Apartment Therapy: The Eight-Step Home Cure - Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan (Boek)

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From not enough space and too many things to not knowing what color to paint the living room walls, many of us struggle with our homes. Now Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, frequent makeover expert on HGTV’s Mission: Organization and Small Spaces, Big Style, shares the do-it-yourself strategies that have enabled his clients and fans to transform their apartments into well-organized, beautiful places that suit their style and budget.

Week by week, Apartment Therapy will guide you to treat common problems, eliminate clutter, and revamp even the tiniest space. Here is an eight-step process that includes:

A therapeutic questionnaire to help you get in touch with your personal taste and diagnose your home’s physical, emotional, and energy flow issues

A prescription with recommendations for each room based on your needs and lifestyle–including tips on how to use color, lighting, and accessories

A treatment plan, including regular maintenance schedules to ensure the ongoing health of your space

Illustrations of floor plans and decorative examples that allow you to visualize concepts before you begin

With surprising ease and without elaborate professional help, Apartment Therapy will help you clear a path through disorder and indecision–to reveal a home you’ll love.

From Publishers Weekly
New York-based interior designer Gillingham-Ryan is out to prove that even the dreariest, no-view walk-up can be transformed into a cozy urban oasis using his "eight-step home cure." The unflaggingly enthusiastic author asks readers to "listen" to their apartments-appraising what he refers to as the bones, breath, heart and head of the space-before determining ways to streamline. Despite the decorator's forays into psycho-babble, his advice proves practical as he teaches readers how to determine a makeover budget, de-clutter, liberate themselves from a lifetime of accumulated possessions and choose paint hues. Gillingham-Ryan's belief that the right lighting can "create warmth and visual movement" leads to more helpful advice on choosing the right fixtures, the different types of light and the virtues of high-end candles. No housing revival would be complete without a party, so Gillingham-Ryan shares the most festive recipes in his arsenal, including "Orange Pant's Deadly Simple Chocolate Mousse" and "Margaritas to Make Men and Women Giggle." While the author's ideas may not break new ground, his ebullient, can-do attitude will appeal to readers interested in, but intimidated by, an apartment overhaul.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"New York-based interior designer Gillingham-Ryan is out to prove that even the dreariest, no-view walk-up can be transformed into a cozy urban oasis using his "eight-step home cure.... Ebullient!"--Publishers Weekly

“What a refreshing decorating book! Apartment Therapy is a must-read for creating your perfect nest. Fire your shrink and follow Maxwell's eight-step therapeutic cure!”--Jonathan Adler, potter, designer, and author of My Prescription for Anti-Depressive Living

"Decorating a home is just plain stressful! Maxwell's book offers a way out; it's like hiring a pro (without the attitude or expense). He takes us by the hand and gently guides us through the entire process, from coming up with a plan to executing it without going broke. Whether you're just dipping in for a quick hit of inspiration, or committing to the whole eight week cure, your home -- and life -- will be better because of it."--Angela Matusik, Editor-in-Chief, Budget Living Magazine

"Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan's Apartment Therapy is refreshing in its point of view–your house has to work for you from the inside out. Gillingham-Ryan encourages readers to really take a good look at where they are at home and how they can improve the quality of their lives.”--Wendy Goodman, interior design editor, New York Magazine
About the Author
"One part interior designer, one part life coach," Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan is the founder of Apartment Therapy, a unique interior design practice in the New York metropolitan area. In April 2004, Maxwell, with his brother Oliver, launched apartmenttherapy.com, now one of the most popular and influential design weblogs in the country.

Maxwell is a regular commentator on the new House & Garden Television show, Small Space, Big Style. Previously, Maxwell appeared on HGTV's Mission Organization. He has been interviewed in various publications including The New York Times, The New York Post, The New York Observer, and the Wall Street Journal.

A former elementary school teacher, he holds a B.A. from Oberlin College, an M.A. from Columbia University, and a M. Ed. from Antioch. He lives in a 250-square foot apartment in New York's West Village with his wife, Sara-Kate, a food writer.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One

Is Your Home Healthy?

In the first few years that I took on clients, I was surprised by the number of people who were miserable in their homes. I wondered what was going on to cause so much distress. As I visited more houses and apartments, and began to read books on shelter style and home improvement, I soon realized that most

American home dwellers tuning in to home improvement are not simply lacking in style or needing to declutter; they are dealing with sick homes.

Despite good intentions, Americans have not only lost touch with how to create and maintain a healthy home, they have created new diseases such as clutter, disposophobia (the fear of letting go of things), and what I call movie theater syndrome and bowling alley syndrome. Like another national health issue, obesity, most of our household issues stem from the fact that we consume too much and work off too little.

As you read this book, I want you to broaden the concept of home and apply to it the same principles we apply to our own bodies. Like the body, the home should be thought of as a living organism. For starters, healthy homes are homes that consume carefully and get regular exercise. After health is established, style and decora- tion come much more easily and can be seen as natural finishing touches. In fact, style and decoration are extensions of a healthy home. You can’t have one without the other.

Hypernesting

Today, Americans spend more money on home improvement than ever before. A whopping twenty-five million Americans took on a home improvement project in 2005, spending $150 billion (2 percent of our GNP). Judging from television shows such as Trading Spaces, Design on a Dime, and This Old House, Americans can’t seem to get enough. And the demand crosses gender lines: shows such as the tremendously popular Queer Eye for the Straight Guy attract male and female viewers alike, while Debbie Travis’s Facelift on both Oxygen and HGTV attracts a growing number of female homeowners wanting to DIY (do it yourself).

