#LifeAtHome

[reneedeneve]

[katiemccrorycph]

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IKEA Life at Home Report x Annie Leibovitz

[homespun-stories]

Where Will The Baby Go?

For something that weighs around three kilos and measures in the region of 50cm, newborn babies sure do take up a lot of space. A little shy of three weeks ago, we brought our second baby back home—the same home we had brought back our first, just over four years ago. Many things have changed since then, not least the number of grey hairs on my head, but the one thing that has remained resolutely unchanged is the footprint of our apartment. 

The fact of this sat with me all through 2022 and 2023, as my husband and I journeyed down the path of growing our family and all the complexities (read: hope, loss, love) that kind of process often entails. But where will the baby go? I'd silently fret to myself before I was even sure I’d have a baby at all to hold in my arms again. Objectively speaking we live in a small apartment, with enough bedrooms for two-thirds of the current occupants, excusing our enormous house cat who cares not for doors or boundaries and considers any available surface her territory for a hard-earned nap. To be honest, I’d welcome that kind of laissez-faire approach to our sleeping arrangements, flopping from sofa to bed to rug, but social conditioning and my extremely Type A personality requires routines and structure. No, the baby would need a bed, just like the rest of us, and we would need to work out where that bed was going to go. 

It’s a profoundly modern and Western phenomenon, this suggestion that each individual requires their own bedroom or even their own bed. In the majority of countries around the world, co-sleeping and room sharing between parents and children is the standard practice of care, to the extent that it would be considered completely unreasonable to expect a child (let alone a baby) to sleep alone. In Japan, where co-sleeping ranks the highest in the world, sleep is described as a river, with the parents occupying the banks and the child as the flowing water held safely between. We co-slept with our daughter for the first six months of her life, although it wasn’t in the formation of a river but more like a motorbike (our bed) with a sidecar (her crib). Given the grunts, hoots and whistles she regularly emitted as she dozed, this analogy feels more apt than the backdrop of a babbling brook. In any instance, she was never more than an arm’s reach away during those thick, dark nights when every insane sound she made was heightened in the silence of a slumbering home. After that, we moved her into The Baby’s Room which we had decorated and furnished with playful odds and sods that said more about our whimsy of being parents than they did of any perceived personality trait of our child. It’s a curious thing, to decorate a room that someone else will occupy, without knowing a single thing about their tastes or interests.

The Baby’s Room had also been our study until that point, and when the time came to move the desk into the front room to make way for a changing table and crib, I felt slightly undone. I was ready to acknowledge that parenthood would come with an exchange of gains and losses, but there was something so bluntly literal about the act of becoming a mother that it necessitated my giving up a private place to write. I guess it’s a variation of that oft-debated line from Cyril Connelly: “There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hallway." The irony is that it was only once my daughter was born that I found the capacity within myself to put pen to paper in a more expansive way, and during my maternity leave I wrote the first draft of a book proposal. Perhaps it’s an even greater irony that four years later I am writing these words whilst my son is wailing in the room next door, as my husband tries to rock him to sleep. Perhaps, like nature, art will always find a way. 

One of the consequences of giving up our study in place of The Baby’s Room, was the associated shame (entirely on my part) that came with living in a home that appeared too small for all our needs and wants. I come from a country that places a great deal of emphasis on the Family Home, variations of which most of my peers now live in and are currently extending, remodelling or digging out extensive basements underneath. Family Homes have a garden, enough bedrooms for everyone, a guest room, more than one bathroom, and the kinds of open plan kitchen-cum-dining rooms that are increasingly of a single aesthetic that populates all our Instagram feeds. Family Homes tend to come with their own social media accounts, so we can follow our friends’ #HomeReno updates and post fire emojis under pictures of construction sites. I have spent a good many years reflecting on what makes us feel good, mad and sad about home, and I can tell you that the insidious rise of interior design content which is beyond the skills and budget of the overwhelming majority is making a lot of us fucking miserable about our living situations. 

After a while, the question of where will the baby go stopped masquerading as a concern about where, practically, the baby will sleep, and revealed itself for what it was: a shameful desire to meet some kind of social norm as a Family of Four. This revelation came to me in the winter of 2022, after a shockingly awful year pockmarked by loss. During this time we had tried, and failed, to sell our apartment and buy a house. For nine long months our home sat on the market, and most weekends we spent our free time cleaning and decluttering so the estate agent could bring one or two people over for a viewing that never materialised into anything other than a pass. That weekend, in early December, when we pulled our home off the market and accepted our fate, I wept. It was another grief, of sorts—the ambiguous loss of a life I had imagined in our new house; one with enough potential to become a Family Home. 

