A Little Zhuzh
Also spelled 'Zhoosh' or 'Jeuje'
There is magic in the act of zhuzhing.
Growing up, my mom would always say that something just needed a little zhuzh, and I knew whatever she was talking about was about to get good.
Never the trendy thing. That was rule number one, even though she never said it out loud. She wanted the unique thing, the weird thing, the thing nobody else had, and if she couldn’t afford it, she’d zhuzh the basic one until it acted as if it belonged to a different, more expensive life.
Half the time zhuzhing didn’t even involve buying anything. She’d walk into a room, shift a chair three inches to the left, and that was the whole move. The entire transformation. And somehow the room would just...breathe again. Still don’t fully understand the mechanics of it.
Sometimes it was paint. Sometimes rhinestones, glued on with way more confidence than precision (none of them ever quite matched, and somehow that was the point). Sometimes it was just piling vintage turquoise over a plain tee, or a pair of leopard shoes that made an outfit that had been trying too hard suddenly, finally make sense.
It was always the layers. The hardware with some age on it. The art that didn’t technically match anything else in the room and worked anyway. The things that came with a story, even if the story was just “found it at an estate sale with your dad” and nothing more.
Whenever I heard that word, I knew something good was coming. Still do.
32 now, and somehow I still believe it, the same way I believed it at 8. You don’t need a new house. You don’t need a new outfit. Most days, you don’t need a new life. You just need to shift the thing you already have three inches to the left.
After many years of zhuzhing, it almost always comes down to the same six or seven moves.
If you’re currently fighting the urge to buy an entirely new piece of furniture, try changing your..