Let Your Home Tell Your Story
Your home is your oasis. It’s also the perfect canvas for celebrating your history.
by Melissa Rayworth
Carrie Nardini chose the soft shade of turquoise for her Brookline kitchen for more than just its beauty. It’s the iconic color of a range of Pyrex mixing bowls used by American moms — including Nardini’s beloved grandmother, who died in 2008 — since the 1950s.
All these years later, Nardini went one step beyond simply keeping that bowl as a memento. She took it with her to Lowe’s, set it down on the counter in the paint department and asked the staff to match its hue exactly in paint. Then she spread it all over her kitchen walls, a unique celebration of every birthday cake and bowl of Jell-O her grandmother mixed up in that porcelain vessel.
One final touch completed this decorating homage to the woman who taught her to cook: Nardini mounted her grandmother’s favorite cooking spoon in a shadow box, framing it as a piece of art. It now hangs on one wall of Nardini’s perfectly Pyrex blue kitchen, watching over a new generation of family breakfasts, lunches and dinners.
Savvy decorating? Sure, but it’s more than that. This room now tells a story about Nardini, a writer, marketer and co-founder of the craft pop-up I Made It! Market. The tangible connection it provides to the women who came before informs Nardini’s daily experience of motherhood in ways big and small. When friends visit, it’s a room that helps them to know her better and maybe see her in a different light.
We are surrounded by stories each day, nearly all of them marketed to us by people who want our time and our money. Take a look around the next time you’re dining out. The casual-dining restaurants that have popped up all over the Pittsburgh region surround you with artificial mementos. Their goal is to suggest that a cookie-cutter chain restaurant actually is an intimate neighborhood hangout. Beauty magazines sell the story that women are in need of extensive fixing, then conveniently offer advice on which updates should be made. Every ad you hear on the radio while driving in your car is telling you a story about something you supposedly need or want.
What about your story?
(Read the full article, originally published in Pittsburgh Magazine, to get detailed advice on using your own home to tell and celebrate your story — here.)
Melissa Rayworth is a journalist who serves as the managing director of Breadcrumbs, a personal storytelling consultancy that helps people discover, tell and preserve the stories of their own lives.
