Put On Your Bra-ssicas: You Can Still Plant Vegetables Now for the Fall! Here’s 14 to Try!

Summer’s Almost Over! What Are We Doing Here, Talking About Gardening?

In May, I wrote about 7 vegetable seeds procrastinating queers could sow right then!. Maybe you did sow some seeds! I hope you’ve enjoyed some of the fruits of your garden adventures by now. Maybe you saw that post in May, sighed, didn’t have time, and moved on with your life. Listen, I feel you. Personally, I am very grateful that my garden chooses to gift me with tomatoes even though I’ve done an awful job of weeding because the work at this very website sure does pile up and we’re all just trying to survive here. Gardens are nice, they’re soothing, they’re pretty gay (claiming it); and it can be really healing and pleasant and cathartic to grow something from seed and then, um, eat it. I want that for you. So, if you gave up, thinking that your dreams of vegetable gardening would have to be deferred for a year because you were too busy or just chaotic until now, I have some news: You can still plant a fall vegetable garden this year! What follows are some fall vegetable gardening tips and how-to’s (including vegetables you can plant for fall and winter harvests) to get you started.

In fact, fall vegetable gardening is its own special thing. So this isn’t playing catch up. This isn’t a rush job. You still have time to do this right! YOU can plant a vegetable garden that will yield veggies this fall and winter.

In fact, it’s the best time for planting certain things. I have a bag of carrot seeds I’ve been hanging onto, gazing at with longing. I’ll pick up the packet, pass it from one hand to the other, wonder what they’ll taste like, and read the message printed very clearly on the package that warns they are NOT for spring sowing. It is almost time for these carrots. I have been waiting for months for this moment.

In fact, certain vegetables, like your brassicas (cabbages, mustards, broccoli, cauliflower), your lettuces, and, again, root vegetables like beets and carrots will actually taste better after a light frost. This quick video explains why carrots are sweeter after a frost, but, essentially, it’s because these plants have adapted to survive in the cold by generating their own form of antifreeze… made of sugar. Then, when we eat them, they taste sweeter because the sugar content is in fact higher.

Sounds delicious, right? Let’s dig into this gardening adventure together!

First of All: Check Your Frost Date

I’ve found the Old Farmer’s Almanac dates to be pretty accurate! My family’s sworn by the print version’s predictions for years, and it’s what I always go back to. Now, in this here year of 2021, you can go and enter your location to see your frost dates online.

So, I’m seeing that, in all likelihood, I’m going to get the first frost around October 19 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. That means I’m going to, personally, for practical purposes, try not to have any plants that will die with a light to moderate frost planted in such a way that I’m hoping to harvest from them any time past the first week of October. I’m not going to plant those plants! (It is, alas, not time for any peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, or really corn. We’re not going to talk about them just like we didn’t talk about them with seed-planting in June. These babies get started early and need to be grown during the hot weeks of midsummer.)

On the other side of the spectrum, plants that can stand some moderate dips in temperature might be with me through the end of October and even into November, which is awesome. I grew up in western New York State / Buffalo, right up on the Canadian border, so my internal clock is set to “it snows in October.” If you’re farther north, you’re probably counting on even less time, and similarly, if it’s hotter where you are, you’ll have a longer growing season. If you’re in Richmond, VA for example, your first frost date is October 30. If you go even farther south, you don’t really have a frost date, even if temperatures will cool somewhat.

Why do we need to know the frost date? So we don’t set ourselves up for disappointment. It sucks to plant something and then have it die in the cold before you can eat anything from it! It also is a little less than satisfactory for something to stop growing because it’s too cold, so you wind up with a teeny tiny (but tasty) plant. My tiny cabbages from last year were my lesson in this (don’t worry, they still made beautiful cabbage rolls) — because, yes, these plants can survive the cold, but you want them established and to have done most of their growing before the frost date.

And yes, there are ways to extend the growing season: greenhouses =, cold boxes, various configurations of translucent tarp — but we’re not trying to start a homestead here, we’re just growing a few vegetables that you maybe haven’t even put any thought into it until this very moment! We’re going to keep it simple.

So Now You Know Your Frost Date! What Does It Meeaaaan!?

We have to look at the time to grow to maturity for whatever you’re planting, the time to harvest, and then count backward from the frost date. If you want to be the safest, time it so your plants are ready to harvest at around your frost date. In my example, I’m going to stagger planting dates so that I have three harvests ready to go at different times. So, let’s use beets as an example:

Beets take 7-8 weeks to mature from sowing to harvest, and I want them to go through about one frost, so I’m going to count backward about 6 weeks from October 19 and not really go past that.

I’m going to stagger planting dates so that I have three harvests ready to go at different times (this is also called succession planting). So, here is my planting calendar for beets.

Week 4 of August: Plant ⅓ of my beets, these should be ready for harvest in about the second week of October or later (these probably won’t face much frost but should enjoy maturing during the cooler weather)
Week 1 of September: Plant ⅓ of my beets, these should be ready for harvest around the third week of October or later
Week 2 of September: Plant ⅓ of my beets; these should be ready for harvest around the fourth week of October (really playing with the frost date with these) or later

Remember, my frost date is October 19. Yours might be different.

When it comes to planning your garden, different plants have different times that they take to grow, so you need to do this for each plant! Besides checking your frost date, my top fall gardening tip is to plan your garden in advance so you don’t miss your planting times. Here is a quick shortcut guide of vegetables to plant for fall with days from planting until harvest based on info I have gathered from the internet, put here just for you:

Beets: 50-70 days
Swiss Chard: 70-84 days
Carrots: 60-80 days (seeds need to remain damp)
Cabbage: 70 days
Bok Choy: depends on variety (baby versions can be ready really quickly), 45-60 days
Kale: 55-75 days
Mustard Greens: 40-70 days (really depends on how big / mature you want the leaves to be)
Broccoli: 80-100 days (I personally wouldn’t plant broccoli where I am at this point, but maybe if you’re somewhere warmer you could pull it off!)
Kohlrabi: 45-80 days depending on variety
Radishes: like 28 days, as little as 18 depending on the variety — these are so fast just keep planting them until the last minute in my opinion.
Peas: sugar snap peas (my #1 recommendation for a beginner gardener) will usually start producing after 40-60 days
Lettuce: depends on variety, as little as 30 days, 45 more commonly, longer
Arugula: as little as 28 days for common arugula, wild rocket can take longer
Spinach: 45-50 days, also depends on variety

What I’m Planting

As you can see, I have some summer harvest vegetables going; tomatoes, kale, swiss chard, beets, peppers, cabbage and runner beans.

