scrolling through Etsy when I can’t sleep. But that’s part of the fun! It’s yours, you get to change your mind, refresh stuff, flip the script if you need to. When I come home from being out in the world, and flop on my bed, it is a sigh of relief, a long exhale. A space of my very own. What could be better than that?

Spaces & Places: A Roundup of 30 Queer-Owned Houseware Shops

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Otherwild

Minna Goods

Domestic Domestic

Fredericks and Mae

Humboldt House

SewQueerBunting

Suay Sew Shop

Katrina Ward

So Gingerly

Junebug & Darlin

Erdos + Ko

A. Miyuki Studio

VibrantVibesBySam

Lockwood

Mud Witch

Queer Candle Co.

Boy Smells

Edgewater Candles

Bijou Candles

Art is Dirty

Ash + Chess

Common Dear

Lovely and Strong

Likely General

Quite Nice

Rainbow Sheep

Rheal

ShopShowAndTell

lightplusink

StudioLeezou

Editor’s Notes: On Spaces & Places

An inside look, just for A+ members, from Autostraddle’s editors on the process, struggles, and surprises of working on what you’re reading on the site. We learn so much from this work before it ever even makes it to your eyes; now you can, too!

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I spend a lot of time thinking about spaces. Spaces that are mine, spaces that I’ve been kept out of, spaces that define me or restrict me or restrain me. I’m someone that has lived in a lot of different places, who doesn’t feel attached to any particular region, and never knows what to say when people ask where I’m from. Home for me has always been about people, rather than cities or towns, apartments or houses.

Yet every time I move, every time I have to establish a new space for myself, I gravitate towards the same kinds of things, the same sensory experiences, the same textures and colors and layouts. I know what makes me feel at home, makes me feel safe and comfortable, makes me feel like I can cry and scream and laugh and dream in the ways that I need to. And no matter where you live, no matter what kind of space you call your own, I have a feeling that you do, too.

Spaces & Places is about the physical locations that we fill with our hopes and dreams, our longings, our aspirations. We choose objects of comfort and joy, creativity and inspiration, softness and structure — articles that help us feel anchored, pieces that give us pleasure. This isn’t about owning an extravagant home or being able to do massive, expensive renovations; it’s instead about cultivating a sense of belonging, about having a sacred, personal place that lets us be our full and complete selves without reservation or self-consciousness. It’s about giving ourselves permission to be comfortable, safe, protected.

The last few years have been impossibly destabilizing, in so many ways, for so many of us. The pandemic ripped countless anchors away, forced us to hide and disconnect in ways that we will be discovering and processing for years to come. Many people moved to be closer to family or friends, gave up the homes they’d established in order to maintain the most important connections they had. Others hunkered down in beloved cities or homes, refusing to leave, believing that the space they’d created would be enough to sustain the long months of isolation. We all are surviving in the ways that we know how, making space within our spaces to keep growing, changing, adjusting.

When the pandemic started, I didn’t know that I would end up losing my home. Not only an apartment that I loved, but a person that I’d considered home for thirteen years, a person I’d followed around the world, a person I’d given up places for over and over. It was a break that was done with love and care, but it was still a devastating loss, a massive crack in my personal foundation. I gave up so much safety, comfort, protection, with the hopes that the new life that I would build for myself would also include brilliant inspiration, fierce love, endless magic. My new place isn’t fancy, isn’t extravagant — but it is mine, and I am slowly, tenderly making it a home: a place that I can be my fullest, truest self, that can reflect my many facets, that gives me space to dream and explore.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be publishing essays and stories, guides and wishlists, galleries and photographs: all offering glimpses of our most sacred spaces, our most personal places, our most treasured retreats. The ways that we allow ourselves to take up space, to make our homes comfortable and reflective of who we are, are gifts that we give to ourselves. And no matter where you work or play or lay down your head, I hope that in exploring these intimacies, in examining the places we spend our days, we can also learn more about who we are, what we need, and how we thrive.

Welcome to Spaces & Places.
-Meg Jones Wall, Guest Editor

Dating a Librarian Is The Best Thing To Happen To My Bookshelves

Spaces & Places is a three-week series focusing on the private and community areas we occupy, the ways we personalize them, and the meanings that we assign to them. Organized and edited by Meg Jones Wall.

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I thought it was going to be harder.

My girlfriend and I took a circuitous path to moving in together. After several months of long-distance, Kristen invited me out to Las Vegas where she’d received a writing fellowship. I flew to Orlando with two suitcases, and we drove across the country with her little dog and as much stuff as we could stuff into her car. In my grandparents’ unfinished basement in Virginia, I left behind most of my belongings—including all of my books minus my copy of Ducks, Newburyport, which I for some deranged reason thought would make a good road trip book. We didn’t need much in Vegas. We were only supposed to be there for a semester.

