Now that I own a home, my entire life will change – slowly at first, then with increasing velocity, until my daily routine becomes indistinguishable from scenes from a Nancy Meyers film. I will no longer eat every meal out of the same bowl (which I call Bowlie) without washing it, such that it becomes encrusted with successive layers of melted-and-re-congealed cheese and vinegars and other foodstuffs. I will never again eat saltines in the shower. I will never use a toothpick to spear and dispose of a tumbleweed of cat hair. I will become Different.
Now that I own a home, I will place all of my fruit in a wildly expensive bowl; this will be my Fruit Bowl. The Fruit Bowl will be for display only. I shall always move the fruit to a smaller (lesser) bowl before consuming it.
Now that I own a home, I will store all of my dry goods in clear glass jars, with walls a half an inch thick. Children or animals that linger overlong in my kitchen will turn into exquisitely maintained thick-bottomed copper pots. I will awake each morning robed in linen and Marcus Aurelius himself will offer me crystal-clear water from an earthenware jug before performing my ablutions.
Now that I own a home, my bowel movements will come in two varieties: Santa Barbara Mission Revival and Total Self-Actualization.
Now that I own a home, old lovers who have retained all of their charm will drop by unannounced in whimsical-yet-classic dressing gowns. I will feed them chocolate croissants I have concealed in my lift-top studded coffee table; croissants that I baked earlier that morning with a pleasantly stoned Steve Martin. I will write all of my deliciously coy thoughts in a crimson journal in front of a picture window overlooking a garden, pensively thrusting the end of my pen into my mouth before smiling and blushing in a manner that is most becoming, although I myself will be unaware of just how becoming it is. All of my necklaces will be made of silver and turquoise and they will fall an inch and a half above my clitoris when I wear them. I will turn fifty with dignity and grace. My rough-hewn wooden dinner table will be a thousand miles long, and I will seat every friend I have ever made at it.
In my home, which I own, I will have a pleasant and uniquely familiar relationship with my gardener, who is Helen Mirren. We will sit in the garden and eat garden fruits (which I will keep in my Garden Fruit Bowl), fruits that taste of Italy and of Living Life To The Fullest, and we will smile at each other with our lips and our teeth, and we will wear hats so wide they block out the sun.
Now that I own a home, I will have a delivery of bone-white hydrangeas and Italianate patterned throw pillows sent to me every morning. I will have a manicured heart. I will wear reading glasses and laugh with my entire throat.
Now that I own a house, I will store my eggs in an attractive ceramic dish designed express for the purpose of storing eggs. I will store them on the counter, as they do in Europe. In my kitchen it will always be Europe, and Rita Wilson will be my best friend. She will drink oceans of very expensive red wine out of the world’s largest stemware. Her wrists will strain with the effort of lifting my stemware, and she will drink wine as red and thick as congealed wine. “I cannot believe you did that,” she will chuckle as I tell her of my escapades. “But I did do that,” I will tell her, as I consume thickly sliced sheets of pasta from the hand of Bette Midler. “I did that in my house.”
Tags: art imitating life and vice versa, movies, nancy meyers, real estate, real life, the joys of home ownership
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I never realized Nancy Meyers was A Thing, but the self-care grocery shopping/singing to the Killers scene with Cameron Diaz in the Holiday was formative.
Anyways, I hope you enjoy your new home, and all the leather poufs from Marrakech and ikat tunics that immediately appear in your possession once you sign the deed!
The Holiday is a horrible movie…and I love it with all my heart.
I didn’t realize The Holiday was Nancy Meyers! That is totally living your best life, 30s edition.
I think of her Thing as lybl 60s edition.
The Holiday is a horrible movie…and I love it with all my heart!
I can warn against leather poufs from Marrakesh. My parents bought one on holiday once and realised once they had got it home that it smelt rather strongly of dead goat, or possibly donkey droppings. It took some years for the smell to fade. (It has now! The living room doesn’t smell agricultural at all!) One of my cats was very fond of it.
This is some next-level White Lady Erotica.
This is how my parents’ house has seemed to me ever since I moved out of it. They would deny it, I’m sure, but their bread is way nicer than my bread, their toilet paper is way nicer than my toilet paper, and their floors are way cleaner than my floors.