Each year brings new magazines as well. The old-school Architectural Digest has been pushed aside by flashier offerings such as Metropolitan Home and Elle Décor, and they are now being challenged by newcomers with a focus on shopping and affordability, such as Domino, Budget Living, and Bargain Style. All in all, more Americans than ever are fixing up their homes—and doing the work themselves. In all of this they are trying to retrieve the feeling of home they have lost. But despite the amount of activity and money spent, most of these efforts end in dissatisfaction, because they only treat the symptoms—they don’t provide a cure.

In place of creating a healthy home, we are trying to buy solutions and cram too much into our homes. What was modestly termed “cocooning” in the 1970s by trend-spotters who saw us spending more recreational time at home has become Hypernesting. Instead of asking ourselves what would really make our home work better, we usually jump to the conclusion that there must be something we can buy to solve our home’s challenges—a flatter television screen, a closet organizing system, or color-coded photo albums.

But when we take something new into our home, we rarely let go of something else. This is how our home gains weight, grows unhealthy, and begins to nag at us. Not only have we created some new diseases, we’ve even created new doctors to treat our problem. Professional organizers and home disaster specialists have sprung up only recently, and their job is to help us sort and manage our extra weight.

Most of us aren’t in need of more organizing; we need to manage our consumption, let go of our stuff, and learn how to restore life to our homes.

I often ask my clients what they imagine their apartment would say to them if it could speak. Samantha, a stockbroker, told me that her home would say, “Can’t she see that I am dying? Why doesn’t she do anything to save me?” As she said this, we were sitting in a badly lit, cluttered, unfinished room. Embarrassed, Samantha said that she didn’t know where to begin. It was one of the best things I had ever heard a client say. Besides being completely honest, I told her, in using the word begin she’d hit upon the main issue. The solution was not about eliminating clutter or lightening a room; it was about beginning to work with her home. I told her that I could show her where to begin. It might feel challenging at first, but her home would love her for it.

No two beginnings are the same. We have different homes and our problems are personal. Even so, I have found that there are two general starting points that correspond to two general types of people. As you think about getting started on your house project, give some thought to which of the two types—cool or warm—best describes your approach to your living environment.

Warm and Cool People

As many cool people as there are in the world, there are just as many warm people. One is not better or worse, more desirable or less desirable. They are simply different.

You typically hear about warm people. These are the ones who worry about clutter and organizing and who tend to obsess much more about their homes. They are often gregarious, friendly, and generous. Warm people are good hosts but are bad with cleaning and clutter. They are challenged by excessiveness and attachment to people and things.

Is this you?

Cool people use their homes less and often find them an inconvenience. They want them to be comfortable but keep them as low-maintenance as possible. Efficient by nature, cool people are often sharp, smart, and independent. Cool people are good guests, but they are not great at making things comfortable. Cool people are great at avoiding clutter. At home, they are not do-it-yourselfers, and they feel clumsy. They are challenged by not feeling attached enough to people and things.

Is this you?

Cool People: Diana

During a preliminary interview on the phone, Diana said, “My apartment makes me sad.” She also said her apartment felt cold and that she wished it was warm and inviting, especially after a long day’s work. She said that she wasn’t sure whether she needed therapy or her apartment needed work, so Apartment Therapy seemed like the perfect solution to her.

Two days after our conversation, I met Diana at her apartment for our first appointment. An attractive professional in her late twenties, she lived in a beautiful one-bedroom apartment in the West Village. Upon opening her door to me, Diana immediately apologized for her apartment’s messiness. Was it messy? Not really. Was it cold? A bit. Was she insecure about her home? Yes.

She began rattling off a long list of things she thought I should know about her apartment. The furniture all came from her mother’s house and had sentimental value. She knew that she needed to paint. She never cooked. Should the large print be hung in the living room? she asked, looking at me with a worried expression. I couldn’t get a word in edgewise.

“How do we do this?” she finally exclaimed, looking around her apartment with her hands up in the air.

I was standing in an apartment three times the size of my own 250-square-foot apartment. It was prewar with low ceilings, original molding, and wood floors. There were large windows on two sides with views south and west. She even had a view of the Hudson River. To me, it had all the hallmarks of a stunning apartment.

I told her that I usually begin with a tour. I asked her to take me through the apartment, telling me everything that she liked and disliked about it, one room at a time.

“Well, that won’t take long. It is very small,” she replied.

What I saw as I walked through the apartment confirmed what I had suspected from our initial conversation. Diana was a “cool” person, and the hallmark of this was that she had a beautiful apartment that was barely lived in. It was sparsely furnished and badly lit, the windows were bare, and there was no food in the kitchen aside from mineral water, a gift box of champagne, and some expired vitamins.

As I walked around the room, I put my hand on the walls and was surprised to feel how cold they were. They could only get cold from the air outside. I asked her if she ever left her windows open. “Oh, yes, I like to keep the windows open when I smoke and then when I am out, because I hate the smell that the cigarettes leave.”

With a continual chill in the walls, the apartment would always feel cold long after the air in each room heated up. Among other things, we needed to solve Diana’s guilty feelings about smoking at home without freezing out her apartment. A good air purifier would get rid of the smell and would relieve her anxiety.

I asked her to put her own hand on the wall to feel its chill. She too was surprised by its iciness. “We’re going to figure out a way to close your windows and warm these walls,” I told her. “This is where we are going to begin.”

Warm People: Carl and Julia

Carl and Julia used their apartment a lot. Carl was self-employed and often worked from home, a place he loved. Julia worked in an office but liked coming home in the evening. They had filled their home with beautiful books, artwork, and antiques, each with its own sentimental story. Friends and family came over often because their home was cheery and inviting.

So what was the problem?

Julia wanted it to feel more relaxing; Carl wanted to find a way to arrange his office. At first, the problems se...

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