Although Covid prompted many to spend more time at home, the trend didn’t begin or end with the pandemic. With that in mind, PW spoke with authors whose forthcoming books help readers choose meaningful decor over fleeting fads, grow and preserve their own food and maintain well-stocked pantries, and get the most out of their living spaces without investing too much of their disposable income.
Where the heart is
“Now more than ever, our houses are our retreats,” says Annie Elliott, who has run an interior design business in Washington, D.C., for more than 20 years. She began posting home decor inspiration and design tips on TikTok in 2021 and has since amassed more than 293,000 followers. Her debut, My Neighbor Saw Me Naked and Other Reasons You Need Drapes (Artisan, Aug.), meets readers where they are. “I don’t want to tell you to put up this wallpaper that’s in vogue right now,” she explains. “That’s just a waste of people’s money.”
Instead, Elliott roots her advice in practicality: how high to hang art, what the most universal pillow sizes are, and, as hinted at in the title, why and how to select appropriate window treatments. She recommends that readers, and clients, look at what they already have when accessorizing their homes. “I believe that deep in your closet you have something, like a pretty bowl, that could go on top of a stack of books on a newly cleared coffee table.”
Artist and textile designer Rebecca Atwood, who lives in Charleston, S.C., likewise advocates upcycling and reusing what’s at hand. She recalls finding a dresser on the side of the road, which she stripped and rehabbed with her daughter’s favorite colors. “I painted a spider because we were reading Charlotte’s Web at the time.” By reupholstering or refinishing tired or discarded furniture, she says, “you might get something better than what you can buy at the store, and it’s more personal.”
Building on 2016’s Living with Pattern and 2019’s Living with Color, Atwood’s The Harmonious Home (Clarkson Potter, Aug.) draws on six settings—cities, dunes, fields, forests, gardens, and the ocean—to guide readers in mixing colors, patterns, and textures. Her emphasis is on evoking memories and sensations, and the ways in which the reader interacts with their space. “There are a lot of books about how the house looks and not how it feels,” she says. “To make it a home, you have to engage with it.”
Hilton Carter, an interior and plant stylist and the author of five previous home and garden books, takes readers on a tour of the Baltimore house he lives in with his wife and daughters in Unfurled (CICO, Sept.), explaining the room-by-room thought process behind its design. He shares floor plans, mood boards, and before-and-after photos, and shows how he injected vitality into each area. “It doesn’t have to be something living like a plant,” he says. “It can be the wood grain on your walls, or a certain color tied to nature, or having windows that allow the outside to come in.”
That said, Carter is a huge proponent of horticulture, which he sees as more than a way to fill up space or look good on social media (his 645,000 Instagram followers notwithstanding). He likes to ask his clients about the emotional angle—what plants they associate with favorite vacations, for example, or beloved family members. “Make decisions based on what’s going to provide you the most happiness, not what’s going to provide you the most likes.”
Family traditions
More than one million YouTube users subscribe to Mary’s Nest, where Mary Bryant Shrader teaches traditional cooking skills and shares the no-waste philosophy she learned from her parents, who lived through the Great Depression. She follows her 2023 debut, The Modern Pioneer Cookbook, with The Modern Pioneer Pantry (DK, Aug.), a guide to canning, preserving, pickling, and drying with an eye toward frugality.
Shrader provides checklists for keeping track of one’s provisions; organization, she says, is key to minimizing waste. That includes, for instance, reusing wide-mouthed jars rather than springing for perfectly coordinated storage sets.“We don’t need more stuff,” she explains. “What we need to do is take an inventory of what we already have.” She’s also not a stickler for the “use by” dates on store-bought canned goods, advising common sense. “Open it. Use your eyes and nose. If it looks okay, you can use it. Does it degrade in nutrition? Yes. Does that mean it’s gone bad? No.”
For Kevin West, a journalist, certified master food preserver, and the author of 2013’s Saving the Season, using what’s on hand means heading out to the garden. “I grow okra in Massachusetts, because that’s what my family eats,” says the Tennessee native, who now lives in the Berkshires. “But I also grow epazote in Massachusetts, because I love Mexican cooking.” In The Cook’s Garden (Knopf, Aug.), he gives readers the tools and confidence to chart their own farm-to-table course. “The book invites people to explore their own taste, their own style of cooking, and whatever food means to them in terms of their family traditions and their cultural heritage. All of this is available in the garden.”
That doesn’t mean going from zero to living entirely off the land, West notes. His advice is to start small and match the effort to the time available. It can be as simple as growing some herbs or a tomato plant. “We can’t control the world, but we can be present in a moment with plants. Then, when we’re done with that, we can make a salad, or make a whole meal from food that we harvest.”
Putting down roots
In addition to enriching the home, gardening can be nurturing for the planet. “The way forward in gardening is not looking at the old traditions of Northern European style with lawns and new trees—it’s about something a little more interesting than that,” says Kendra Wilson, who writes about British and U.S. gardens and has been a correspondent for the Gardenista website since 2012. In Gardenista: The Low-Impact Garden (Artisan, Oct.), she highlights the “radical thinkers” who are creating eco-friendly gardens in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia.
“When you start thinking about the fact that the garden’s not just for you but for other creatures,” she says, “you think about what you can do at home that helps ecology—working with trees that clean water sources, provide so much habitat, and oxygenate our landscapes. It’s all connected.” Wilson encourages readers to turn away from manicured expanses and ornamental trees and toward native plants. “This involves being more engaged with their space. You don’t need to pull up all the turf, and you don’t need to get rid of your lawn. You can start slowly, and you’ll see the native insects come back very quickly. It’s so rewarding to go into the garden every day and see what’s growing, see it flourishing, see the butterflies coming.”
Home and garden come together in Build It Simple (Storey, July), a refresh of Ken Braren’s 1977 title HomeMade. Senior project editor Sarah Slattery, who updated the how-to book, says the 50 projects remain the same but the language, materials, and instructions have been modernized. Many of the projects are geared toward beginners, such as the boot jack, made by cutting a notch into a single board and adding a block underneath to prop it up. “It’s so much cheaper and more reliable than buying anything from Amazon,” Slattery says. Building a workbench is more complex and also more versatile, she explains. “It can have multiple uses as you go on. You find that it works as a potting bench this year, and then next year, maybe it’s your kids’ craft table.”
Slattery and others PW spoke with see the home as a lifelong investment that evolves over time and doesn’t need to break the bank. “With the downturn in the economy,” she says, “I think people are looking for ways to upcycle, use what they have, but also have a more meaningful life.”
Elaine Aradillas is a journalist and author based in San Antonio, Tex.
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