A private island, a forced declutter and a jet setting cat
An impromptu writing retreat/injury rehab weekend
Working for yourself often means that no two days/weeks/months are the same.
Working for yourself in a creative landscape that is rapidly changing means that you have to hustle hard.
Working for myself as I build new businesses and adapt to that changing creative landscape means that I’m writing this from a remote rural island that I didn’t know I’d be visiting until a few days ago.
I’m sitting in the enclosed porch of a sweet little cottage on Osea Island, a rural ‘village’ near Maldon in Essex (yes that Maldon of the sea salt), on a small private island only accessible twice a day when the tide goes out and exposes a bumpy, pitted causeway that winds for a mile through oyster strewn mud. Anyone can rent a cottage or the Manor House or any of the other properties on the island (or the whole island if you fancy!) and it also gets booked for film, weddings, corporate events.
(Full disclosure: one of my uncles owns Osea Island so I stayed for free and in no way is this meant to be promotion! He doesn’t need my help :) )
My daughter is sitting across from me - in a leather club chair that mirrors the one I’m writing from. She’s recovering from a serious ankle injury she sustained during baseball tryouts last week, and is now watching baseball on her phone when she should’ve been playing.
She wasn’t supposed to be joining me, but after being released from hospital, she was stranded and realised she wouldn’t be able to get home or care for herself once she got there. A five hour detour from Margate to a baseball field in Slough and back to Osea was arranged - I was thrilled to do it if it meant spending the weekend with my 25 year old ‘little girl’.
The cat is in the cottage acclimating himself with his new surroundings and home for the weekend. My cousin has gone for a swim in the sea. My other cousin is off playing games with his friends. My uncle is probably wondering around surveying his land or in the recording studio. It’s warm-ish and windy and the air carries the sound of children and dogs whose families have also come to stay in this idyll for Easter weekend.
How I ended up here
A week ago I received a 3 day booking request from Airbnb for the bungalow for Easter weekend. The following day I decided I’d have to decline it because I hadn’t meant to keep my listing active and I didn’t have anywhere to go for a long weekend at short notice - with the cat. Moments later, my cousin texted to see if I’d like to go with her to Osea for the weekend.
“Could the cat come?”
“Yes!”
“OK then, let’s do it!”
Kismet.
After letting my airbnb guests know that the bungalow was all theirs, I looked around and realised just how much I would have to do in preparation.
If you read my piece Sleeping with Strangers about last summer’s experimentation with being an Airbnb host, you’ll know I dabbled in renting two rooms in my house while I stayed there as well. But since the end of July when I moved my mum in with me, I hadn’t accepted another Airbnb booking. It had served a purpose when work was slow, but I was happy to not have to do it anymore. Until this week, when suddenly it seemed silly to turn down a booking for a few days stay, when styling work was still slow.
Even if it meant a full gut and cleaning job of the house.
Working hard for my money
Now that my mum is no longer with us and it’s back to being just me in the bungalow, I’d really let myself spread out. The unfinished middle bedroom had become my wardrobe until I have one built in my room; the front bedroom that had been my office, then my mum’s room had now become a hybrid of both. A bit of a shrine to my mum, but now with my work bits slowly creeping back in, as well as being a great spot for drying clothes and storing things before I list them on eBay or Vinted. So, a mess.
The living room and kitchen were ok, but many signs of life had re-appeared - so many family photos stuck on the fridge. Stacks of books and bits and cards and paperwork dotted all around. Trays of seeds germinating in soil on windowsills.
Chaos, at least my version of it.
Some airbnb rentals are fully lived in - I booked one years ago in Paris when I worked for Anthropologie and my team were there to open the Paris stores. It was a proper lived in home where nothing had been cleared away and we loved it. And I’ve stayed in others - Amsterdam with my daughter in December - where it is a full time holiday rental with no personal family bits around and just what you’ll need for your stay.
My place is somewhere between the two. I remove family pictures from the fridge but leave the ones that are permanently stuck on one of my cabinets. I clear all surface clutter from the bathrooms, kitchen and bedrooms, but I don’t empty all the drawers (I pop clothing rails in each room with hangers). My hope is that it has the comfort and personality of a lived in home but without too much stuff getting in the way of the guests’ experience.
