Denouncing my materialism as a Taurus
Finding comfort in my semi-furnished flat
If your ‘type on paper’ is a stereotypical Taurus babe, then I am your type on paper.
For better or for worse, I could be a guaranteed, unapologetic force of loyalty, stubbornness, sensuality, emotion, possessiveness and materialism in your life!
For the purpose of my own personal comfort, let me bypass the undesirability of most of these traits.
What control do I have over my birth chart and astro-alignment? Who am I to deny what is written in the stars? I am a multifaceted girl, equipped with both roses and thorns, committed to exploring my enduring materialism with a *critical* eye.
Lets make this house a home
Wanting your space to look nice is arguably a universal desire ~ and should be a universal right (!!) ~ and after a few years of questionable living situations in London, I had finally found my comfort place.
Though our house was definitely the nicest place I’ve lived, this comfort was about the people and how it felt to be there, over the aesthetics of the home.
After your basic needs have been met, comfort and a sense of ‘at home-ness’ are often more to do with how you relate to a place, rather than being about having the nicest things.
Spend a night in a high-end hotel, and it could feel dry, cold and lifeless; you may leave your stay with a feeling of emptiness, a guilt about the discrepancy between your capital investment and emotional gain.
Or you could spend the night at a friend’s house, curled up on the couch, under well-loved blankets seeped in that friend’s familiar scent, candles lit, incense burning, dim, ambient lighting flooding the room.
In this hypothetical perfectly-lit living room, I can imagine feeling calm, centred, held and safe. I have always strived to be the friend who provides the space with cushions and candles and snacks and ambient lighting!!!
I want to curate, shape and share a place of safety and cozy comfort, for myself and for the people I share this life with.
New home, new sense of alienation?
Lately, after moving to a new continent and a new apartment, I am finding a lot of contradictions between my beliefs that I can’t buy my way to a place that feels like home, and the desire to buy my way to a place that feels like home.
Although I know my comfort in the material isn’t directly about greed or mindless consumption and acquisition, it has been jarring to be reminded of how directly my mood correlates with how my space looks, and the fact I am dependent on capital to alter that space.
I am like a little sims character and my environment bar is red and I need to buy all the plants and all the paintings to turn my bar green!
In London, I didn’t really splurge to make my house a home, but I put in time and energy, collecting things that:
a) appealed to me aesthetically
b) had meaning
c) made me feel happy.
A red light lamp that my friends from home sent me for my 25th birthday during one of the first Covid lockdowns, another lamp I got from TK Maxx when I first moved to Brixton in 2018, a 19th century wooden table and mirror set I found on the street when living in Deptford in 2019, another table I bought for £20 from Brick Lane market when I was -aff it- leaving an afters at 7am on a Sunday morning, lots of cushions I have collected over the years, blankets from my childhood home in Aberdeen (thanks mum <3), draped over our stained couch, lots of random trinkets, bowls to hold my keys, vases, mugs, posters and drawings on the walls, too many books piled up on my bedroom floor, reminding myself and everyone else that I AM a literary girl.
I think of the comfort my space gave me and it is not directly about the things but the stories connected to those things and the memories in that space.
In a way, those items create a sense of a life for me, as well as a sense of ~who I am~, offering a level of groundedness and rootedness amidst a lot of instability.
This is an optimistic and even utopian idea of the home, amidst a bloated property marked, rentier capitalism, financial insecurity on a local level, and genocide and displacement on a global level.
For many, home is a place of precarity, it is not a place of safety or comfort. The idea of home and the fact I’ve always had access to a semi-comfortable home my entire life is something I think about often, especially over the past year.
The walls have memories
While travelling this Summer and staying in hostels, I fantasised about having my own space again.
I imagined fresh white bedsheets, my belongings spread out across my room rather than crushed into my suitcase, each item having its own specific place; I imagined a feeling of order and a space of my own.
When I moved to LA, I missed the spiders and the dirt and the frogs in the shower.
