'I've been nesting for about five years'

Home ware has long replaced my once obsession with shoes and lingerie

I suppose it was inevitable really, the move from shopaholic to scoutaholic. It’s just part of growing up, right? But I honestly never thought it would happen to me.

I remember one particular shopping trip in my early 20s when I took an unknowing friend to one of my favourite haunts. I shopped for eight hours straight; trudging up and down, trying on some clothes and discarding many others. My friend’s plea to stop for lunch was ignored and for the last three hours she sat alone on a bench, completely defeated as I continued on in my mission.

Madness you say? I can admit that now. But back then the joy of finding the perfect shoe or catching the last wave of the sale from my favourite - and wildly expensive - lingerie brand was incomparable. I like to think of it as a positive side of my character for I am nothing if not dedicated. When I met the creative head at the aforementioned lingerie brand (which if you had any interaction with me between 2014 and 2019, you will already know, so I won’t give them anymore free advertising) and discovered we had the same bra size, I decided it was meant to be. After spending an obscene amount of money on my first bra, I sent flowers to a friendly member of staff in my local store. And from then on, I never paid full price for my lingerie. See? Dedicated. 

As I’ve explained in my book, Still Standing - 100 Lessons From An “Unsuccessful” Life, I spent the years directly after my divorce, drunk. And that’s only slightly an exaggeration. There was a lot of money spent on shoes, lingerie, nights out and holidays. It only came to a head the year after I got back from my ski season. I’d left London exhausted, broken and tired of trying. My relentless activity was an attempt to push down the pain and rejection I felt from my daughter who I had failed to keep alive and my husband, who I had failed to keep from walking away. 

I returned, no more fixed than I was when I had left, but with a new sense of purpose. I didn’t want to be drunk anymore, I wanted to be present and alive. I started spending more time at the flatshare I was living in at the time, and I began making it into a home. My flatmates, lovely though they were, thought I was wasting my time. Why bother making it into a home when we would all (presumably) be off soon to our new homes; with partners or a mortgage. Neither seemed in reach at the time, but I also didn’t want to put off making my surroundings a place I felt comfortable in. 

When I was pregnant, I learned about nesting in preparation for the baby. When I returned to London from France, sober and single after a dead-end relationship (he told me from the beginning it was never going anywhere but I ignored this for two years lol), I realised I needed a nest for me. That was almost five years ago and I’ve moved house twice since then and haven’t stopped nesting. I have spent hours looking for the perfect stovetop kettle, anxiously searched on Facebook Marketplace for secondhand furniture and developed an obsession with rugs. In 2020, my flat was featured in Apartment Therapy, largely because of the huge mural I hand painted on my living room wall one evening using the spirit level on my iPhone 5.

Friends have told me I should change careers, that the world of interior design awaits me. I have considered it, but this weekend, as I moved dreamlike around a newly discovered concept store, I realised that there’s just a deep longing to create my real home. I lost that deep and comforting sense of home when I was temporarily estranged from my family and I lost it again after the divorce. My recent move away from London feels like a step in the right direction and while I don’t know what it looks like or when I’ll get there, I sure hope it’s soon.

Doll x