As a Los Angeles resident of 27 years, this is an interesting moment to discuss decluttering a home after the world witnessed a wildfire ravage my city, taking many of my friends’ and neighbors’ homes and schools—and infinitely more. There has also been some harsh discourse saying, “Those people in L.A. have the money to rebuild; they will be fine.”
This overlooks the people who are employed by the very rich who have also lost their livelihoods. Gardeners, housekeepers, dog walkers and pool technicians have likely lost their small businesses in multiple towns, as have hundreds of teachers in affluent and not-so-well-funded schools, along with the support staff, janitors and crossing guards who worked there. The loss in L.A.—for the rich, the middle and working classes and the poor—reaches far beyond the homeowner. It becomes a collapse of a way of life for the communities that can’t rebuild.
But there is a conflation of the word “home” with the word “house.” Before the wildfires began, I wrote the following story about the difference between the two. You will see there is no mention of the size of my house or the number of rooms inside it or even the comfort of my own couch. To me, a home is defined as the place where we keep the things we love—the things we collect in our life that tell us who we are. That is, the people I love, the memorabilia of what we have shared together and the accomplishments achieved with each other watching.
No amount of money can replace these things. No heirlooms, journals or baby blankets can be rebought. Nor can the trauma of fleeing in the night and having nowhere to return to ever be erased.
The thing that has made me feel better in the chaos and heartbreak of the last few weeks has not been minimizing the devastation of others, but rather, being of service in small ways: by sending some money to teachers who lost their homes and delivering blankets to Cal Firefighters living in tents on the fire’s edge while battling the blaze. By giving away toys from my house to kids who now need them. I was decluttering, if you will, any narrative in my heart other than, “How can I be of service?” As you’ll read in the following story, decluttering feels good in my home and now I know it also feels good in my heart too.
The journal of who we are
The dining room of the house where I raised my kids has art from all the national parks we’ve visited, alongside a giant map of Iceland, detailing our drive around the country. With the addition of photos of us in these places and wallpaper on the ceiling, it’s a busy room—right on the verge of “too much.”
Our living room also has 10 black-and-white photos of New York, where I’m from, two of which are 6 feet wide. These are placed around the room to break up the multiple colors and textures of floor-to-ceiling books. Some black-and-white pictures of my children have also snuck in here too, which help break up the manic number of shapes, shades and textures on display.
Displaying the artifacts of our life, rather than art and figures that detail other peoples’ experience of the world, is what makes the difference between a house and a home for me. These walls are interesting for our guests to see, but they’re also a journal of who we are.
I love living with our life “out on display” so much that every room of my house is like this. I also hate white walls, as they make me feel like I’m in a dental office. My aim is to create a feeling with objects and texture in multiple colors. To keep my curated look from turning into sensory overload, I have one basic rule that evolved from shoe shopping…
My one-in, one-out philosophy
Long before playing Sharon Leone on Fire Country, I was classically trained in theater and hustled for years in L.A. and New York City. My first TV contract came at age 28 as a talk show host on MTV. As the female “sidekick” on Loveline for 200 episodes, I wore four outfits a day, each one meant to be fabulous. The budget was small, and I was given money to buy my own shoes so they could be repeated. I only owned a single pair of jeans, but I went for it on the footwear—in variation, not abundance.
But once the walls around the bed in my tiny rental apartment were filled with the most eclectic array of sneakers, sandals, boots and loafers I could find, the rule was when a new pair came in, an old pair went out.
This boundary then expanded to coats (I’m not a bag person or clothes horse but I LOVE me some outwear) with my first house and a walk-in closet. My rule became one color at a time—so if I had a green leather bomber but then just had to have a green ski jacket, one of them had to go to my kids, friends or a donation spot. This made me spend more carefully and consider how much enjoyment I’d get out of each color.
When I bought a house near a public school my kids could attend for 12 years, this boundary on overspending/overbuying/over-displaying evolved into themed art. Like in the dining room and living room, the rooms in the house showcase one style or one color or even one basic idea—Indonesian or woodwork, music paraphernalia or metal, travel or self-portraits—to create a feeling, memory and tone. I organized these themes by room because otherwise, it felt chaotic. The object, photo or piece of art I loved most would start a room, and I would decorate to go with it. With this self-imposed boundary, the rooms calmed me, even if the walls were filled to the brim.
Colors of the heart
I’ve recently downsized to a smaller house for just me. This required an enormous purge of my belongings. My idea was to take the original piece I loved most in each room and see if I could give away, trash or donate the rest. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a home full of only my favorite things? I admit at least one runner-up from every room made it into the moving van, but not much more. There are bedrooms here for my kids, but now that they are all away at school they mostly just visit.
The house has one great room for living, dining, TV watching and cooking. Although the high ceilings and a wall of windows are breathtaking, every wall is trimmed in white—as is the ceiling, and it’s too tall for any ladder to reach. So the white is staying. The floors throughout the house are monochromatic concrete in a dark beige hue—my other least favorite color.
To make this house a home, I immediately wanted to cover it with throw rugs, patterned furniture and gallery walls full of photos. But when the four large, multi-colored rugs I bought arrived, it felt cluttered and overwhelming, even to me. So I knew I needed a new system.
I attempted to find one common color for the entire house. The first thing you see peering through the windows and sliding doors along every room in the house is grass. So I decided to go with green, which also worked well with the white and beige. I added a subtle green couch in the living room, plants in the TV nook and green tile in the kitchen. The earth tone softened the industrial feel of glass and cement, which led me to a second color to track through all of the house: gold.
Normally, I find it too loud, but it warms the white walls, so I changed all the hardware in the kitchen and bathrooms to gold. This base color scheme led to my comforting style: multiple textures, patterns and additional colors in each area, with each space feeling unique and different from the next.
I have only been here six weeks, but I’ve settled into a Parisian-feeling living room (red-orange and green) and a safari-themed TV area (true greens and animal prints). I know it sounds crazy, but it feels orderly to me.
Looking around me, I think the evolution of my shoe-shopping boundary has evolved with my life. In my twenties, the world was my oyster, but my worldview and my tiny apartment were not that big yet. I simply filled the space I had. When my life expanded to include children, I separated our colors and adventures by room. Today, mostly as a party of one, I keep a few colors everywhere and add flavor on top…and declutter anything that doesn’t resonate in my heart.