I’m going with some things I KNOW will do well and trying some things for the first time. I’m looking forward to the slower pace of a fall vegetable garden, and hoping that a little cold slows the pests a little. (Not a gardening tip: just a wish, from me to the universe.)

In terms of things I know will do well, I’m planning more sugar snap peas where I currently have runner beans trellised. These are always a hit and I don’t feel like I can have too many. I’ll probably trim back my grape vines pretty hard (I have wild grape vines that came with the place, that I keep around for their tasty leaves, harvested in late spring).

Once the green beans, radishes and peppers have run their course, I’ll pull them and replace them with beets, succession planted as outlined above. Where I currently have my beets, I’m sowing carrots and a few cabbage plants. Some people get hardcore into crop rotation. I have limited space so I do what I can, but there is advice out there for what to plant before and after what else, mostly as an effort at pest management.

As for new things, I’m trying bok choy in my spring lettuce containers. The spring lettuce turned bitter, is now dead and ready to be pulled. I’m going to try some mustard greens and other lettuces in my tomato container later on.

What Do I Do With My Fall Vegetable Garden Now?

Get planting! All of these will do well in cooler weather for a fall planting. I recommend that you do research specifically on whatever you decide to plant, just to make sure you have the right conditions. I talk a little bit more about growing plants, like peas, that require a trellis in my first gardening article.

So, the point here: If you combine your frost date + the knowledge that you now possess of plant grow times, you likely have time to grab some seeds and get a patch of ground ready (don’t forget to test your soil for lead and if you need to do this you can get a sample tested for $20 here). Carrots are great for soil that’s a little rough, if that is your situation. I’ve also seen cabbages persevere (though grow slowly) in heavy clay soil. Peas are intrepid. Most of these, and even root veggies, also do pretty darn well in raised bed situations. These are especially good if your soil isn’t safe to use or if you can’t get it tested (because with a raised bed, you are using soil you bought from a gardening store that is safe and I hope lead-free).

After you sow the seeds and take care of them according to instructions, you should be well on your way to a beautiful fall harvest. Soon, autumn won’t just be about pumpkins; it can also be about beets and carrots, lettuce and sugar snap peas and all the colorful fall vegetables you’ve planted. You did it! (Or you will!) Proud of you!

Another note: with most of these plants, beets, lettuce etc — if you follow the seed packet instructions, you’re going to have thinnings. You can eat these! I like them on top of poached eggs on toast. You could put them in a sandwich, IDK dream big!

Some Other Things to Do With Your Vegetable Garden in the Fall

This fall, once I pull some of my summer plants, I’ll transfer some potted blackberry plants into my caged area so they’re safe from deer and will cover them for the winter. I’m also going to try and cover and preserve my huckleberry and ground cherry bushes so they hopefully grow larger next year. Finally, depending on where you are, September and October are the time to plant garlic for the following summer harvest! You can get seed garlic, or if it’s sold out because it is always sold out these days, you can break apart and peel the skins from garlic you get from a farmer’s market and plant each individual little clove pointy side up (and mulch on top to keep it tucked in and warm all winter). I tried both farmer’s market and store bought garlic last year and…only the farmer’s market survived, thus the recommendation. Harvest these the next late June or July, when the tops (scapes) start to brown. Keep this timing in mind as you plan your garden in case you want to have a garlic patch!

Got tips, tricks, recommendations, fall gardening plans or questions…maybe even garden photos? I would love to see them in the comments! Good luck out there, my gay gardeners. I believe in you!

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.

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!

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!

The 11 Queerest Episodes of HGTV

Back in January, the Discovery network launched Discovery+, a streaming service for the bevy of networks under its media umbrella. The service has something for every type of gay. Are you a chef-y gay? Discovery+ offers you all your favorite shows from Food Network and the Cooking Channel. A true crime gay? You’ve got Investigation Discovery’s entire library at your fingertips. An adventurous gay? Visit every corner of the world from the comforts of your couch with the Travel Channel or or Discovery. Are you a gay who’s unsure of where they stand on the question of “is love a lie?” Shows like 90 Day Fiance and Say Yes to the Dress will help you figure out where your allegiances lie.

For me, though, I’m a home improvement gay, determined to watch enough HGTV to one day level up to the DIY gay status. Thus far my love for HGTV just leaves me with a lot of ideas but lacking the capacity to bring any of them to fruition. I can talk a good game, though!

While I love watching HGTV, the network is definitely lacking when it comes to diversity. Its talent is disproportionately white and its out queer talent is disproportionately male. As far as I can tell, the only lady gay to ever host a show on HGTV is Ellen DeGeneres. Those same skewed demographics are reflected in the participants in their shows too. Some of that is the nature of home ownership which is almost inherently discriminatory — only about half of LGBT adults own their homes, compared to 70.1% of non-LGBT adults — but there’s a casting issue too: in a 2017 analysis of House Hunters episodes by the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center, just 68 of 1,565 episodes featured gay or lesbian real estate seekers. Of those, only nine featured lesbian couples.

But HGTV is trying to do better…so if you’re looking for something to mindless to binge, and want to see some queer ladies while doing it, here’s a quick list of 11 of HGTV’s best (and queerest) episodes.