These days, when I’m feeling a bit out of sorts at home and in need of a reset, I roam around the apartment and find things to fix or do—packing toys away in their rightful boxes, folding laundry, changing lightbulbs, that kind of thing. Invariably, I’ll end up standing in my daughter’s room gazing at all the things that make this space sing with her personality that we could never have anticipated when we picked out paint colours—the paintings bluetacked at a wonky angle on the wall, the rock and gravel collection, the basket of teddies, the plastic box stuffed with countless beaded bracelets she’s made for us all. I can’t even remember what it looked like when it was a study, and I don’t care any more. I didn’t lose anything when I moved my desk out, because it was never a trade to begin with. The day we turned that room into our daughter’s bedroom, we simply dialled up the joy in our lives. I couldn’t see it for a long time, but now I know that I’ve been living in a Family Home all along.

So where will the baby go now that we are four and our home is still, resolutely, the same size as before? He’ll go right here, of course—with us. 

[robertalanclayton]

Bennett Colorado, RA Clayton #ruralamerica #lifeathome

[freelancershahin]

Unlock Inner Peace Harnessing the Power of Reiki to Release Anger

#StayZen #LifeAtHome #KeepItPositive #Lisa_Brandis #intuition #meditation #intuitive_reiki #Intuitive_Healing #strategies #meditationforsleep #Reiki_video #intuitivereading #strategiestrading #Intuitive_healer #healing #wellness #reikihealing #reiki #Inspiring_transformation #intuitivereading #Empowering_journey #Reiki_journey #personaldevelopment #Energy_healing

[the-local-witch-says]

Summer bbq in the backyard halloumi cheese, chickpeas and skewered chicken marinated in yogurt… served in dollarama bowl, fine china for the curry sauces, and trays from the life at home brand at the local independent grocer

[jerryshapins]

i love the spirit of blue jays..especially in our yard after putting out a few peanuts! 

[medienhype]

Enjoying our New Year Lounge. Happy New Year everyone, friends near and far, may it be a good one #newyearseve #stayingathome #liveathome #livefromhome #lifeathome #lounge #shotoniphone #lrmobile (hier: Munich, Germany) https://www.instagram.com/p/CJe4afWJY7dwtHL9QsXEFRkDlhsCgNJgtSTw5c0/?igshid=1uratbyhf1dlh

[sizzlinggalaxytriumph]

This was taken in June. Since covid19 made grade 8 graduations online, some of the teachers from the school came and took porch portraits. Now I am in highschool, it is harder than I thought!

[alfapoet]

They always want to come back when they see you thriving “without” them. Don’t do it. Don’t fall for their surface admiration. They only want to see if they are capable of tearing you down again. SHE WEARS PAIN LIKE DIAMONDS is now available in bookstores, Amazon, Book Depository etc. link in bio. 💎💎💎💎💎 If you get it please let me know! ♥️♥️ when reposting use the hashtag #shewearspainlikediamonds and I might choose you and send typed poetry to you. Thank you for all the support and love ♥️♥️♥️ — Alfa __________________ #writersofig #qotd #poem #poetry #poets #lifequotes #poetrycommunity #pandemic2020 #lifeathome #poemsofinstagram #writersofinstagram #selflove #me #love #inlove #writing #quote #mentalhealth #stmartins #stmartinspress #macmillian #poetryforthesoul #poetryofinstagram #alfaholden #alfapoet #alfawrites (at Louisville, Kentucky) https://www.instagram.com/p/CABk6ZlheJZ/?igshid=1i3hznrchdra1

[katiemccrorycph]

Loved being interviewed for this lovely piece about a few secrets for a good life at home...!

[homespun-stories]

The Winter Bathers

I’m a woman for all seasons. They help me carve up the elephant-sized year into something manageable, so I don’t freak out at the prospect of 365 unchanging days. I joke with friends about the abject misery of cold and wet winters in Denmark, where I have lived for the last eight years, but I inwardly rejoice at the cashmere and candles and casseroles that accompany them. I always think of that Bill Hicks line on people who live in L.A bragging about it being hot and sunny every day: “What are you, a fucking lizard?” Our summers are so much sweeter in Scandinavia for knowing we’ve weathered the worst and we’re duly rewarded with long days, soft breezes, and lush greenery. If you’ll allow me a moment of cringe, I believe that the seasons teach us the power of rituals. And rituals are how we endure.