Then COVID-19 hit, and we ended up stuck in Vegas for a strange summer beyond her fellowship. Even before that though, I felt unmoored without my books. I’d never been away from them that long. When I lived in Los Angeles, I sublet a furnished room so small I had to keep my books in the trunk of my car. They rattled around as I drove, but at least they were close. In Vegas, I certainly wasn’t without books. We lived above an independent bookstore, and we filled the ladder-style bookcase in our loft before the pandemic even hit.

But I didn’t have the books that had become my north stars. My compendium of Annie Baker plays. My essential Dykes To Watch Out For. A very worn copy of Interpreter Of Maladies. My post-it-note-filled copy of Heartburn. A book on lesbian erotics in writing I found at a thrift store. And ones I didn’t even know meant so much to me until they weren’t around, like my copy of Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher from high school that’s bizarrely, obsessively dog-eared in multiple places by a past version of myself, including every single page that has the word “gay” on it.

It took another cross-country road trip, a couple months in a temporary place in Orlando, and several rounds of stressful pandemic apartment hunting before we found our first place to truly, for real, permanently move in together. We bought new things together for our apartment in Miami, and we moved my girlfriend’s things in, including her three classic, black Billy bookcases from IKEA and several boxes of her personal book collection. We got plants. I decorated the kitchen. The rooms filled and came to life. Those bookcases looked magnificent. But so many of my things were still nearly 1,000 miles away, including my books. I saw the crowded bookcases and projected too much onto them, an anxious thought prodding at me: Was there any room left for my things? For me?

Figuratively and literally, there was plenty of room for me in our life. Just because I didn’t have all my things moved in didn’t mean this space wasn’t as much mine as it was Kristen’s. We’d made decisions together. We’d built furniture together. In fact, our shared aesthetics (think: cozy and modern meets Florida kitsch?!) made the homemaking process rather seamless.

And yet, I was all worked up over the books. I’d never dated another writer before or anyone with an extensive book collection for that matter. I thought it would be hard if not outright impossible to merge my books with my girlfriend’s. The three bookcases were nearly full. Would mine have to stay partially stowed away in boxes? Even if we found the space, what would it look like to bring our books together? Did they need to be separate like our closets? I know a couple that keeps permanently separate bookshelves. I don’t judge them for it, but it wasn’t what I wanted. Writing and books feel like a significant part of this relationship, and I know it’s important to have divisions and individualism within relationships, but I also couldn’t imagine drawing these hard lines. My books, your books. It’s not like I want to claim anything of hers for myself. I just want our books to be able to live together, like us. Books peacefully cohabitating, smashed together on shelves. It sounded genuinely intimate: our books, touching.

I guess it’s what Kristen wanted, too, because separate shelves were never even suggested. We were once again on the same page.

The tension, instead, came later.

My girlfriend was more than happy to conjoin our books, but she had some rules. She is, after all, a librarian. I anticipated we’d have some sort of shelving system, which I’d admittedly never really had or been able to stick to in the past. I was game though, ready to be more mature and sophisticated in my bookshelf tendencies rather than just indiscriminately throwing books where they fit.

My mother drove down from Virginia with my books and the rest of my belongings I’d been without for over a year. With some Facebook marketplace luck and an assist from my mom’s SUV, we got a fourth Billy bookcase to match the others. A very commanding and nosey Leo, my mother insisted upon assisting with organizing our books. Thus sparked the first tricky step of merging bookshelves: dealing with my bossy mother. The pandemic meant, for better or worse, we hadn’t had to deal with a lot of family stuff in our immediate space for much of our relationship. Kristen took my mother’s forwardness in stride though. I knew she loved me when I saw how chill she was about my mom throwing our books wildly around our living room.

When my mother suggested we organize our books by color or at least have “one designated red shelf,” I was nothing short of horrified. I’ve of course seen the color blocking books trend on Instagram and in some of my friend’s homes, but it makes no fucking sense to me, and I was quick to say so while also taking it a step further to call it stupid. My mother proceeded to organize by genre per my instructions but didn’t relent entirely. She still threw a random shelf in the middle of one of the bookcases just for red covers, regardless of genre. It was easier to just let her do it and fix it after she left.

When Kristen and I disbanded the red books and reallocated them to their respective shelves, I made more fun of my mother and, by extension, anyone who sorts books by color. I expected agreement, but Kristen offered something else. She said the color system probably works for my mother, a very visual and aesthetic-driven person who is more likely to remember what a book looks like than the first and last name of who wrote it. It works for other people, too. There’s no one right way to shelve, she told me. From her, I’ve learned that so much of library work responds to the specific needs of the community. If a color system makes the most sense to my mother, that’s all that matters.