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Vacation House Rules 203: “Vacation Playground”

Jackie and Teresa have recently purchased a lakefront cottage in hopes of eventually retiring there. In the interim, though, they want to use their new property to generate income… and they call in Scott McGillivray to help them maximize the cottage’s rental potential. Scott seizes upon Jackie and Teresa’s ultra-competitiveness and turns their cottage into a family retreat, perfect for gamers.

House Hunters International 14914: “Staying Calm in Cologne”

Watching HHI is a trade-off: there’s a high probability you’ll stumble on an episode where some obnoxious American moves overseas and can’t fathom why they can’t have all the conveniences of home. That is annoying. But, there’s also the opportunity to play the my favorite House Hunters game: “will this couple survive this move?” Conversations about a rental between one person who wants to be close to work and the other, who begrudgingly gave everything up to move across an ocean, are always especially tense…and it’s not hard to imagine relationships hinging on their outcome.

That said, I think Lydia and Melissa Hartung are safe. Lydia’s new job marks a return to her home country of Germany, only this time its with a new wife and two dogs in tow.

House Hunters 19710: “Make No Mistake in San Diego”

House Hunters episodes themselves are a bit more difficult to watch on the Discovery+ app. Instead of letting you select individual episodes, the app has a channel devoted exclusively to running HH episodes on a perpetual loop. Perfect if you’re looking for background noise to soundtrack your work days, less helpful if you’re on the search for lady gays. But if you’re fortunate, you might happen upon this episode featuring Sophie and Jeannie, a young married couple who are looking to purchase their first condo. The former collegiate rugby players disagree on almost everything: Spanish or contemporary, move-in-ready or fixer upper, city or suburbs and starter or long-term home.

House Hunters 19602: “Putting Out Fires in Knoxville”

Heather and her wife, Kristyn, are looking for a new home in the Knoxville suburbs. Heather’s a real life Maya Bishop/Hen Wilson: a firefighter in Maryville who’s looking to stay close to work, lest she have to repeat her training in a new county. Kristyn, though, is tired of the long commute to the kids’ school in Knoxville and is looking for something to shorten their morning routine.

House Hunters 18201: “Glam vs. Land in New York

What better way to kick of Pride 2021 than with the debut of a House Hunters episode featuring Dominique Jackson, one of the stars behind the acclaimed series Pose. Elektra Abundance Evangelista’s portrayer is on the hunt for a two-story colonial with a pool with an easy commute to New York City. Her fiancé, Edwin, is after a different style of life, though: he wants a farmhouse with some acreage.

I love this episode so, so much. Both Edwin and Dominique have known homelessness so the significance of this purchase isn’t lost on them. As the episode closes, Dominique says, “As a black trans woman, this is something that is absolutely amazing — home ownership is something that my community is not really accustomed to — this shows my sisters that we can own houses, we can be whatever we desire to be.”

Home Town 309: “A Modern Millenial Makeover”

Keri and Laekin are a newly engaged couple who first met in high school and reach out to Home Town‘s Ben and Erin Napier to find their first house together. They’re both just 21 so I spend the entire episode marvelling (or worrying?) that they’re getting married and buying a house so young. Thankfully, they’ve got a reasonable wish list: a master bathroom with a separate shower and tub and a book nook for them to read and study. And, much to my surprise, beneath Keri and Laekin’s genial exterior are two savage negotiators who get the Craftsman cottage under list price.

Property Brothers Forever Home 206: Marrying the Old and the New

When Drew and Jonathan pull up to Kate and Amy’s vintage Toronto home, Amy and her son Edgar are sporting matching walking boots: him, after having broken his leg on a trampoline, and her, after breaking her ankle while carrying Edgar down the stairs. But even with the walking boot, when it comes time for demolition, Amy is gung-ho, ready to turn their main floor into an efficient space to host friends and family. See, this is the kind of lesbian energy that HGTV needs more of.

Tiny House Hunters 206: “Tiny Home, Big Move”

As much as I lament HGTV’s lack of diversity, the one place I didn’t expect black people or lesbians to show up is on Tiny House Hunters. Like Roxane Gay, “I thought this fixation was primarily a ‘white people thing,'” until this particular episode which features an adorable black lesbian couple. Joy is fresh off her service in the Air Force and is moving to California to start school, while her new wife, LaToya, is transitioning into a new career as a blogger. With hopes of achieving financial freedom, the newlyweds look at three tiny houses, each less than 400 square feet.

Design at Your Door 106: “Rooms on Fire!”

Design at Your Door was one of HGTV’s first swings at producing new content during the pandemic. The premise is simple: couples seeking to improve some part of their home gets a virtual consultation from an HGTV designer. The catch? After being sent all the materials they need, the couple is responsible for bringing the designer’s vision to fruition. It literally forces home improvement gays to become DIY gays… or at least it does in this episode. Gina and Denise do a great job bring the ideas of designer Tiffany Brooks to fruition, creating a beautiful guest space for their mom.

Love It or List It 1203: “Constant Construction Chaos”

I am, admittedly, partial to Love It or List It because in 2014, the show lefts its roots in Canada and began taping episodes in my home state of North Carolina. Now, when I watch, I get to see cutaways to familiar landmarks and, in a few instances, even some familiar faces. Now, finally, an episode with some North Carolina gays! I was thrilled.

Jody’s a talented contractor who’s done an incredible job renovating the main floor of their Durham home but her wife, Emilee, is (understandably) tired of living in the middle of a renovation. Emilee wants to move to a new space — with ample space to grow their family and host her mother — and Jody wants to see the project that she started through to the end.

Love It or List It 1712: “No Laughing Matter”

It was love at first sight Jamelle and Lauren when saw their 2400 square foot home but after a few years of dealing with a lack of closet space, falling pieces of ceiling and no space to write without distraction, Lauren’s ready to look elsewhere. Finding a new space for their couple and their daughter is no easy feat, though: Jamelle’s got an exhaustive list of wants, including — oddly — a stove facing the dining area.