In my experience, once the kids leave everything gets either 1000% classier or 1000% more cluttered.
Mark Ruffalo and Phoebe Cates will take bluebird-form every day when you’re getting dressed, fly in your window, and style your scarf to perfection.
(Nancy Meyers directed “Cinderella”, right?)
Must be a relief for Cates to get away occasionally from Kline Manor, with its cavernous ceilings, its acres of neoclassical statuary, its turbid grottoes, its seventeen undercrofts, its ebony-paneled bathrooms.
As one of the eleven people who saw “Princess Caraboo”, I dream of her sailing the seas on her wooden ship, avenging injustice.
You aim high, Mallory. I’d just be happy if home ownership turned me into Ina Garten.
I sat at home yesterday eating leftover mac and cheese out of a Tupperware on my lunch break while watching Barefoot Contessa. So say we all. :'(
“Studded coffee table” is the most impossibly butch phrase I’ve ever read.
Not to discourage you, Mallory, but I had similar thoughts and it… didn’t even come close to working out. I’m still re-using dirty dishes and being deeply ambivalent about cat hair buildup.
Mallory, I became a homeowner last year, and I just want to tell you that it’s all true and you are going to be so happy. So happy. Don’t listen to anyone else.
And if you have trouble with any of it, try saying some daily affirmations! Forget electric drills and power sanders, the power of positive thinking is the most effective tool any homeowner can have lol.
If it seems like it’s not working, maybe some yoga on the terrace.
“pensively thrusting the end of my pen into my mouth before smiling and blushing”
On a trip to Disney World I discovered that the part of a Doogie Howser episode that most entertained my dad was the computer journal pause………before the final thought (it had a syndicated morning spot at that time in Orlando).
I have an apartment full of toys, but when I really think about it…I like it that way. My sister’s gonna move and she wanted me to move into our dad’s house (where they live now) but I don’t like that house. Have you all seen Cary Grant’s kitchen in (edit) “People Will Talk”? GAWD, it’s beautiful. That’s why I’ve still gotta get a house *someday*. Kitchen Brick.
My clitoris is made of turquoise, actually. Do you think a matching necklace would set it off or just be de trop?
Olivia de Havilland will move in next door. She will invite you over and the two of you will drink fabulous lemonade while she tells you the Secrets of Old Hollywood.
Ooh! We can say all kinds of mean things about Joan Fontaine.
Those countertops are perfect still life arrangements! Obviously Nancy Meyers has no cats.
Like I said about toys (to say nothing of strands of lights). Gotta be a No Cat Zone to maintain that!
These are my dreams. Mine also include a handsome, but bland, doctor several years my junior who finds me fascinating and funny, but ultimately, I will leave him behind for someone more appropriate in age and inappropriate in personality.
Every time I put fresh flowers in a red ceramic pitcher in the house i own I feel like this. NEVER LET GO OF THIS FEELING.
Call it a jug, both to yourself and others. You’ll get a 10% increase on that feeling…in a slightly rustic but fresh and clean way, like some radishes resting on that rough-hewn table.
You know I’m right.
A stoneware jug, if you want to live in a Laurie Colwin novel.
I became a homeowner last year and the only way my life is like a Nancy Meyers film so far is that I ugly cry sometimes and I like to dance around my house to bad music. Oh, and I DO have a fruit bowl!
I have TWO fruit bowls, a large one and a small one, but to be honest, depending on what we have in, sometimes it’s “one small fruit bowl and one large bowl of onions and root vegetables” or “one large and somewhat barren fruit bowl with occasional pieces of onion skin and one small garlic bowl” or even “one small fruit and everything else bowl and one large salad bowl because we don’t actually have any other salad serving bowls.” They are very utilitarian in a not very Nancy Meyers way.
“croissants that I baked earlier that morning with a pleasantly stoned Steve Martin”
Yes hello where can I sign up for this
I will NEVER give bowlie up. Bowlie and I have gone through so much together.
The rest of it sounds dreeeeamy though.
