Wow! This book is so out of print that I couldn’t even find a cover photo¹! That’s too bad because I really like this book. I picked it up when I was settling into this apartment, which we have lived in waaaaaay too long. My realtor warned us at the time that we were buying too small. But it was what we could realistically afford, without borrowing from our families. And we managed to pay off the mortgage a couple of years after buying, which felt really could when the economy tanked. Every day for a year, it felt like, I thanked my husband for holding our noses to the grindstone until we had paid it off because it felt really good not to owe money just then. It was just big enough that when my husband was WFO and I was WFH, it was still comfortable – but then Covid hit and we were both WFH and now it feels entirely too small, sometimes a little bit like the hotel in The Shining².

I like this book because I love hacks. If I’m doom-scrolling and see a hack, I always have to click. I’m kind of the same way at work – I’m always looking for ways to push platforms to their edge cases. When I was a consultant, I had to learn to stop doing that for clients because it is a total scope-buster – you just never finish an implementation when you’re constantly allowing the client to raise the bar – and, I promise you, they are never as grateful as they should be.

This book is great! The author uses floor plans and really bad black-and-white before-and-after photos to show you how you can repurpose the furniture, rugs, lamps, and objets d’art to create the feeling that you are striving for. Sidebars call out clues for what was not working and, afterwards, what they banished, borrowed³, and bought.⁴ Each of these “lessons” reinforces a larger lesson like balance or focal points, which she then discusses how to apply in different rooms (bathroom vs. bedroom, etc.), and she provides a checklist for that larger lesson to help you recreate it yourself.

It makes it very easy to reorganize your stuff using design principles. My apartment is never going to get featured as an “after” on some social media site, but it works much more effectively than it did before I got this book.

My sister-in-law often talks about a picture book she had when she was a little girl, about a couple who lived in an Eastern European farm village. They went to their rabbi and complained how small their house was, it was making them fight and they were unhappy, and asked for his advice. After a thoughtful pause, the rabbi replied, “Chickens.” “Chickens?” the couple asked. “Bring the chickens inside,” the rabbi nodded.

So the couple went home and brought the chickens inside.

A week later, they went back to the rabbi and complained that they didn’t know what to do – things were so much worse than before. They asked again what they should do. The rabbi replied, “Goats.” The couple looked at the rabbi, looked at each, shrugged, and went home and brought the goats inside.

A week later, they were back, complaining and sniping about how much worse things had become. The rabbi’s response: “Cows.” “Cows!” the couple exclaimed. “Cows,” the rabbi nodded and watched as the reluctant couple left for home.

A week later they returned, defeated. “Rabbi,” they said, “please. Our house is so small and crowded. We’re so unhappy.” The rabbi followed them home, examined the house, and advised them to put the animals back in the yard. Out came the chickens, the goats, the cows. The rabbi and the couple went back in the house. The wife exclaimed, “Rabbi, it’s a miracle – I don’t know how you did it: the house is so much bigger now.”⁵

Now, if only I could get rid of all these farm animals, maybe my apartment would hold both of us WFH.

If you come across this book in a used bookstore, snap it up.

1. Excuse the really bad photo. ↩︎
2. Movie not book. I do have the book knocking around here somewhere. Maybe I’ll read it again (for the 4th time maybe or 5th time) and do a comparison between book and movie. That ought to be good for SEO if nothing else. I’m Team Movie. ↩︎
3. From another room. ↩︎
4. Since this “use what you have decorating” (emphasis mine), she often buys very little. Sometimes slipcovers, a screen, pillows, a throw, accessories. Every now and then a coffee table or lamp. ↩︎
5. My sister-in-law, who was extremely practical, even as a small child, figured having all the animals in the house must have pushed out the walls. ↩︎