Here is the third excerpt from the new book that comes out on March 28th. You can check out the central book post here to find other excerpts and all the info.
This one is a story about myself that shows (I hope) how painful it can be to see your space for what it is and how personal the results can be. I still carry this memory around in my head when I am working on an apartment. It continues from the second excerpt. BTW Marre is an old and talented friend whom I lost touch of years ago. However, I found a mention of her online as living in Spain. If you see her, please say hello for me :-).
Getting There Myself
I am a warm person. I learned this more than ten years ago when Marre, my next-door neighbor, walked into my first apartment in New York City’s Little Italy and told me I had too much stuff.
Knowing she was a furniture designer, I had invited her over to show off some new shelves I had built. Instead of being impressed with my shelves, she said, “Why do you have so many things in your apartment?”
I was embarrassed. In my view, her apartment was minimal and Spartan. I felt that she just didn’t understand me. I told her that I didn’t have too much, that I had everything I needed and it was all carefully arranged. My apartment resembled a ship where everything was tucked into place.
“You have no empty space,” she pointed out. “I can tell that when you do have an empty space, you fill it. Why?”
This was true. I considered any open space an opportunity for inserting something useful. I had built shelves in an old doorway, created a pulley system for my computer screen that lifted it up to the ceiling, and managed to insert a large drafting table into one corner, which I used as my second desk. I was very good at finding a use for any space.
“Why don’t you take some things out and open up the space? It would look much better if you did.”
What? Take something out? I thought this would be a death blow. Everything I owned was a prized possession. I had long considered my use of space an achievement and liked how everything worked perfectly. But I was forced to reconsider.
Marre’s apartment, despite its severity, had a calmness and openness to it that my apartment lacked. Her apartment was smaller and yet it felt bigger. It was comfortable to sit in Marre’s kitchen, and people naturally gravitated to her apartment to talk. She was right. My apartment wasn’t carefully arranged, it was packed. There was no breathing room. It may have seemed functional, but it was crowded and required a lot of attention.
My life at the time was the same. I was struggling to write a master’s thesis, feeling no momentum or excitement about it, and my relationship with my girlfriend was languishing. Working on my apartment seemed, on the surface, to be a healthy form of procrastination, but after considering Marre’s comments, I started to see all of this activity as a big, warm security blanket. My home was my protection, my pacifier, and it was doing a good job. My life lacked movement and energy. With Marre’s words, something clicked.
I began to experiment with removing objects from my apartment. I got rid of a chair. I took out the drafting table. I threw out a pile of old, mismatched dishes and mugs. What began as a trickle turned into a torrent, and over the next few months I emptied half of my apartment. As I did this my work habits changed, and the energy that I had previously put into creating and maintaining my home redirected itself into my work. I finished my thesis feeling good about it. Soon after, my relationship came to an amicable end, and we were both relieved.
Thanks for sharing these excerpts maxwell - i definitely want to get the book
I think I am a warm person, but I am also really attracted to cool spaces. Is there a happy medium? I have been decorating my new apt since november and i think maybe it is getting too cluttered. my boyfriend always makes comments about there being too much stuff, especially in the living room - but I think his house looks like a barren wasteland, so is he a good judge?
I am thinking about doing some purging and your comment about the mismatched coffee cups struck home. I probably have way too many dishes, mugs etc. but it is hard to get rid of that stuff because I keep thinking I will come in handy - every once in a while i through big parties and i like to use real dishes and cups.
I also think there are a lot of clothes I could get rid of but then I think of the money I spent on them and it's hard to give them up.
I guess i need the book. :)
I think your next door neighbor is a clod. If you have lots of stuff, maybe you like lots of stuff and find it stimulating. And who just waltzes in and announces that you have TOO MUCH stuff?
Home is meant to be a safe haven, not a museum of good taste.
I have lots of stuff--not mismatched dishes, but lots of sets of beautiful china, collected for years. I work from home and I like to see things around me that remind me of travels, of friends, of family.
Frankly--bare walls, cold heart. Most minimalists are cold people with control issues.