Beachfront Bargain Hunt Renovation 201: “Fishing for a Fixer-Upper”

Beachfront Bargain Hunt Renovation combines two of my favorite things in one show: the beach and a bargain. Couples and families search for a fixer-upper and use the balance of their home-buying budget to bring their dreams to life. In this episode, Stephanie and Virginia are looking for vacation home on Galveston Island (TX) where they can relax and entertain family and friends. Renovations are tough on any couple but, for Stephanie and Virginia, the process brings them closer together and by the end of the episode, they announce their engagement!

Which Set of Goth Lesbian Girlfriends Is Going to Buy the Lizzie Borden House

Morbid lesbian true crime aficionados, fans of the 2018 Kristen Stewart and Chloe Sevigny vehicle, and real estate moguls will be thrilled to know that the Fall River home is for sale after 15 years of operating as a bed & breakfast. For the low low price of $2 million, honestly almost middle-of-the-road as far as Massachusetts property sales go, you too could live in the home where Lizzie Borden’s parents were killed, arguably by Lizzie Borden, as well as the attendant “business, …bed and breakfast’s website, intellectual property, and the merchandise sold there.”

The current owners (and realtor) seem to be hopeful that the property will be maintained as a bed & breakfast and tourist attraction; it also seems a prime opportunity for lesbian crime fiction writing retreats, a communal space for wealthy misanthropic gay women with bad relationships with their dads, or perhaps some sort of hatchet-throwing boot camp. There’s also some appeal to the idea of using it as a private residence; think of arguing with your wife over whether it makes more sense to buy plastic water bottles and re-use them or buy glass BPA-free ones and have to replace them when you inevitably lose them in the same kitchen where Lizzie and Bridget Sullivan may or may not have exchanged charged glances, or having to dig the car out in the winter in front of the barn where Stewart and Sevigny were depicted fucking in the film (so much scratchy hay!).

Alternatively, a quick Zillow search has revealed that in addition to the ancestral Borden home where Lizzie’s father and stepmother was murdered, also for sale is Maplecroft, the estate that Lizzie and her sister lived in for the rest of Lizzie’s life after the murder trial – and it’s a Pioneer Valley steal at only $890,000 asking price right now! I think it might be cottagecore? I’m sure you can let me know in the comments. Huge month for the Borden hive – let us know where you guys settle, send pics of what you’ve done with the place.

Lez Try It: Flower Arranging á la “Imagine Me and You”

Imagine Me and You is a sweetly inoffensive romantic comedy about two women, Rachel and Luce, who overcome all odds (a straight man named Heck, a straight man named Coop) to fall in love and live happily ever after together. And you know what? I like it! It’s a cute movie where the lesbians don’t spend all their time quietly yearning for each other or walking into the sea or whatever. Never seen it? Rachel (played by Piper Perabo with a British accent, innit) has curly hair and goes to work approximately once every six months; Luce (played by Lena Headey) is a lesbian florist who is gay. We know Luce is a lesbian because she has an office dripping in beaded curtains, wears asymmetrical cardigans, and leaves a four-person dinner party to sit on the roof in the rain by herself. At one point, Luce wears a navy blazer layered over a chenille V-neck sweater, as if the film’s costume designer was like “Lesbians? I think I saw a lesbian in the back of a Delia’s catalog once!” Anyway, Rachel is married to a man named Heck, but then she falls in love with Luce, and then they live happily ever after.

I remember watching Imagine Me and You shortly after I came out, probably because I saw it on one of those sad lists of “The Top Lesbian Movies For Lesbians That Aren’t, Like, GOOD, But They’re Good LESBIAN Movies, And Also Carol Is Number One On The List But Every Other Movie Is Kind Of For Lesbians Only”. But I like this movie! It’s cute, and Giles is in it, and it features a scene where two lesbians fall in love at a romantic, dimly lit elementary school presentation. The only really BAD thing about it is that it ends with a straight man staring directly into the camera and laughing, as if to say, “Can you believe this lesbian movie ends with ME getting a happy ending? My name is Heck!”

Also, I don’t know where to put this, but it needs to be said: Luce’s flower shop is named “Flowered Up”. What?? That’s not a thing people say! What is that a pun on?!

Anyway, there’s a lot of talk in the film about what different flowers mean, as Luce is repeatedly confronted by emotionally unstable customers demanding the perfect flowers for very specific occasions. We learn that red roses mean love and fidelity, azaleas symbolize “may you achieve financial security,” and, crucially, lilies mean “I dare you to love me”. I was intrigued. Why do flowers have meanings? What are their meanings? Could I make my own bouquet and send it to somebody? Is this something I could do from the safety of my own home, because there is still a slow-burning apocalypse going on outside? Turns out the answer to all of these questions was yes! I was all flowered up and ready to go.

Lez Trying It

First, I ran through a flowery field, screaming at the flowers. Their mysteries would soon be known to me!!! I was feeling pretty cocky about it. Then I sat down and stared at a blank Google Doc for an hour. Turns out, I didn’t know shit about flowers, and no one seemed to like it when I called them “fancy grass”. It was time to make like the Great Mouse Detective and do some research.

My first question was, why and how do flowers have meanings? Isn’t the meaning of any flower “I like you enough to murder a non-sentient being for you”? Actually, although many cultures assigned their own meanings to plants and flowers (including the ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians and Chinese), true flower symbolism as we know it today first rose to prominence during the Victorian era. Victorians mastered the art of passive-aggressiveness by assigning specific meanings to not only each flower, but also every color of each flower, meaning that a yellow rose could have a much different meaning than a red one. Giving flowers meanings allowed the Victorians to say things to each other they didn’t dare speak aloud (horny!), and books that defined the “language of flowers” were commonplace in Victorian homes, presumably because John Grisham hadn’t been born yet.