There’s a saying in Denmark which you learn pretty fast when the first cold snap hits: there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing. Which is all well and good, but does nothing to explain the frantic energy with which the Danes also remove all their clothes entirely and throw themselves into the sea during the coldest months of the year. This particular form of brutality is known as ‘winter bathing’, a coy name which implies retreating to some Edwardian copper tub filled with steaming, eucalyptus-scented water whilst the snow falls gently outside. The reality is a gaggle of naked people, nipples to the wind on a frozen pontoon, wading into water colder than the base temperature of my fridge.

I moved to Denmark during a heatwave. Those first weeks in Copenhagen were spent in a spritz-fuelled haze as the long summer days melted into ambient warm nights, and I did little more than bounce between the bars and cafes that lined the historic canals and cobbled streets. When I filed the papers for my residency card and was asked to give the reason for my relocation, there was no box for me to tick. I had no job, no studies, no family here to reunite with. I had, quite plainly, moved for life. And Copenhagen appeared to be where I was best suited for living it. Even the inevitable winter, and my staggeringly bad clothing, couldn’t diminish the joy with which I embraced my new hygge lifestyle. I lit a lot of candles, I consumed vast quantities of buttered potatoes, bread and pastry, and I persisted in ordering glasses of red wine in local dive bars that only served beer on tap. Denmark and I—we were made for each other.

By the time I was ushering in my third winter, I’d leveled up my clothing to include the kind of coat that stops people dying on the side of Mount Everest. I’d completed my first ‘Viking biking’ experience having cycled in snow without losing my mind or my two front teeth. And I’d also moved to a neighbourhood in Copenhagen that is locally known as “Shit Island” for reasons that seem to involve a blighted history of municipal waste disposal and a whispered disdain of working class people. It offered affordable housing that was minutes away from a protected nature reserve and one of the city’s longest and cleanest public beaches. And that was where I first saw them: the Winter Bathers. A mass of flushed naked bodies waddling around the turquoise wooden dock at the top of the beach whilst I was scowling at my partner through the biting wind, my survival gear zipped up to my nose.

I’d had a primer on European nudity when I went skiing with some friends in Austria a few years earlier. I say “I went skiing” but this is a significant overstatement of the facts given I had never placed a single ski boot on my feet before the trip. “I went crying on the side of a mountain whilst my friends had a blast” would be a more accurate description for the “holiday” for which I forked over vast quantities of cash I could not afford. I can think of no other experience where you pay so much to be routinely hurt and humiliated, aside from the kinds of activities that take place between consenting adults in sex dungeons.

After three days of crying on the side of a mountain called—I kid you not—the Grimming, the weather went from Loads of Snow to Too Much Snow and offered me a blessed exit ramp from the nursery slopes and my perennially hungover 19-year-old ski instructor. My friends and I huddled together back at the lodge, throwing logs into the only form of heating—a single raging furnace we’d named The Beast—and weighed up our options for things to do at a ski resort that didn’t include skiing in a blizzard. My friend, whose family owned the house, suggested we try out the local spa he’d been to before. We wondered why he was so quick to volunteer for dinner duty instead, but desire for warmth soon overcame intrigue as we trotted off with borrowed swimsuits to poach ourselves in pools of water whilst our friend laughed into his snaps and thawed some sausages on The Beast for our return.

Whatever vision I’d had of a cozy alpine spa retreat quickly evaporated as we pulled up outside something the size and comportment of a department store. This was a serious multi-level bathing complex and it was packed with locals. If we’d taken a beat longer at the reception desk, we would have reckoned with the enormous sign that declared the complex “textile frei” beyond the kids’ paddling pool, but we’d paid our entrance fees and suddenly found ourselves surrounded by hundreds—literally, hundreds—of naked Austrian strangers.

One of our party, an American, was so overwhelmed by what he called “this European obsession with nudity” that he stormed off to the deck chairs outside the cafe and put a towel over his head. The rest of us pushed on, slowly peeling off our layers and keeping our eyes resolutely above the neck as we gingerly headed towards one of 50 or more steam rooms. Before long, the simple fact of our nakedness melted into the background. I guess it’s hard to stay uptight when the environment you’re in is expressly designed to do the opposite. I found myself gazing at naked strangers through the steam in the way you might look at potatoes in the produce aisle—no intention or judgment, just browsing the various lumps and bumps. Most of the men were curiously hairfree below the earlobes, like upright seals in toupees, and their wives and girlfriends wore blue frosted eye shadow and gold jewelry despite the water and the heat and the fact it wasn’t 1982 anymore. Everyone looked like they ate boiled potatoes and pork chops three times a day.