After all, I’ve come to realize even our system isn’t perfectly straightforward. It goes something like this:
There are two bookcases in the living room. The one on the right houses novels sorted by author last name, A-R. On the left, the first two shelves contain poetry unsorted by name. The next two shelves contain unsorted short fiction. The fifth shelf is the Stephen King shelf. The bottom shelf continues with novels by authors with S-W names. In the office, two more bookcases. On the right, you’ll find Kristen’s extensive V.C. Andrews collection, classics, a shelf for graphic narrative and YA, plays, and vintage books. On the left, the fourth bookcase we added to the mix starts with four shelves of unsorted nonfiction we’ve been meaning to sort loosely into subgenres (memoir, essays, reference/history, theory, craft). We’ll get to it one day (I keep saying to myself). The second-to-last shelf finishes out the novels by authors with W-Z names. The bottom shelf is an odd pairing of books Kristen used for her thesis on Flannery O’Connor and a stack of my journals.

It sounds topsy-turvy on paper. Why do our novels break in such nonlinear ways? Why does modern YA live among the classics—the spine aesthetics of those respective groups strikingly discordant? Why organize novels by last name but not short fiction? None of these questions really matter if this much is true: We both can locate books without having to scan shelves for longer than a few seconds. Everything has its place. The system works for us, because it is ours.

Each bookcase is also a home of its own. Aside from the books they hold, each has its own decor, too. Plants sit atop the bookcases in the living room, while the office bookcases hold miscellaneous things meaningful to each of us: some goofy like Kristen’s 7-Eleven novelty clock and my childhood softball trophy from 1999, some sentimental like bowls woven by my cousin in India and gifts from Kristen’s friends. Decorative pennants from one of my best friends adorn the office bookcases, and an unlit, massive flamingo candle gifted to Kristen for her book launch is perched on one, too, its coloring slightly faded by the Miami sun. A dried rose from the rainbow bouquet I sent her on the same occasion rests on a bookcase amid taxidermy, embroidery, miniature owl figurines, postcards, and costume glasses I got at a junk shop in Venice beach when I was probably 13. It’s a collage made of both of us.

So we got all our books on the shelves with minimal conflict. But my library lessons weren’t over. In the coming weeks, a new challenge arose. The bookcases were filling up. Shelf space was dwindling. Our short fiction shelves became so packed it was difficult to actually pull a book out. But shelf scarcity didn’t seem to faze Kristen. She calmly explained we would just have to get rid of some books to make room for new ones.

I did not calmly respond to this. I cried.

We were both surprised by my reaction. We didn’t have a full-on fight, but it was fraught. We simply weren’t on the same page. I thought Kristen was asking me to make sacrifices. We all have relationship baggage, and one of the various dilapidated suitcases hauled in from my relationship history contains imbalanced sacrifices masked as compromises. I like to compromise in relationships, but that’s sometimes at odds with my history of letting partners bulldoze over my wants and needs. In recent years, I’ve learned the line between being easy-going and being a pushover.

She wasn’t asking me to dump a bunch of my beloved books in the garbage. She especially wasn’t suggesting my books had to go while hers could stay. First of all, the books would be donated. But also, if I wanted to keep every one of my books on the shelf, I could. She didn’t want me to get rid of anything that mattered to me. But I needed to understand space on our bookcases was finite, something I was clearly in denial about. If more books were coming in, some would have to go. Kristen, with her library brain, constantly reassesses which books she actually needs to keep and which she can send to a friend or donate. If you know you’re never going to read a book again, why hold onto it?

It’s a very simple lesson. But it cracked something open for me. Books can be replaced. Parting ways with them just means re-homing them. There’s no reason we need multiple copies of the same damn book. Bookshelves might have finite space, but they aren’t fixed, not really. They’re dynamic, evolving spaces. They’re homes. Expanding a book collection also requires culling. When we add new books, we shift the shelves. Room can always be made for the things we love. There will always, always be space for me in our home.

When it came to combining our books, I’d been the one nervous about problems, but I was the problem. I erroneously assumed Kristen would be more difficult. She’s the librarian! She must have so many rigid ideas about how books are organized and displayed! I should have known better. Ever since the early days of our relationship when she still wrote a column on libraries, I’ve learned that a lot of what I previously thought about libraries was wrong. If anything, being a librarian makes her more fluid and unpretentious when it comes to books and how to arrange them. She knows how to adapt to the needs of the community which, in this case, looks like our shared home. Our books, like our lives, can mesh in ways that might not make complete logical sense from the outside. So long as it makes sense to us.

Submit Your Questions! Into the A+ Advice Box: Spaces & Places

Cheers, queers! Next week we’re launching a very special new issue focusing on spaces and places – interiors, exteriors, shared rooms, any place that you can call your own no matter the size or location. Be on the lookout for a letter from the editor next week with more details about everything we’ll be exploring here over the next few weeks.

As part of that issue, we’re here to offer you some advice! Have a space you want to fix up, but aren’t sure how? Trying to find a specific kind of item and struggling? Want to carve out a space in a shared living situation but don’t know where to start? Fighting over space with someone else? Trying to establish a home for the first time? Send us your spaces and places related questions using the special A+ Jotform, that will also make it easy for you to send us photos of your space, objects, or ideas!

***Submit your questions (and a photo if you want) right here!***

Try to get your questions in by July 14th if you can! Check back on July 23rd for answers to these questions!