In addition to assigning each flower a meaning, the Victorians also went one step beyond: the physical positions of flowers (i.e., whether they were held in the left or right hand or placed upside down or right side up) were also given specific meanings by the Victorians. Many of the flowers that were given meanings were those that couldn’t be easily purchased at the florist, since gathering and arranging the flowers yourself was apparently part of the fun, presumably because John Grisham hadn’t been born yet.

At this point, my brain was starting to veer into Da Vinci Code territory. I was beginning to obsess over every flower I had ever been given in my life. When my parents gave me red roses for my college graduation, did they know that they meant “I love you”, or were they too ignorant to know which flowers meant “Congratulations on successfully completing your geology major”? My ex used to give me bouquets of pink stargazer lilies because she said they were her favorite, but those flowers symbolize prosperity and abundance. Was she trying to tell me to go on Shark Tank? Is that why we broke up???

To make things even more complicated, there are a ton of different meanings for flowers. Some of these meanings have changed over time, and some of them vary between different sources. I decided to narrow my focus in order to make my own bouquet. I would assemble a bouquet to send to my two younger sisters, Diane and Jess, with a very specific message, and then I’d see if they could decipher it. For some reason, I thought there would be an online florist site where I could build my hideous bouquet, but there was not, and anything I found even remotely close to that was, like, $85. So here’s the bouquet I built, along with the meaning of each flower in it:

Aster: Sisterhood. (We are sisters.)
Iris: Irises have a lot of different meanings, but two of them are good news (i.e., good news! Here is a symbolic bouquet for you!) and “pleasant surprise”, often referring to the birth of a child (Diane has a one-year-old son). Works for me!
Tansy: I declare war on you!!! (I couldn’t resist. There’s something very charming about declaring war with a flower. Also, we are sisters.)
Yellow carnations: Disdain. (If I am going to war with someone, chances are I disdain them.)
Magnolia: Love of nature. (I will fight you in the woods.)

I had come up with the perfect bouquet. It looked beautiful and had a clear meaning: “Good news, sister! I am declaring war on you. We will fight outside.” This made a lot of sense to me. I sent my sisters a mock-up of my bouquet (read: an email with 5 loose images of flowers) and asked them what they thought it meant.

Diane was confused by this TOTALLY NORMAL request for information. She said, “This is a sweet bouquet that reminds me of My Best Friend’s Wedding. The vibe it gives me is, there’s a wedding between a man and a woman and I’m a random person in the wedding and the bride sent me this bouquet as a thank you.” Before I could say anything else, or perhaps ask why a bride would give someone else a bouquet on her wedding day, she said, “I’m going to go watch The Crown.” Fair enough!

Jess was a little more forthcoming with her interpretation, although she also didn’t really understand what I meant by “the meaning of flowers”. She said the magnolia reminded her of a debutante ball, “like the one in The OC where Jimmy Cooper punches another dad,” and that the yellow carnations looked like they belonged “in a movie when the character forgets to bring something for their prom date so they have to pick weeds from the driveway and pretend that they are from the florist.” (She also said “what in carnation?”, in case you were wondering if my love of bad puns was genetic.) Overall, she called the bouquet chaotic (“bou-chaotic”) and said “if I were to put all of this together, it seems like something the prom queen would receive on stage after her prom king boyfriend died.”

My flower experiment was a failure. Now I was going to have to send my sisters a strongly worded letter announcing my intentions to fight them, which was much less elegant than a bouquet. What would Luce do? Probably yell at a soccer player. I laced up my yelling shoes and headed off to the local elementary school.

Conclusion

The language of flowers is interesting. Will I ever use it again? Maybe. I can totally see myself sending a bouquet of snapdragons (deception) to a special enemy, or gifting a friend some lavender (distrust) and then frantically texting them “I GOT YOU LAVENDER FOR ITS RELAXING PROPERTIES!!! I TRUST YOU!!!!” But in this never-ending pandemic, there’s something seductive about old-fashioned means of communication. A handwritten letter, a deliberately designed bouquet, a Western Union telegram: they all offer that personal touch you can’t get over Zoom. There is also something very queer about sending a subtext-laden message in a bouquet, which I suppose is why it makes sense for flowers to be so prominently featured in a movie like Imagine Me and You.

I highly recommend learning more about the meanings of flowers. It was absolutely the best thing I’ve done for this column, since reading is easier than sword fighting and learning is more delicious than creamed spinach. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get flowered up. I need to fight my sisters in the woods!!

(Thank you to Audrey Burges and Xu Mason for their help in teaching me about the meaning of flowers!)

What Is Cottagecore and Why Do Young Queer People Love It?

On TikTok, a white teenage girl in a pristine white dress with spectacularly long, red hair mugs for the camera in front of a forest backdrop. A voiceover plays: “Anyone else wanna just, like, move off the grid into a cottage in a nearby forest where you can bathe in a stream and make your own quilts and grow your own herbs and spices and dance with the fairies, because…same.” Hashtag fairies. Hashtag dream life. Hashtag lesbian. Hashtag cottagecore.

Coined on Tumblr in 2018, the term “cottagecore” describes an Internet aesthetic inspired by a romanticized interpretation of agricultural life (the suffix “-core,” derived from the 80s hardcore music scene, is now used to denote a genre). The cottagecore aesthetic is marked by flowy skirts, ceramic toad figurines, and bucolic scenery. It’s knitting, baking, and rolling in meadows. It’s Beatrix Potter and Taylor Swift’s Folklore. It’s a denial of hustle culture and a fetishization of coziness that became a hashtag, a lifestyle, and, most notably, an escape.

Cottagecore has proliferated multiple subgenres, including goblincore (a more androgynous aesthetic — think linen overalls and lots of mushroom imagery), grandmacore (a exaltation of skills of yesteryear, like baking bread and embroidery) and fairycore (cottagecore with a sprinkle of pastels and butterflies). These celebrations of “simple living” paradoxically exist on apps, where cottagecore devotees document their picnics on perfect, grassy hillsides beneath a perfect, setting sun. During a pandemic that has confined many of us to our homes, TikTok, Tumblr, and Instagram have seen an uptick in this idyllic content. Its creators are young, mostly white, and overwhelmingly queer.