Feeling more confident, and leaving our friend to scrub his mind free of rampant nudity, the three of us girded our loins and explored the deeper environs of the spa complex where the saunas were located. My partner nonchalantly strolled ahead of us into some kind of potting shed, the door of which was firmly slammed in our faces by a towel-clad man with a glistening shoulder-length perm. He was, it transpired, a gus meister—a sadist with control of the thermostat and a penchant for using his towel as a whip. My friend and I peered through the porthole, as my partner was scolded in front of the sweating crowd for letting the heat out. He was now in the hands of a man who looked like he’d eaten Kenny G for breakfast and there was nothing we could do to save him. Less than an hour into our spa experience, and we were two men down.

And so, the two of us left standing headed into the empty sauna next door. It happened to provide a stunning, moonlit view of the snow covered ground and the potting shed where unspeakable things were happening. We gazed out into the starlit night in convivial silence, brows beading with sweat as the sand timer trickled down, grateful to rest our eyes on something that wasn’t flesh. Then the door to the potting shed was flung open, disgorging 20 or so bright pink people whereupon they promptly threw themselves onto the snow-covered ground and started rolling around. “Oh, would you look at that..”, my friend quietly muttered. Oh, would you look, indeed—for there was my partner, resplendent in the full moon as he writhed around naked in the snow with his new friends.

***

Back in Denmark, in early 2016, I had developed a lingering curiosity for the eccentric ritual that was being performed at my local beach. Asking around, I learned that the turquoise pontoon was the location of a longstanding winter bathing club, where members rotated between the frigid sea and pine-clad saunas every day of the week, every week of the year. Applications for this obscure membership were open during the first hour on the first day of October to anyone who could navigate the website that had been built in 1997. Correspondingly, the fee for such a bewildering process was less than 20 cents a day. Somehow, my partner and I signed up. So, too, did friends in the neighbourhood, and so we headed off together for an induction session that was totally in Danish which I totally didn’t speak.

Passing over the little wooden bridge from the beach into the winter bathing club for the very first time is like passing some mythical border where The Emperor’s New Clothes is operating at scale, in that lots of people are naked but no one talks about it. You, the one in the arctic base layers and wind-breaker, start to feel like the weirdo in a land where clothing isn’t part of the religion.

Having run the gauntlet of nudity, we finally huddled together in a cabin and waited for class to begin. It was a brisk reminder that Denmark has a national obsession with rules, and despite the seemingly carefree nature of the activity at hand, there were many, many rules for winter bathing. My friend kindly noted the most important ones down on his phone, in English, and periodically showed them to me. You must enter the water ass first, he revealed at one point. I couldn’t picture the pretzel-like distortions I would have to put my body through to conjure such a feat, but Mamma Gus—the grey-haired matriarch delivering the commandments when she wasn’t whipping people in the sauna—was already onto the next bathing diktat which my friend was frantically transcribing. “Who are these people?” I wondered to myself as I gazed across the packed room, before catching my reflection in the window.

People joked, when I first moved to Denmark, that I had relocated for the weather. Lately, because I am not a fucking lizard, I have come to agree. If I must spend a winter somewhere, as a woman for all seasons, then I’d rather spend it here. From the unencumbered vantage point of where the land meets sea, and the weather plays out on an enormous canvas, you understand that the Danish winter contains multitudes. There are days on the dock when the sky is cerulean blue and you can see your toes through the water as the sun shimmies off the ripples. There are days when the slate-grey sky rains down on the churning waves and you hold on to the ladder for your own dear life. And there are days when the sea freezes over, and they cut a hole in the ice so you can swim through the slush as the snow quietly settles around you.

Cold water immersion, much like the culture around it, is something you acclimate to. What was once an affront to the system—the temperature, the nudity—becomes the norm. I quickly learned the right way to compose myself for winter bathing, ensuring I didn’t squeal when I entered the water, and placed a towel between my butt and the bench of the welcoming sauna. I came to understand that the rules are a necessary part of the ritual, because they hammer out the pointier parts of our personalities and let us live the simple mantra of the seasoned bather: cold, heat, and repeat.