This has made me think about my space and my materialism in a different way. What is it that brings me that sense of peace? Is it the cozy feeling of a well-organised and nicely lit bedroom? Or the memories that my personal belongings elicit? Or the comfort of sharing a home with people who have become my family? Of feeling accepted and belonging to a space? And can the impulse to buy, decorate and alter be ignored in favour of learning to be present in what feels unfamiliar and unhomely?
Thinking back to my home in London, I can close my eyes and imagine my flatmate Daniela coming downstairs and telling me how my cat had misbehaved that day, looking over at Luna’s innocent, protesting eyes as she began her nightly scratching attack on our orange armchair.
I can see my other flatmate Pauline enthusiastically greeting me good morning: ‘hellosies!’ as we both navigate around each other in our tiny kitchen, making our breakfasts, taking our 9am WFH ‘start time’ very lightly, complaining about our work or catching up on any tea that may have occurred since we last saw each other 8 hours ago.
I lived in that house for 3 years and saw so many transitions there; I have memories of cooking with friends, sharing wine and debriefs post-break-ups, hosting friends visiting from other countries, sleeping on the couch when there wasn’t enough space, birthday parties and new year’s parties with all my favourite people in one place.
All of the emotion that those years and that house held!
From difficult flatmate dynamics, heartbreak, sharing my bedroom with my bestie and that becoming ‘our’ space, a shameful number of Thai takeouts eaten in my bed and late night knocks on my bedroom window telling me to open the front door.
My room was on the bottom floor, looking out onto a big tree and a semi-busy street, there wasn’t much privacy or daylight at all, but despite these imperfections I felt a genuine shift in my being towards a deeper sense of safety and wholeness when I entered the front door.
In LA, I have a nice home, a nice flatmate, a peaceful and safe space, but it doesn’t feel like home.
Lately I have been feeling a tension between my desire to buy new things and ‘make my house a home’ and the awareness that if I spent money on buying new things for my apartment, I would indeed feel GUILTY and annoyed at myself for spending money on things I don’t need, and it would probably not fill this sense of lack I am experiencing.
(This is heightened by the fact I am finding it really difficult to NOT support unethical businesses like Amazon, since more local options and smaller businesses are unaffordable or inaccessible without a car, but that is a whole other topic.)
When I think back to Koh Phangan, although I craved and romanticised the idea of having my own space, I actually felt a similar level of at-homeness in those hostel and volunteer dorms as I do in my flat now.
I started writing this as an anti-consumerism essay, as I was feeling frustrated about my living situation, but I think through writing I have realised that what I’m actually feeling is a sense of longing for the home I was able to experience over the past years.
My experience of getting older and coming to the ~end of my 20s~has been one of increasing gratitude for all the joy and beauty and love in my life, it made me so happy to look back on those photos from London and know I have this extended family across the globe, as well as the ability to find more love and joy in LA ❤︎.
I think for now I will pause on buying the bookshelves and cushions and decorative items, and try to remind myself to be fully present for the people and moments around me that will truly make this year in LA feel like home.
Ways I am trying to make my house a home while resisting the pressure to buy / contribute to unethical companies’ growth and rampant overconsumption!!!
Taking home this UGLY cupboard I found on the street with the hope I will one day turn it into a ‘creative project’ but will likely just leave it in my living room as an eyesore for months <3
Soft-committing to learning to grow plants! I’m making little description cards about each plant (I only have 2 babies so far) so I can care for them well and encourage GROWTH.
Got a monitor from my bestie which will serve as a TV as soon I find a MAN to hang it on the wall.
‘Turning my bathroom into a spa’ with local farmer’s market eucalyptus.
Picking up books from a free street library in downtown LA > buying books.
Saw my friend’s bf growing his own spring onions, I too will grow my own spring onions.
Using my jacket belt to carry my yoga mat rather than buying a yoga carrier.
Bringing my coffee to work in an old pasta jar lol.
help my mood is also v dependent on how my space looks and the things in it, I think I'd feel very much the same if I looked around and didn't see loads of cute shite dotted about but, as usual, it's all about balance~ anyway I loved this!! I think this is my favourite piece of yours so far 🩷