I have been living in my first apartment for about 5 months now, and something is just... off. I have pretty much no budget, and my furniture is extremely nice but second hand from my mom... I like it, but I don't LOVE it. I read apartment therapy every day and, especially after reading these excerpts, can't wait to get the book and finally get down to the business of loving where I live.
Maxwell: I finally read all three excerpts. I'm inspired. I would say you have a hit on your hands. Interesting to me is that your explanation of warm and cool people is right on the money with myself and my late husband. This explains his lack of understanding of my need for magazine clutter and my awareness of the need to learn better organizational skills yet my yearning for linear design - I'm mostly a warm and he was definitely cool (and yet hot, but that's another topic, and a sweetie). So.....I just pre-ordered the book.
Rachel: I think Maxwell was trying to explain that cool people are more exterior and don't cocoon the same way warm people do. I don't think he meant they were cold in personality or had control issues. I know several minimalists and they're not cold at all. And, I know several warm people with control issues. Cools just have interests other than accumulating "stuff". But what the hell do I know anyway. I'm just a regular gal.
I'm very much looking forward to Thursday's AT party and would hope the book will be there to browse through.
Well done, Maxwell. Thanks for sharing.
Warm vs. Cool is my eternal struggle... both fight for pride of place in my apartment.
(With Warm winning, of course!)
Logically, throwing three things out when I bring in one new thing makes sense -- but is so hard to do. I am SO attracted to cool spaces, but I've never quite managed to achieve True Coolness.
Still, my friends say that my place isn't cluttered, though sometimes it feels that way to me.
Goodness, I'm counting the days until the bookstore tells me that my copy has arrived!
I'm starting to suspect that I'm a cool person -- the only mismatched coffee mugs in my environment belong to my husband. Every pot and pan has its own spot in the cupboard. My *closets* have breathing room (usually -- the craft closet is ground zero for stuff slated for Goodwill, so it's horrible right now).
But I have a lot of trouble putting things on the walls and choosing rugs.
Oops -- I think my kitchen cupboards just proved that I have control issues.
The reason for my place-for-everything-and-I-mean-it routine is that I'm really bothered by clutter (I work mostly at home, so there's no escape) but I will do almost anything to avoid cleaning. (I could clean the bathroom or... LEARN SWAHILI! Yeah! That's the ticket!) Cleaning and tidying happens for me only if it's EASY, which requires a rigorously organized infrastructure.
I'm not so sure about the warm/cool business, but Maxwell is a charming writer, and I look forward to reading the rest of the book.
Rachel has a point--it's pretty presumptuous to come into someone's home and give unsolicited advice about what's wrong with it. Some of the most brilliant people I know are slobs with junk all over the place. I can't live like that, but it's probably from lack of imagination.
Francis Bacon's gallery (or someone) once provided him with a beautiful studio. However, he soon discovered he was unable to paint there. Eventually he returned to the crummy old place where he'd worked before he made money.
Let me clarify--I have lots of stuff, but it's stored, displayed, and treasured. Victorian, not sloppy. I think Maxwell's writing is wonderful, and I hope the book does well. But there's a huge difference between slobby-disgusting and "decorated within an inch of its life".
I stand by my belief--cool is cold-hearted. If you're too aloof to display your childhood stuffed animal (or at least store him/her very carefully)you're too chilly for me.
I didn't mean to suggest you were a slob, or that messiness is disgusting, or to agree that minimalists are "cold-hearted".
Only that Maxwell's friend's remarks were serendipitous.
There's so much invovled with paring down, you know. You have to have just the right things to make a minimalist look work. I could toss out half the junk in my apartment and it would still look dingy and depressing because the sofas I inherited are Uhh-gly. I'm a warm person who loves the cool look (it's everywhere now - even Pier 1 has a more modern, clean-lines look going) but lives in another warm person's hot mess. So there's that for ya :). Someday!
The generalizations and jumps here are starting to bother me... why can't we just say, "I will never be a minimalist" as opposed to something like "minimalists are cold-hearted."
Plus it's like saying "all collectors have OCD."
Quit slamming whatever style you *aren't*.