Doing Small Things with Great Love

There are times when, as a designer in my mid-life years, I wonder if I’m doing enough in the world. There are so many pressing issues and concerns in today’s society that seem to put a picture-perfect interior in its superficial space. I love what I do, but really - Is it important; is it enough?

My own home, a constant work in progress, is filled with stories and relics. My Grandfather’s Robert Frost and Walt Whitman books, filled with his loopy Professor script in the margins, sit prominently on a living room shelf. The door knocker from my husband’s childhood home is turned into art and hung on our son’s wall. To others, these are shelf fillers, knick knacks; but to me, these are pieces of my family’s heart that ground me and inspire me to be the person I was born to be.

For me, doing what I do isn’t about helping people create homes that are fancier than their neighbor’s homes, or about checking some proverbial “box” on a checklist of life accomplishments. I believe that the space where people live and rest is one of their most important embodiments, as both a time capsule and a tool for progress. A home should remind a person where they have been, and offer a safe space to explore and become who they are meant to be. A space to be nothing else but who YOU are, with the people who bring out the best in you. And, in the end, if my role is to help create that space that nurtures and inspires a person to go out and take on the world, in whatever way they choose…that’s enough.

- Abbey