OMG, I had a Bowlie in grad school and it broke during my move to my first apartment. Now I have a set of stoneware dishes, lavender, with a paisley pattern (YESSSSSS), but I broke one of the salad plates, so I can’t actually have three people over for dinner. Two is my limit. xD
Your cat will escape, to be returned later that afternoon by Stanley Tucci, who lives a brisk walk away and bakes rustic loaves of bread that he brings to your dinner parties.
Stanley Tucci needed to be part of this. He helps you with the dinner parties. He gives you life.
this actually made my eyes pop open all wide. stanley tucci has that ability.
*Weeps quietly in the corner due to reminder of “If Stanley Tucci Were Your Boyfriend” article that ruined my enjoyment of spinster hole*
I at least feel like I ought to be able to figure out fresh flowers, but no! It must be the lack of homeownership.
I feel like I might’ve weirded out a new friend who came over to eat pizza, drink and watch “Wizard People, Dear Reader” because I had some fresh tulips in this neat vase my mom got me that kinda looks like an artillery shell. “I like flowers! I’m not saying this is a date!”
Children or animals that linger overlong in my kitchen will turn into exquisitely maintained thick-bottomed copper pots.
Yesssssss.
I saw Practical Magic at a young age, and it shaped me a in a lot of ways (cool magic and witches! Sisterhood! Forming a thing for red-and-black hair relationships! Killing men twice when need be!) — not least of which was THAT HOUSE. It has been my dream house ever since. I may one day own a house, but I know it will be inferior in every way it doesn’t resemble That House: http://hookedonhouses.net/2009/10/25/practical-ma…
DREAM HOUSE TWINSIES! I would do all sorts of morally questionable things to be able to live in that house. (And if we can arrange to have Stockard Channing and Diane Wiest on retainer to come over at a moment’s notice and make Midnight Margaritas – ALL THE BETTER.)
YES. YES. YES YES YES.
Sometimes I just put on Amas Veritas (it’s on Spotify!) and dream of My Best Life.
Cherrywood bannisters that never need polishing, man.
agggh, was Practical Magic her doing?? That House was been my holy grail since I was 16.
I was first worried about how North American eggs shouldn’t be kept on the counter, because they’ve had their natural protective coating washed off. But then I remembered that, now that you own a house, your eggs will come from the chickens that you will effortlessly raise in your backyard, so it’ll be fine.
Is this a real thing about American eggs??
It’s totally true, apparently in Europe people have to wash their eggs before using them and we don’t in America because that coating has already been removed before sale.
… I’ve never washed an egg in my life, nor have I ever been outside of Europe.
Guys, am I dead? You’d tell me if I were dead, right?
The coating doesn’t have to be removed. It’s not removed on purpose here, it’s just that some regulator decided at some point that eggs should be washed before they are sold, and the power washer they use removes the coating along with the traces of chicken poop and whatnot. So they have less chicken germs, but more risk of being contaminated by other germs.
Also, if you are dead, your ghost has ended up on The Toast’s comment section, which seems like not a bad afterlife.
Oh no now I’m reminded of Ghost and I am sad 🙁
Australian here who has never washed an egg but frequently finds feathers and whatnot stuck to them. We refrigerate ours in summer because of the blinding heat though. Who washes eggs before cracking them? WHO IS EATING THE SHELL?
Another Australian here who also had never even heard of washing eggs.
That is, until I started effortlessly raising chickens in my backyard, at which time the chicken books (like baby books but even easier to throw against the wall and laugh upon actually raising chickens) told me that UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should I wash the eggs because the protective coating is there for a reason.
If you dislike small amounts of dirt/feathers/poop on your eggshells, a rub with a dry cloth or in extreme cases sandpaper is the way to go.
Eggs are not refrigerated in supermarkets here, as a rule, though in my house they always were once we got them home. We don’t fridge our fresh-laid eggs. We keep them in a converted Ikea cutlery tray in the pantry.
So the internet tells me!
The internet also tells me that the theory in Europe is that if you refrigerate eggs, the condensation that forms on them when you take them out of the fridge might carry germs into the eggs, and therefore it’s best to keep them at room temperature. By that same theory, if they are already refrigerated then it’s best to keep them cold until you use them, and North American eggs are refrigerated in the store.
