What Stress-Free Home Magazines Are Missing

a few words on eclectic home-making

Stress-free home magazines are addicting and alluring, to say the least. I know, because I buy them all the time.

Do you want a rustic, minimalist, seemingly dust-free farmhouse chic home that’s mostly white? Of course you do! Here’s how to magically get it!

I love a good home decor magazine, but let’s be honest—they are full of a lot of wealthy white families who pay people to clean their houses and style their spaces for photo ops.

I appreciate a good apartment therapy home tour, one that boasts of eclectic accents, full bookshelves, odd people living their odd, beautiful lives.

But I look through these magazines that I continue to buy, and while home decorating is one of my favorite hobbies, I usually use these photos as a kind of starting point or inspiration. My decorating style is eclectic, and definitely not mininalist.

A few years back, someone walked into our rental home and said Oh, how quaint. I smiled, trying to decipher whether it was a compliment or a jab.

But here’s what these stress-free, perfect-your-space home magazines miss: they miss the everyday people who create homes with their presence. They miss culture and liminality and magic.

I’ve lived in a lot of different styles of homes throughout my life—trailers in trailer parks, a small shack, duplexes, a two-bedroom apartment, a three-bedroom house in the suburbs of my tiny town, standard ranches, now a three-story twin in Philadelphia. The thing that ties all these places together is the presence infused into them.

Christmas when I was maybe 7 or 8 in our trailer

I couldn’t really help how the trailer or duplex or suburb home of my childhood turned out, but I remember some of the decorations (that I still have now), the comfortable chairs that I sat in, the quiet moments or laughter with my siblings.

I remember how I made my own room feel in those spaces, the inspiration that hung on my walls or the quiet projects I created when I felt inspired.

We’ve lived in 8 different homes since my partner and I got married and started our family. But we’ve always had some sort of garden (in ground or in containers or a hanging shoe organizer when we got creative), a lot of books and journals, kids toys that have evolved with their ages, and dog hair piled in nearly every corner.

I am a seasonal decorator, and the older I get, the more I love it. The changing of the seasons every few months creates a perfect space to change the interior landscape—our own souls and the rooms of the homes we inhabit. It simply adds to the magic.

But what I really imagine within my own space is community and comfort. What will we feel in these homes? What will others feel and experience?

And please hear me—there’s nothing wrong with having the resources to keep a home clean and tidy or to get the dream home you’ve always wanted. But that great American pastime of making things perfect when they can’t possibly be, feeding the algorithms that are forever hungry— it’s exhausting.

Am I still going to buy those farmhouse magazines? Probably. I’m going to get inspiration where I can find it and tweak it to fit my own spaces, and I’m going to celebrate when homes that look like mine are shared. And I’m going to admit that we often create our own stress when we try to make ourselves fit a status quo that isn’t made for us.

I guess what I want to say is this: don’t be afraid of the mess. Let your movements in your home feel like a prayer, like a spiritual practice, and you’ll infuse your own magic into it. Don’t try to fit the labels out there; don’t take the quizzes that try to put you in a box; celebrate your liminal, creative, eclectic self.

So tell me: what do you love about your home, and why do you love it?