Unlike “tradwives,” a right wing movement that advocates for regressive gender roles, cottagecore presents domesticity outside of the binary. People of any gender are invited to participate in the cottagecore’s decidedly soft aesthetic, but women (and “women’s work”) are at the forefront. As Isabel Slone wrote in the New York Times, cottagecore “offers a vision of the world where men are not consciously excluded; they are simply an afterthought.” Perhaps this is why young queer women have embraced cottagecore with fervor — on TikTok, #cottagecorelesbians has nearly 33 million views.

Hazel, an 18-year-old queer woman living in rural Wales, is one of these content creators. “For a small portion of time, I can forget about what’s troubling me and be swept into a beautiful world of flowers and baking,” she said. “[Cottagecore] is the idea of this perfect, fantasy lifestyle where you’re away from the pressures of modern life.”

The queer drive towards escapism is a longstanding cultural marker. The ultimate cottagecore dream — to run away to a bucolic wonderland with your lesbian wife — hearkens back to the withering lesbian separatist movement of the ’70s, which called on feminists to either claim lesbianism or celibacy and move to “womyn’s” land. While cottagecore is focused on the individual (running away to the woods with your girlfriend) rather than the collective (establishing a commune), the movement shares the lesbian separatist reverence of “community.” In this case, however, “community” is only built online through follows, likes, and shares. While the cottagecore community lacks the IRL connections of the lesbian separatist movement, skill sharing as a radical practice has been embraced by both of these worlds. On TikTok, cottagecore creators teach each other how to start a vegetable garden, how to sew your own apron, and how to make tea with fresh ginger. They’re also sharing their social politics.

While some lesbian separatist communes still exist, most dissolved due to harmful trans-exclusionary policies, the increasing acceptance of queer women in mainstream culture, and the centering of white women’s issues and leadership. Cottagecore escapists tend to express trans-affirming ideology, and some are trans or non-binary themselves. Many creators include anti-racist messaging in their online content, but like many queer separatist communities of the past, the cottagecore community is overwhelmingly white. Cottagecore content creators of color are claiming space for their joy in this predominantly white world, and they’re initiating critical conversations about what some elements of cottagecore represent.

Daphne is a 17-year-old, mixed-race lesbian in Oklahoma who finds comfort in cottagecore imagery. “It makes me feel very serene,” she said. “It lets me escape the troubles of the world, even if it’s just the few minutes a day that it takes me to post, to look at some frogs just chilling on a lily pad or someone harvesting some veggies.”

Daphne’s Instagram account, @sapphic.daph, is a collection of images featuring Black revelers — mostly women — smelling flowers, picnicking in parks, drying herbs, and luxuriating in nature. “Some representation can show that we, too, can live happily, and I’m glad I can provide that content for my fellow Black people,” Daphne said.

Iridesscence is a 26-year-old Black Chicagoan who “very loosely” identifies as queer. She discovered the cottagecore hashtag this year and found that it applied to the pastoral fashion content she was already creating online.

“I’d like to see more non-BIPOC Americans within the aesthetic who fantasize about escaping to rural lands to reckon more with what that means for them to do,” she said. “It’s always important to remember who owned and who built up the land and be respectful of that.”

Iridessence isn’t alone in noting that white cottagecore fans can’t “reclaim” stolen land. Critiques of cottagecore are increasingly widespread on platforms like Tumblr, where writers point out that cottagecore romanticizes a period in which white colonizers stole land from indigenous people for their homesteads. While the cottagecore community attempts to reckon with the colonial past, the role of existing indigenous people in the cottagecore movement seems limited. Indigenous Tumblr users are encouraging white cottagecore creators to find more respectful ways to “connect to the land.” Indigenous TikTokers are using the cottagecore hashtag to presumably draw more white users to non-cottagecore content that addresses indigenous issues. Indigenous people who make their own cottagecore content are few and far between. Is cottagecore truly for everyone when some of us get dream of “running away to the land” while others struggle to take that land back?

Cottagecore’s “return to nature” ethos also echos the isolationist narratives of white cis men from Henry David Thoreau to Christopher McCandless, whose socioeconomic privilege allowed them to leave the perils of the “real world” behind. As one cottagecore critic wrote on Tumblr, “[‘Cabin narratives’] have the tendency to deny what may be the most politically important implications of a sort of agricultural, ‘natural’ rebellion against capitalism: solidarity and community; the sharing of skills, resources, and knowledge; liberation beyond the isolated, privileged individual — ultimately, I would argue, social justice.”

Aside from the occasional enthusiast moving to a cabin in the woods, in the cottagecore community, escapist fantasies tend to remain just that. The young queer people of cottagecore seem eager to engage in critical discourse while they fill their moss terrariums with crystals and bake bread. Colonialism, climate justice, and gender justice are openly discussed in cottagecore online communities alongside gardening tips and photos of thrifted aprons. The conversation is occasionally clumsy, but it’s happening. While young people work to redefine their values, the cottagecore aesthetic helps some creators make space for delight in a callous world.

“I feel delicate and feminine and beautiful,” Iridessence said. “And like I’m giving others like me permission to feel the same.”

How to Move During a Pandemic

by Ari & Vanessa

Moving is always stressful. Moving during a pandemic? Extremely stressful. Lucky for you, we (Ari and Vanessa) both just moved, and we lived to tell the tale. We took our own personal experiences, a bunch of generously shared advice from Autostraddle readers who have also moved over the past six months, and put together a guide to help you through this particularly fraught pandemic task. We’ll get into the nitty-gritty details in a minute, but before we dive in, we wanted to emphasize these overarching helpful tips.