Yes, it’s a real thing! I was so distressed the first time I was abroad and saw non-refrigerated eggs. A baker who raised her own laying hens told me that refrigerating eggs changes their texture, slightly, in a bad way. But in the US you gotta refrigerate 🙁
Or maybe your charmingly rustic farmer neighbor will leave them on your doorstep in the mornings.
I am slightly ashamed to admit now that we get our free-range, unwashed eggs delivered to our house by a friend who is a farmer, for $3/dozen. I do not refrigerate them. They are delicious.
We won’t judge you. We’re just jealous, that’s all.
I bought a house last year and the only way my life is like a Nancy Meyers movie is that I ugly cry sometimes and like to dance around to bad music wearing a fancy kimono robe. Oh, and I DO have a fruit bowl.
This is exactly how I want to live- except add plain, slightly rustic, and hideously expensive Danish tableware, and a La Cornue stove.
It will be so much better than how I live now, which is mostly “drinking beer in my underwear on the sofa, which is also where I take all my meals, surrounded by bicycles, and parts of bicycles.”
HI I feel like we could be friends depending on what kind of beer
Are you me? Come over, dude, let’s crack a Busch and work on our polo bikes.
Well, except that I consider this to be my Best Life, this side of the revolution.
While not a Nancy Meyer’s film, I fall so tragically under the spell of Under The Tuscan Sun so completely every time I watch it. Olive oil made by your neighbors! Learning how to put your heart and soul into a home and have it love you for it! Wine! Garden parties! This is how adulthood goes!
(No I am not over Sandra Oh’s character leaving Kate Walsh how dare she have you even SEEN Kate Walsh’s face it is a marvel of edges and cheekbones.)
While I don’t really want the sun, I do want a cloud-shaded house near the shore with a salty breeze, the Nicholas Sparks Diane Lane. But preferably in, like, New England instead of North Carolina so it was *actually* cloudy more of the time (because North Carolina summers might not exist in Nicholas Sparks movies) (I’ve only seen “Safe Haven” for How Did This Get Made but I understand they’re all the same). I’m kinda saying I want to live on Planet Caladan with Diane Lane
Failing that I’d like Mary Louise Parker to live with me in my New England Nicholas Sparks Atreides house (all that beautiful dark woodwork inside). We’d LOVE to have Sandra Oh over for dinner (if we had children we’d move into a Moonrise Kingdom house).
I love the ocean, I just prefer to need a jacket. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmWGh7UBhgw
Yes, my biggest issue with that film is the lack of ocean- I also really love the ocean so if “Under The Tuscan Sun” was like… “Under the Grecian Sun” I would be totally all set.
I’m not going to tell you to see more Nicholas Sparks movies, but “Safe Haven” was a bit of a departure in that I didn’t accurately predict the twist. Perhaps that is more embarrassing on my end, that I could not accurately predict a Nicholas Sparks movie?
It’s an obvious twist, but it’s too stupid to believe, so you’re even angrier when it’s revealed.
I’m going to let you in on a secret because Toast people are good people: Mexico. The area between Ensenada and the Valle de Guadalupe is like Tuscany but cheap and with a beach. I live in a little Mexican-tiled cottage covered in climbing roses about 30 feet from an empty 6 mile sand beach. There are olive groves and gorgeous vineyards up the road just beyond the organic vegetable farms and flower fields. In the spring I trade my hens’ eggs for honey with bits of comb and everyone keeps their doors open, literally open, all day for the sea breeze to blow through.
That’s my new goal: to live in a little cottage with roses in Mexico.
It’s the other way around, Kate Walsh leaves Sandra Oh! How dare SHE!
OH MY GOD THIS IS ACTUALLY MORE EGREGIOUS. SANDRA OH HAS THE HAIR I DREAMT OF HAVING AS A CHILD.
Clearly my love for Kate Walsh is so deep that I fundamentally changed the plot. I really liked her on Grey’s Anatomy, I don’t know.
