The basic premise of Holistic Housekeeping is that we are in a relationship with our home. In this spirit, I began the Spring Homemaking Revival to center the question, “How do we fall in love with our home all over again?” Renewal of love and commitment is vital in any long term bond. But this question grows more and more complicated for me each year, because home extends far beyond the walls of our physical dwelling space. Our home includes our community, and not all of us (myself included) live in a compatible community.

Much like we may be forced to remain in an unhappy marriage for the sake of the kids or financial need, we may be forced to remain where we live because we don’t have any way out, or because the only other options are also sub par. This is a heavy reality to bear. And it can make all of these practices of renewal, reconnection, revival, and receptivity feel totally meaningless–even self-violating. Like we’re trying to make a marriage work when it has already failed. This is especially true if our larger home (our country and cultural body) is hostile and violent towards demographics of people like us, mirroring the rejection and violence we may have experienced in our own extended family growing up.

Place-based identity is such an essential, universal human experience. If we do not have any sense of healthy pride about the place we call home, we feel alienated and heartbroken. So this year I would like to acknowledge and honor this hardship more directly, because it’s not always 100% clear if the issue is that we ourselves carry core belonging wounds that make it difficult to feel at home wherever we happen to be, or if the issue is true incompatibility with the place that we live (and yes, both things can be true at once). Even if we know without a doubt that we are dealing with true incompatibility, does that mean it’s pointless to engage in practices of renewing love and appreciation for our home?

When Your Home Doesn’t Love You Back

Feeling at home where we live is, in many ways, a luxury and a privilege. The United States has always been a hostile home for oppressed demographics, and as the political landscape becomes more chaotic and openly violent towards the people who live here, the safety of home is not guaranteed. Feeling let down by the place we call home (including job markets, school systems, medical establishments, spiritual communities etc) is part of life. Life will never live up to the daydream long term. And this can feel deeply personal, like we love our home but our home doesn’t love us back.

Disappointment around unmet expectations is hard to bear. Some marriage counselors recommend acknowledging the expectations as the issue, rather than our partner as the issue. And this can be hugely helpful and very healthy, in some instances. But we have to be careful not to override the validity of our pain. Some expectations are reasonable. But even though our expectations are reasonable, people and places may not be able to meet those expectations.

Remaining sober in our relationship with our home often means accepting the limitations without allowing defeat and complacency to win out over our ability to make the most of our situation. What is truly impossible? Once we can accept this, we are much better equipped to know what is possible, and can take more ownership of meeting our own needs, fulfilling our own desires.

What is True Incompatibility?

True incompatibility is an irreconcilable difference. A lot of differences can be reconciled. No person or place will perfectly mirror us, and in fact we require differences for mirroring. Sometimes the mirror is foggy or broken. Inaccurate mirroring can arise from lack of consensus reality with the people around us. But basic social mechanics are always present and always allow us to see ourselves in relationality more clearly.

Would I Be Happier Some Other Place?

The older we get, the harder it becomes to know when to break up/move out, and when to hunker down and make it work. It is normal to wonder if we would be better off in some other place or in some other relationship. At the same time, each relationship comes with it’s own kind of hardships and limitations. So we are always trading one set of limitations for another. That doesn’t mean people don’t go on to have better connections after leaving a bad relationship. This happens all the time. But it does mean that a break up isn’t always the only solution.

Wherever You Go, There You Are

How can I make exactly where I am, the best it can be? Knowing it will never be what I want it to be, but will only be exactly what it is? This is the question I ask myself when I feel frustrated by the limitations in the place that I live. I know that there are some things I will experience no matter where I go, because wherever I go, there I am. I also know that there are some parts of my experience that are location dependent. It’s not always clear, but self honesty can help me figure it out as I examine my relationship patterns over time. Whatever stays the same regardless of the change of location is for sure a me-thing. Whatever varies regardless of the change of location is a place-thing.

What Makes You Feel at Home?

In asking myself what makes me feel at home, I realize that home is available to me no matter where I live. I feel at home when I invite people over every week, and imbue my space with moments and memories. I feel at home when I hide Easter eggs every spring for my children. I feel at home when I am reading a book and bleeding onto the page. I feel at home when I am perched at the edge of a mountain view, or sleeping outside, or laying in a river. I feel at home when I am cuddling my kids in my bed. This is the hearthfire, and we carry our hearthfire with us wherever we go.

Read more

In a crisis, it is important not to push ourselves beyond our capacity. Unfortunately, our society does not typically accommodate mental health days, let alone offer leeway for full blown depressive episodes. And these episodes often loop through other layers of hardship, such as illness triggering a…

Read more

This conversation provides a pretty solid overview of the basic premise of Holistic Housekeeping, hearthcraft, and private session work. You can click the title above to listen on Spotify, and explore my website if you’re curious about boo…

Read more

Our relationship to home includes microlevels of home like our literal home (the place where we live), as well as macro levels of home like our neighborhood, community, nation, planet, solar system, universe... Home can also be experienced as an emotional location; a felt-sense of respite, purpos…

Read more

In any long term relationship or long term commitment, we must endeavor to ride waves of inspiration and de-motivation, ease and hardship, gratitude and resentment, aliveness and stagnancy.

Although we receive a lot of socio-cultural messaging that true love should feel effortless, there …

Read more

Spring Homemaking Revival

Fall in love with your home all over again.

Our relationship to our home is intimate, akin to a marriage or family bond. Like all long term committed relationships, it can be hard to keep the spark alive. Sometimes we fall out of love, or question if we were ever in love to begin with. Sometimes it’s a marriage of convenience, or a temporary arrangement. Sometimes we feel like we want to move house because we simply cannot tolerate the mess and clutter anymore.

I am here to remind you of the power of a good, old fashioned, deep cleaning ritual. But this time, we’re going to do it in good company.

During this weeklong gathering, we will spend the first hour deep cleaning our homes alongside each other, and the second hour resting and exploring the question/practice: How do I renew love for my home?

Price: $150

Register Here!

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Thanksgiving occurs as a ritual act across time and place; its scope is much broader and much deeper than all the distortions of a major US holiday and consumer c…

Read more

Regret comes up a lot in decluttering. It’s one of our biggest fears around letting stuff go; what if I regret it, or what if I don’t have what I need? It’s totally normal to have strong feelings about the possibility of regret or the actual regret of giving something away.

Because the fear of regret can be overwhelming (triggering our basic sense of sur…

Read more

Read more

“I’m not a hoarder, I’m a collector.”

I often hear clients say this, even though their collections remain buried in so much clutter, they haven’t put their hands on those objects or even seen those objects in years.

I want to try something new…

Read more

There are usually only three options:

You can subvert it, embrace it, or double down.

Subvert: This mess is a sign of life/a sign of my loved ones in this home. How might I feel about this mess if they were to die tomorrow? How might I feel about this mess if I lost my home?

Embrace: YUM, mess. Mess becomes …

Read more

I often hear people say, “I need systems!” But sometimes I question how much clarity people hold about what a system is, exactly. It seems as if many people use the term “system” interchangeably with “organizat…

Read more

When we feel like we are forced to choose between neglecting our home or neglecting our art, we might struggle to understand how deeply interconnected these two areas of our life really are. To some extent, it’s unavoidable. I’m a hearthcraft practitioner, and my own home is neglected while I’m writing a housekeeping book or building a housekeeping cour…

Read more