Why am I like this?
After three full days of hardcore decluttering, purging, sorting (and a fair amount of shoving things in the already full garage to deal with later) the house looks better than it ever has. And I found myself asking “Why am I like this?”
Why do I have 4 vintage gravy boats in my crockery cabinet?
Why do I have a wall of curtains in my ‘office’, hiding boxes of art supplies, ribbon, prop electronics for shoots, rolls of wrapping paper and so many other bits ‘just in case’.
Why do I have so many half dead/alive plants cluttering up the living room and not bringing me joy when I look at them?
Why do I have a junk drawer in almost every room?
And why does my cutlery drawer have SO MANY SMALL SPOONS? (I can’t resist buying them in junk shops - so small, they take up no space, and yet…)
I’ve written about this before and I’m sure I will again, this idea of letting go of stuff that weighs us down (not in a full on Marie Kondo way unless of course that is your thing).
But for me, it always manages to creep back in. The stuff.
I left my sparkling bungalow to my Airbnb guests on Friday and I was so in love with the space. So decluttered, but still with personality. So clean, but still imperfect. So organised but still with a bit of beautiful mayhem behind glass fronted cabinet doors.
I’d love it to stay that way, but I know better than to believe it will. But I do think that each time we reassess our surroundings and our current needs, we get a little closer to living in a way that makes us feel good for the way we are now.
15-20 years ago when my kids were smaller and still at home, my houses never looked tidy. They were always cluttered and always full and always messy. I still did my best to make our homes great places to live, but fighting our needs back then would’ve made me an insane person. And it would have been a really stifling place for kids to grow up if they were afraid to make a mess.
But now? Now I get to make decisions for the life I lead now, the one where it’s just me (with frequent visits from friends and family and maybe once again Airbnb guests). And while I am a very neat and tidy person, I also like pretty little bits, often too many.
The importance of a good edit
I’m very good at editing - words, rooms, wardrobes - for other people. I sometimes get paid to do these things. A certain amount of detachment is necessary to be a good editor and we as humans can be far too attached to do it well for ourselves. Attached to the memories, attached to the money spent on a thing, attached to the idea that a thing might be passed on to the next generation. (In this piece HOME, I wrote about my mum’s unintentional Swedish Death Clean last summer and how it made me think about the stuff we leave behind for our kids top clear up).
But the older I get and the further away I move from the role I’ve spent most of my adult life playing (mother, caretaker, giver of everything to everyone), the easier it becomes to redefine my space.
Sometimes we just need a push to make some hard decisions. Maybe it’s hosting a dinner party or having family to stay, or in my case, opening up the Airbnb calendar once again. Without a deadline of some sort to force you to face your clutter demons, it can be impossible to make a start.
I know that when I go back home it might be time to face the curtained wall of shame and perhaps lose 2 out of 4 vintage gravy boats.
Accepting what works for you
I also know that I love this way of working. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. It’s wonderful when you fully accept that your way of doing things - while it may seem unstable or unpredictable to others - works for you. Of course more security would be lovely, but finding ways to thrive (or sometimes just survive) no matter what life throws your way is a strength that you shouldn’t downplay.
My sister sent me an Instagram video recently of an accountant/financial content creator, sharing all the different ways she makes up her (substantial) monthly income. Whether or not it was all true is hard to know, but it reassured me that I’m ok. My way of doing things is ok. A podcast, writing, airbnb hosting, styling, wallpapers, styling events, decluttering services, creating content…
It’s diverse and complicated and at times unreliable (and exhausting), but as a creative I think that’s the way forward. You have to have a lot of strings to your bow these days and you must look at it as a positive, rather than a failure (my mantra to myself these days).
Right then, I’m back home now and off to discover what horrors lurk in the garage where I blindly threw things in the eleventh hour of cleaning last week.
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Yes please, would love to see more of Osea
Yes please. Would love to see more of the uncles island.