1. Wear a mask.
2. Be more organized and pro-planning than you ever thought possible.
3. Be as honest as possible with your landlord/rental company about the situation you’re in.
4. Focus on your own safety and precautions, yes, but remember that your move is going to expose other people to you and your germs, and you need to be proactive about protecting them from your germs, too.
5. Be kind. We’re living through a pandemic – everything is taking so much longer because folks are getting used to an impossible reality. Your organization and planning will help a lot with this step because if you’re not doing something at the last minute or feeling very anxious you can be more patient, but even if you do get stressed or overwhelmed, try to remain kind.

If you’re feeling really overwhelmed and need help conceptualizing what a successful move would look like without a pandemic, we encourage you to start with this helpful guide written by Rachel in the Before Times: Moving 101: From Point A to Point B With Minimal Crying. Once you’re done reading that, come back here and join us for our Pandemic Moving 101 Journey!

We believe in you, you’re gonna do this! Here’s how.

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What To Do Before The Day of Your Move

Like we said in the intro, you’re going to want to be more organized than you ever thought possible during this move. Here are some things you might want to be thinking about – this is just a starting point, so if you think of more organizational elements that will help your specific move, add them, too. And don’t be shy about actually writing everything down – that will help you keep track and not forget anything.

• Where will you get your boxes? (Friends? Home delivery from a big box store? Curbside pickup from U-Haul? The post office? The grocery store?)
• What supplies do you need to gather, and will you be purchasing online or going into the store? (Whichever you decide make sure you’re not taking a million small trips – you’ll want to limit your exposure to others as much as possible because COVID does not care that you’re moving!)
• Can you isolate yourself for 14 days before the actual move so you know you aren’t accidentally spreading asymptomatic COVID?
• Can you isolate yourself for 14 days when you reach your destination (same reasoning)?
• Can you form a small pod of people 4-6 weeks before your move so you don’t have to hire movers and can rely on your the folks in your “germ pod” to help you? (This point is especially crucial if you live alone and are moving solo!).
• If you’re hiring movers, how many people should you hire to maximize efficiency and minimize exposure for you, your housemates, and the movers? (We have more advice for you if you decide to employ people with your move in the next section.)
• What are the administrative tasks you need to take care of before your move to help you have a smooth landing, and also to allow yourself to quarantine properly for 14 full days if that’s something you’re otherwise able to do? (For example, file a change of address on the USPS site so your mail will be forwarded efficiently, let your doctor know well in advance that you’re moving and ask how they recommend you transfer your prescriptions, research the government services you’ll need access to – like the DMV – to see if they’re working and how their procedures have shifted due to the pandemic.)

Another way organization is key for your pre-move planning is the way you actually pack your belongings. Autostraddle reader Megan emailed us and shared this tip: “When packing, I tried to consolidate things into boxes and bins and tote bags as much as possible to minimize the number of surfaces being touched, i.e. distributing things in boxes by weight and not by room.” If you’re using a pod or a box to ship your belongings, consider what will need to be washed when you get to your new destination (anything that wasn’t in a box, like your pillows or sheets – I know that there is conflicting research about how long COVID can live on different surfaces, but tbh I think this is great advice even when not dealing with a pandemic so I’m including it!).

Finally, the research is in: wear a mask. Wear a mask when you go to the store to buy all your moving supplies! Wear a mask if folks outside of your pod enter your home to help you move! Wear a mask while you’re sorting through boxes in front of your local liquor store! Wear a mask when you get on the airplane! MASKS: GET INTO THEM!

Choose How You Will Actually Move

There are so many options for how you can move, and there’s no best way. The primary thing, no matter how you move, is if you’re around people, wear your mask. WEAR YOUR MASK; DO NOT TAKE IT OFF. We’ve covered some of the basics here, but of course you may use some, none, or all of these! Do what works best for you!

If You Hire Movers, Tip Extremely Well and Respect Their Time

If you hire movers the biggest tips here are well, to tip, and stay out of their way. Movers are essential workers, and unlike grocery clerks, you’re able to tip them! And you should tip them! I understand if it’s unreasonable for you to be able to tip a full 100%, but if you’re a person of means, that’s exactly what you should aim for. And because these are essential workers, they’re seeing lots of people who are and aren’t taking this pandemic as seriously as they should be. So, help them out (and honestly, help yourself out), and stay out of their way. Okay, now that we’ve moved past basics, let’s talk about some other ways you can treat your helpers well.

Logistically, you want to check what safety measures the moving company is putting into place. Six months into the pandemic, most moving websites I’ve visited have very clear messages about how they’re sanitizing their trucks and materials. Regardless of how the company is handling cleanliness, you should provide hand sanitizer and a clean sink with soap and water for them to use. If you’ve got disposable masks, it’d also be really nice to offer those – when I moved, I went through twelve masks in one day. Having fresh, clean, masks available will make the process easier for everyone.

You also want to be sure to be very organized, more so than you’d usually be for a move! If you have the ability, think about moving everything into a central room so folks don’t have to go all throughout the house. Have your mattress already wrapped in plastic so strangers aren’t touching it, don’t use boxes that will fall apart or have difficulty closing. The main reason you want to be organized is, obviously, to respect the time of the movers. Folks are able to move fewer people than previously because of the sanitation measures they’re taking, so if you can turn your two hour move into an hour and a half, you’re offering them more time to rest and clean!

If Your Friends / Germ Pod Help You Move, Express (COVID-Cautious) Gratitude

If your friends help you move we offer much of the same advice as if you hire movers. One of the biggest differences to keep in mind is the usual “I can give you pizza and drinks after to say thank you!” You probably should not do this! Instead, think about sending their favorite meal to their home via your favorite delivery services. When I (Ari) moved into my new spot, the old tenant, a friend, left popsicles in the freezer, and those were amazing treats to give folks on their way out as they headed back home. Be nice, send thank you cards and don’t hug, as much as you want to!

