A Little Bit Of Everything

34 open tabs at midnight and what’s actually worth the splurge.

Design Waitlist

We hit #1 this week in Home & Gardens on Substack! (My middle school English teacher never saw this coming.)

If you’ve been here for a while, you know I generally try to keep my distance from metrics. But when I saw that notification pop up, I just felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude.

For you, and for this corner of the internet we’ve built together.

It’s no secret that I am an overthinker. Every single letter takes me three times longer to write, far too many open tabs, and a minor existential crisis about whether I’m making sense. But I pour my heart into it because I care so much about what we talk about here.

I think a lot of us are just feeling tired of how fast and disposable everything has become. It feels like so many things today either look totally identical, fall apart six months in, or cost a fortune for no reason.

So whether we’re working our way through the Buy Once list, falling down a hyper-specific design rabbit hole, figuring out what it actually means to design a home with soul, or I’m just sharing a bit of my own weekly chaos... I’m just so, so glad to be in it with you.

Thank you for showing up, for reading this hyper-fixated labor of love, and for funding this work so we can keep building it for the long haul. I’m really glad we found each other.

The Buy Once Directory

A few years back, I read an article about a girl who fell in love with her Miele vacuum, an obsession handed down from her mom. I recorded a quick video about it, and through some strange twist of internet fate, that clip is how most of you ended up here. I will never fully get over that detail, and lately, it’s made me think about how many women, some close to me, some total strangers, have built the person I am today.

They say if you want to remember who you actually are, go back to who you were at eight years old.

Above: circa 1999-2002

Staging elaborate imaginary cooking shows in the kitchen, soundtracked by The Chicks, Alanis Morissette, and Norah Jones, I was constantly surrounded by half-finished scrapbooks & the coolest woman I knew. She wore turquoise rings, embellished guitars, traveled to trade shows on weekends, and made it all look effortless. But more than that, my mom was a builder. She’d sketch her dream home down to the exact pathway, then slowly turn the house we lived in into the closest possible version of it.

July Favorites

In college, I took a job on a farm run by Amanda and her husband, Brian. They’d started it with a few acres and a dream. Full moon dinners on weekends, a working farm during the week. Y’all, I loved it.

Here’s the thing about Amanda. They didn’t have a huge budget back then, but she never compromised on things that mattered to her.

She bought the good ingredients. She made gorgeous floral arrangements foraging the property, then wholesaled the star stems. She sketched floating tables that would one day drop from the ceiling of a restaurant that didn’t exist yet. She thrifted vintage plates in every corner of Texas, even if it meant handwashing hundreds of them after late dinners. She bought the fancy chips at H-E-B and listened to a small radio in her kitchen instead of paying for cable.

She dreamed up her future, and pulled it into reality with whatever was available to her at the time.

A Little Zhuzh

Pam took me in when I was a homesick intern in Florida, a vulnerability I was far too proud to admit out loud at the time. In her late sixties, and still full of life, she taught me the secret to a long marriage: never lose yourself. “Find something completely separate from your husband,” she’d tell me. “Do not merge into one person.” She wore heels in the oppressive heat of a Florida July, her clothes without a single wrinkle, and left a signature perfume lingering in rooms long after she’d walked out of them.

Then there are the women who have inspired me, even though we’ve never met. Like the all-female design firm in Megève, France, whose chalet projects I once spent an entire year deep-diving, with Google Translate working overtime in another tab.

And these are just a few of the many women who have made me who I am today. Them, and that eight-year-old girl in the kitchen staging imaginary cooking shows. Which brings me right here, to this page, sitting with you.

Rhys Champagne | MÆGEN Salt & Pepper | Floof Donut Pet Bed | Kyrgies Classics | July Favorites | Stainless Garden Scissor Set | Everyday Bowl

I tell you all this to explain the why behind the newsletter you hit subscribe on. I started this to share everything I’ve learned, and everything I’m still figuring out, right alongside you.

And then there’s the other half of it: a deep, persistent frustration with the declining quality of everyday products. The exhaustion of endless marketing campaigns. The fatigue of asking, every single time, is this actually worth it, or is it just really good commission?

I want to build a space that counters all that noise with something real and useful.

That’s my why.

I went through the Buy Once Directory this month for updates, plus one new addition on deck.

Quick refresher if you’re new: I go through the list monthly to make sure every product still earns its spot. Before anything gets added, it gets a real deep dive or a real-time update based on my own experience using it.

The update:

After weeks of overthinking,