Every week I do this ritual a few times over the course of an hour, and when I am done my skin is buttery, my muscles loosened, and whatever thoughts were raging around my head have floated to the bottom of the sea. In the absence of any kind of spirituality that would find me convening in places of worship, winter bathing is where I go—for solace, for connection, and to grapple with the very meaning of things. I do not know what I did or who I was before I became A Winter Bather. How small my life must have been without this tremendous cracking open and repair. It has become a constant amidst chaos and the answer to my questions.

I have asked it many questions, lately. Last year was bruised by loss—the loss of a job, the loss of a home, and the loss of a much-wanted pregnancy. In the aftermath of the very worst day, when I joined that dreaded clutch of women who go to hospital pregnant and leave without a baby, I longed for the cold water. No swimming, the miscarriage pamphlet had advised, due to the risk of infection. I waited and waited whilst I bled each day, deep red and clotted, unable to fathom the cruelty of the loss as the memories bounced around the lockbox in my mind. I needed an ocean to pour them into.

When the time finally came and the bleeding stopped, it was a quiet weekday afternoon. A couple of lunchtime bathers were already packing up their things, leaving me and a pair of ducks to enjoy the moment in companionable silence. The winter bathing club actually has a name: Det Kolde Gys. It roughly translates as ‘the cold shudder’, which is strangely enigmatic for a language which is so blindingly matter-of-factual. It points to the shared sensation of every single person who heads down the ladder and into the water, no matter how seasoned the bather. Like the rumble of an engine turning over, the cold shudder is the sign of life. That day I welcomed the shock, drawing it deep into my body and wrapping my arms around the pain before I released it into the water. The balm of the heat in the sauna just moments later made me weep. Isak Dineson was right when she said that “the cure for anything is saltwater - sweat, tears or the salt sea.”

Cold, heat, and repeat; winter, spring, summer and autumn. Rituals are how we endure.

[theswanprincessofficial]

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When you’re feeling down and bored stiff, remember... The Swan Princess has 9 movies most of which are on @hulu we also have a @tiktok @facebook @youtube a shopable website chuck full of merch, a blog and TWO APP GAMES! Yes 2! Check out GATOR ESCAPE and HIDDEN TALES on iOS or Android. 🦢👸🏼📱🐊🐸 #swanprincess #theswanprincess #cosplay #swan #swanlake #animation #animatedmovie #swanderful #linkinbio #follow #share #subscribe #princess #shecandoit #tiktok #newvideo #lifeathome #quarantine #entertainment #kidsofinstagram #appgames https://www.instagram.com/p/B-acYzvhDRR/?igshid=11vsj4utqim7t

[unpredictableaunum]

Hey Everyone its April! Sorry for the radio silence of late. Some updates on my end, I was wrestling with it alot but I've made the tough decision to not attend Megacon this year. We're super bummed about it but for the safety of me and my staff, who are also my family, it's better to take the safe route and wait to try again next year. I've gone back to focusing on commissions and etsy orders and I hope to have more update photos of those projects. I'm also working to get the inventory I've premade online on my etsy. . Our next conventions then wont be till Ancientcitycon in September. Hoping everything but then will be better and mostly back to normal. . As for commissions, i've done more work on these three beauties. Each skully has has something very unique about them one with scars and a gem, one with big pointy teeth and a other with a nose, all have horns though! XD . Hopfully all of you have been doing well and remembering to wash your hands and not touching your face! 😆😷💖 . #aunumwolf42 #aunumart #updates #etsy #commissions #lifeathome #quarantine #quarantinelife #project #fursuitmaker #costumemaker #cosplaymaker #costume #cosplay #fursuit https://www.instagram.com/p/B-fonOoJUrr/?igshid=i4kz2l1nzimg

[tsukiasakura]

Sisters: That special connection.# My two youngest having fun together in my room... As I watch I wish their older sister was here playing with them. Unfortunately Janice is an Angel and only the very lucky and special people get to see her now

[pigfartsitsonmars]

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The things I do to her. #dancechallenge #animalsreact #tiktok #overalls #yyc #emo #emogirl #cosplay #bodypositive #alternative #punk #tattooedgirls #lifeathome #quarantined #selfisolation #dallascowboys #staysafe #lgbt #dogsofinstagram #dog #puppy #pet #pets #petsofinstagram (at Calgary Alberta Canada) https://www.instagram.com/p/B94sekBJYE5/?igshid=1l0tzn0ow1mve