Hey there Reader,
Since we bought our house in January 2022, we’ve been slowly renovating and decorating it.
And I do mean slowly.
There’s been no dramatic before-and-after reveal, no six-week transformation.
Instead, we’ve been working our way through it room by room, making changes as we’ve had the time, money and vision to do them.
One of the rooms we’ve recently finished is a spare bedroom.
When we moved in, it had a walk-in cupboard that took up a disproportionate amount of space while still somehow managing not to store things particularly well. It made the room feel poky and tight, so we removed it, stripped off the feature wallpaper, painted the walls and installed cupboards that actually worked.
Then came the furnishing.
There’s a bookshelf in that room that I’ve just finished stripping back and conditioning. It’s the second time I’ve restored it over its long life.
I’ve had that bookshelf since I was 16, but its history goes back further than that My dad originally bought it for my brother’s room when I was about 12. Since then, it’s followed me through every house I’ve lived in.
The chest of drawers has also been with me for more than 30 years. My first husband and I bought it when we moved to Napier with our newborn son in early 1994.
On top of it sits a Lego orchid which was a 2025 Christmas gift and a small hand-painted plate given to me by my great-grandmother in 1989.
The bed is new-ish. We bought it after moving into this house. But almost everything else in the room has been gathered, inherited, carried and kept over time.
It’s not a room that could’ve been purchased all at once.
It couldn’t be recreated by clicking “shop the look”.
It reflects several different versions of my life, all occupying the same space.
This got me thinking about something my mum said when she visited my old house back in 2013 when Ben and I were getting married.
“It looks like a show home,” she said.
She meant it as a compliment, and I certainly took it as one.
I’d put a huge amount of time and energy into making that house look immaculate. Much of my weekend was spent cleaning, tidying and maintaining it. Everything was in its place. The surfaces were clear. The rooms looked polished.
At the time, having someone say it looked like a show home felt like confirmation that all that effort had paid off.
But now I’m not sure that describing a home as a show home is entirely a compliment.
A show home is designed to appeal to as many people as possible. It needs to feel attractive, but not too specific. It should suggest a life without revealing too much about the person actually living it.
There are no stacks of well-read books, inherited plates, battered pieces of furniture or objects whose value would be impossible for anyone else to calculate.
Nothing is too strange, too old, too personal or too revealing.
A show home is designed to be admired, not inhabited.
In her book Freestyle, Liz Kamarul writes:
“Scrolling through social media can make it feel like the worst thing you can do to your home is to allow it to feel dated. But our homes shouldn’t reflect what is happening in the trendiest design circles. They shouldn’t be time capsules of what’s hot today, and they shouldn’t all look the same. Our homes should be physical reflections of who we are as individuals. Your home should look like you because it’s a place where you can be your most authentic self and recharge, where you can learn about who you are and what you like … How can your home feed your creativity if your home looks like everyone else’s?
There’s enormous pressure for our homes to look current.
We’re continually shown the newest colours, materials, shapes and objects. We learn which kitchens are dated, which woods are back, which metals are over and which pieces everyone apparently needs this season.
And because we’re often looking at the same images, following the same accounts and shopping from the same handful of places, our homes can begin to resemble one another.
The same swivel chair. The same wavy mirror. The same travertine side table. The same carefully casual stack of books.
There’s nothing wrong with any of those things. Something doesn’t become meaningless simply because it’s popular.
But a home built entirely from the visual language of the moment can quickly become a record of what was fashionable, rather than a reflection of the person living there.
I don’t think the answer is to keep everything.
Some possessions carry memories. Others simply take up space. Good design still depends on editing.
But it also needs evidence of a life.
New things can sit alongside old things. Beauty alongside usefulness. Coherence alongside surprise. There can be space for the person we’re becoming, as well as some acknowledgement of where we’ve been.
Perhaps a home feels like us not because every item is beautiful or perfectly coordinated, but because the combination is particular to us.
And I think the same may be true of our lives.
A life can become a kind of show home too.
It can be carefully arranged around what currently appears desirable: the right work, the right routines, the right body, the right holidays, the right habits and the right ways of spending our time.
From the outside, everything may look considered and successful.
But is it actually you?
Or has it been designed around a version of the good life assembled from what other people currently value?
Just as our homes can be filled with objects chosen because we’ve seen them everywhere else, our lives can become filled with goals we’ve absorbed without examining particularly closely.
We can pursue productivity because productive people are admired. We can optimise our mornings, track our habits, take on another qualification, renovate another room or add another worthy commitment.
None of those things is inherently wrong.
But taken together, they can create a life that looks impressive while leaving surprisingly little room for your history, peculiarities, preferences or desires.
A show home asks: What will people think when they walk in?
A real home asks: How does it feel to live here?
Perhaps that’s also a useful distinction when thinking about a life.
Not: Does this look right?
But: Does this feel like mine?
🪞 Something to consider
Look around a room in your home and choose three things that couldn’t have been selected by an algorithm or copied from a photograph.
What do they reveal about your history, your taste or the things that matter to you?
Then ask the same question of your life.
Where can you see clear evidence of yourself in the way your days are arranged? And where might you be following a template that no longer fits?
🧭 Try this
Choose one object you already own that has meaning, history or simply feels unmistakably like you.
Instead of replacing it, hiding it or saving it for some future use, find a way to give it a more deliberate place in your home.
You might reframe a photograph, restore a piece of furniture, bring something out of a cupboard or place an inherited object alongside something new.
Notice what happens when you design around the life you’ve actually lived, rather than the image you think you should create.
💌 A note from me
The idea for this newsletter came from Freestyle by Liz Kamarul.
It’s one of the things I value most about books. A sentence about decorating can change how we see our homes, but it can also give us a different way of looking at our lives.
That’s part of what I want The Good Life Book Club to become.
A place where we explore life from the inside out, through identity, meaning, wellbeing and the questions that help us better understand ourselves.
But also from the outside in, through our homes, habits, routines, environments and the practical shape of our days.
Because the lives we create within ourselves and the lives we create around ourselves aren’t separate. Each shapes the other.
The book club won’t be about reading books simply to finish them or collect more information. It’ll be a place where books act as mirrors, helping us notice what resonates, question the lives we’re creating and choose one small way to live differently as a result.
I’ll be sharing more about its next chapter soon.