When will Diane Keaten and/or Martha Stewart and / or Oprah stop by in silken pajamas to sing along to feminist anthems of the 50’s following a breakup?
i’m still haunted by mallory’s “so you’ve decided to take some time for yourself” piece, where carole king appears, cradling an earthenware cup of tea, to sing “you’ve got a friend.”
Thank you for bringing this up, because I had no idea it existed and I am happier now than I was before.
i am 100% sure that having one of those ceramic egg holder thingies is the key to mature adult living.
And I only just got a sugar dispenser last year! (I’m building up my arsenal of Calphalon at least)
To try to use words to express how much I loved this is just too difficult. My words are not fit to sit beside these words.
You know, it’s not until I read this that I was able to fully understand that lately my appreciation for the fantasy of romantic comedies has as much, if not more, to do with their kitchens than with the romance. In fact I am rapidly approaching a point where I think the kitchen would look much better without some guy in it.
Plus that floor’s a cold, hard, Mexican ceramic tile.
Will there be pasta bowls?
I DO have pasta bowls. Whatever else happens, I got that covered.
HAD I BUT KNOWN about the glory that is pasta bowls back when I was financially vegetarian and thus eating basically gruel and glop for every meal. Pasta bowls make the glop seem _fancy_.
“Financially vegetarian” may have just made my week.
I am eating a thing that could charitably be described as “people chow” and yes, the pasta bowl *does* make it seem fancy!
I hereby offer this admission: I quite literally write every morning in a crimson journal, at my desk which sits in a window over looking (my neighbor’s) garden. This fills me with unaccountable joy.
What also fills me with unaccountable joy? Eating Cheetos straight out of the bag and drinking box wine while binge-playing Dragon Age Inquisition.
I’d like to think I lead a balanced lifestyle.
I have literally just resurfaced from a 3-week Dragon Age Inquisition and Belgian Beer binge. That game is amazing, but it may also consume my life.
The takeout box on the third image; does it contain an entire unsliced lime? Will that man hang up the phone and take an enormous bite of lime skin and pith and reflect on, idk, the romance of life?
You’ll understand when you have money, dear.
It’s definitely a *when* thing, right? You’re certain that eating limes isn’t going to make me earn 10x more?
No, if you’re not adequately prepared it will have a deleterious effect. But once you’re earning enough, yes, you’ll order take out crudites with a lime on the side.
Now, I’ve been assuming you’d eat it like an apple. Maybe instead it’s swallowed whole, like Anna and the hamster in V?
THAT….is left up to the individual (though new acquaintances may judge you on your preference, like over/under with toilet paper rolls).
Nah, just Tony Abbot that shit.
As wonderful as the aspiration to have a life transformed into a Nancy Meyers movie upon becoming a homeowner, I still hold out in my belief that if I am ever one, I will purchase a king-size race car bed and happily jump on it every night as a sign of my tremendous success, and in jubilant celebration of being a GROWN WOMAN.
“Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure” is a completely valid real estate goal. I just wouldn’t waste as much breakfast as he does. In fact, I pity that fool for what he leaves on his plate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByRJCp4pzgw
I am shopping for a Fruit Bowl, but have been disappointed in the lack of bowls that are both attractive, open enough to allow airflow, and big enough for the ridiculous amount of fruit I eat. My partner teases me for needing an enormous fruit bowl. Bah. I can’t help it if I need to eat plums once every fortnight or I shall wither away like princess made of fog and rose petals.
In my kitchen it will always be Europe. In my kitchen it will always be Europe. In my kitchen it will always be Europe. In my kitchen it will always be Europe. In my kitchen it will always be Europe.
Are you me? Come over, dude, let's crack a Busch and work on our polo bikes.
Well, except that I consider this to be my Best Life, this side of the revolution.
I am eating a thing that could charitably be described as "people chow" and yes, the pasta bowl *does* make it seem fancy!
Nah, just Tony Abbot that shit.
‘croissants that I baked earlier that morning with a pleasantly stoned Steve Martin’ needs to be engraved on my cutting board or a silver tray. I adore you, Mallory.
Coming back to this one to comment that my husband and I now regularly refer to bowel movements as “Total Self-Actualizations” so basically you have changed our lives for the better.