How to Choose Between a Van, a Truck, and a Pod

Getting a van, truck, or pod might be the best option for you if you don’t have many friends with large vehicles, or want to do the move by yourself in your own time. If you’re getting a van or truck, see if the company has a contactless check-in system. U-Haul has one that requires a phone with GPS enabled, and will require you to take a picture of your ID as you sign in. No, you cannot use an old picture of your ID that you have on your phone, and yes, I know this from experience (which is to say: remember to bring your ID with you!). Pods are nice because similar to no-contact check in, you also can keep it at your home for long periods of time, and it’ll get sent to your new location! If you aren’t a strong driver and are moving a long distance (like Vanessa), we love the idea of a pod.

Be prepared to wait! Just like movers are sanitizing between moves, companies that provide moving trucks are doing the same, so your truck reserved for 8:30 might not be ready until 9:30, and you just have to be okay with that. Don’t be the person yelling at essential workers because you’re inconvenienced. We’re all dealing with inconveniences!

Finally, be okay with taking as long as you need. If you think you’ll need four hours, reserve the truck for seven, just in case. If you think the pod will arrive within one week of your arrival, pack a suitcase with enough underwear for two weeks, just in case. Keep your necessities close, and get comfortable waiting. Things are taking longer now, depending on where you are, it’s hot as hell, and the last thing you want to happen is to end up in the ER or urgent care because of exhaustion. Treat yourself gently, this is gonna be hard, it’s gonna be sweaty, and we aren’t used to having three layers of cloth covering our mouths and noses at all times.

How To Actually Move Yourself and Your Pets During The Pandemic

Depending on where you’re moving and how far away it is, your choice of how to physically take your body (and your pets!) from point A to point B will differ. I moved across the country and chose to fly instead of drive; Ari moved within their city and managed their move with a U-Haul van and a friend’s car (which said friend had to drive because Ari doesn’t drive). Regardless of your mode of transport, there are ways to take precautions to keep yourself and those around you as safe as possible.

Here’s What To Do If You’re Flying During The Pandemic

Research the airlines and see which companies are taking a strong stance on COVID safety. I flew JetBlue and they require masks on the plane and (as of July 2020) are not booking the middle seat at all. I also bought a face shield (to be worn as well as a mask, not instead of a mask!) and to be honest I loved it and will probably start wearing one at all times. Many airlines have consolidated their flight schedules because fewer people are traveling right now, so plan in advance to make sure you can book a flight on your desired date and also see if you can get a trip at a non-peak time.

Here’s What To Do If You’re Taking The Train During The Pandemic

Full disclosure, neither Ari nor I have moved via train (ever!) and none of the readers who wrote to us have either, but I’d imagine the tips for flying are relevant if this is your preferred mode of transport.

Here’s What To Do If You’re Driving Long Distance During The Pandemic

I really want to stress that we should be thinking about the overall health and safety of everyone throughout this pandemic, not just of ourselves. I’ve seen a lot of entitlement surrounding “getting outdoors” or “going into nature” or “driving so I’m safe” on social media, and I want to stress that we are still in a pandemic and now is really not the time for a fun road trip.

If you need to drive to get from point A to point B that’s cool, but I personally do not support stopping at a bunch of national parks or extending your trip any longer than you have to. The longer you’re on the road the more likely you’ll be interacting with individuals in small towns who did not consent to being exposed to your germs, and I think the goal should be to make the lightest footprint possible.

Autostraddle reader Emily suggested sleeping in your car if you’re able to; camping is another great option, though if you stay in hotels or other rentals be mindful of the workers who are going to have to sanitize after you and take care to clean up after yourself. Try to limit how often you’ll be entering grocery stores (I would…not stop at restaurants) – musician and longtime Autostraddle pal Mal Blum recommends packing protein-heavy snacks so that you won’t have to stop for food so often. I know it’s not fun to survive for a few days on Cliff Bars and beef jerky, but again, this isn’t really about having a fun road trip. It’s about moving during a pandemic and being mindful of the health and safety of those you encounter along the way.

Here’s How To Move Your Pets During The Pandemic

Give yourself extra time and grace when you’re moving with pets. Take out your carriers earlier than usual, if putting them in carriers is your want. Use pheromones in the weeks leading up, because seeing you stressed out and masked is not going to make your pets feel any happier or safer (trust me, this is from experience). If your pets really struggle with travel, think about talking to your vet about a sedative (if you’re flying, you’ll need to make sure your airline doesn’t have any rules against sedatives…although…how could they check?). In the most ideal world, you’ll either move your pets before everything else is moved (I, Ari, moved my cats to my new spot the night before my Big Move, slept there and fed them in the morning, and then locked them into the bedroom), or very last thing. If you can help it, I would not move pets, especially cats (what I know best), into your new place while everything else is happening. It’s just not gonna be fun.

You Made It Through Your Pandemic Move, Now What? Quarantine!

Yay! You made it to your new place! I’m so happy! Please go take a nap, I’m sure you’re tired. Once you’ve woken up from your nap, think about how you will keep yourself and your new neighbors and community members safe in the upcoming fourteen days. If possible quarantine strictly before and after — that’s 14 days of no-contact with other humans! We understand that’s not possible for everyone but if it is, go for it. Are you living alone? Many utilities aren’t requiring someone to show up at your place anymore to turn them on, call them to see if they’ll provide you with a self-installation kit. Need groceries? Count on your housemates, if they’re able to help, or if you’re alone, feel comfortable using Instacart or Shipt or whatever delivery service is available near you. The folks shopping for you already live in the community and won’t be introducing new germs into the environment, so it’s probably safer for them to go shopping than you.

If you live with housemates, have a pandemic protocol meeting with your housemates. If you can do so beforehand, do so; it’s nice to know how people are navigating the pandemic before you move in with them. Even if you do have one beforehand, it also might be nice to have one once you get there as well. Being on the same page matters! You don’t want to be surprised by a “socially distant hang out” on your first night there.

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We’re so happy you’re moving somewhere new, and we hope that your new home provides you with safety and happiness! Because of this pandemic, moving is going to be hard, but you can do it! Keep these tips in mind, and everything should work out fine! We love you! Be safe!! WEAR A MASK!!!!!