Tag: kate payne

The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking

A couple of days ago, I peered into the shelf where we keep the sheets and towels, and something looked odd. I couldn’t put my finger on it.

A tiny act of domestic order, courtesy of Kate Payne

And then I realized: That light-blue duvet cover was folded properly!

How could this have happened?! I searched back in my brain, back back back, till…last week, when Kate Payne was visiting. Yes.

Kate is the eponymous Hip Girl, and she’d been here for a couple of days in the early stages of her press tour for the magnificent new Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking, a splendid book that I’m just having the pleasure of getting to know.

Kate is one of the best things to come out of writing Forking Fantastic!, because she saw the book and decided Tamara and I were just her sort of people, and tracked us down, and she was completely right. The first time I went to her apartment, I realized I was in the presence of greatness, because she’d managed to make a basement in a Bed-Stuy row home look like a palace, and she’d only been living there a matter of months.

By contrast, when people come to our house, where Peter and I have lived for five years, they often say, “It’s so…lived-in!”, which is a euphemism for “It’s so…dusty, and why is this coffee table so sticky if you don’t even have any children?” Due to steady work and lots of travel, we’ve lost the thread on a lot of the domestic arts, so the HGGH couldn’t arrive at a better time.

Kate’s book is so full of tiny bits of wisdom (how to manage your compost, how to hem your pants, how to make bread) that I’m getting that feeling that everything is possible. Even folding my sheets properly, so they give me that sense of peace and order when I look at them, instead of a feeling of panic.

So I’m dog-earing pages and making lists and looking at my laundry with a fresh eye. And I’m completely loving Kate’s approach–that managing your home life is empowering and makes the whole rest of your life better. And while Kate may have more natural talent for rigging up ingenious things with clothespins, she’s also just a super-enthusiastic beginner who’s tenacious enough to stick with things until she learns how to do them. Or until she realizes that maybe perfect isn’t the goal, and that good enough is just fine.

Just at the moment, I don’t have free time to improve our whole house, I’m just briefly setting the book in the various trouble spots, ritualistically, hoping its magic will rub off and start to instill order. In our bedroom, which is a pit of organizational despair. Or over by the pile of half-finished sewing projects. Oh, or there, on that shelving that’s the catch-all for crap on the second floor.

So I heartily recommend this book, which is a joy to read. And this isn’t even because Kate gives a big shoutout to FF! in it. It’s because I realize how much I need this book, even though I thought I was reasonably domesticated. Which means pretty much anyone setting up a home anywhere needs this book.

If you’re in the NYC area tonight (May 9), you can nab your own copy at Greenlight Books. I’ll be there. Even though I probably should be home folding my sheets.

Queens Writers News

Sniff. The lovely Heather Hughes, the first Queens Writers Fellow, has left us, gone on to graduate from her yoga program and is now conquering things left and right and having champers poured for her. No one deserves a drink more than she.

She had this to say after she left the upstairs desk:

When I entered the Conquering Lion Yoga teacher training program, I was prepared for the physical intensity that awaited. What I was less prepared for was the number of written assignments. There were monthly assignments, weekly assignments, and, yes, daily ones. I had a background in writing: MFA in creative writing, stints as a copywriter for an infamous men’s “fashion” catalog (ruffled poet’s shirts and underwear with built-in cock rings were just two of the best-selling items, although probably not due to my prose) and as an editor at a magazine about books. But I had gradually fallen out of the actual practice of writing.

Left to my own devices, in my own apartment, I wasted a lot of time gazing out the window or finding new ways to rearrange my bookshelves (grouped by author and then alphabetized by title? grouped by author and then by publication date?). Your fellowship arrived at the perfect time and helped get me on track and actually writing.

I’m indebted to you and Peter for all the generosity and hospitality (and food—I’d definitely be remiss if I didn’t mention the crack ham, the sourdough bread, the giant deep-fried grasshoppers…) you’ve provided me, not just over the past few months but over the past few years. The world is considerably richer for having you two in it.

Gah! Right back at ya, Heather!

Since she left, we’ve managed to dry our tears a little, and although we haven’t had a full-time steady person here, we have had a couple good visitors. The exemplary Kate Payne spent a couple of days here recharging mid-book-tour. (Check out her totally inspiring Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking — more details in a bit.) She didn’t wind up doing much writing, but she did intern with Peter on knot-tying (not what you think, people!), and to prep for her book event in Philly, she made some pretty cool chore wheels. (I’m proud to say she used our 7-inch of the “Dukes of Hazzard” theme song as a template. I mean, how else do you draw a perfect circle if you don’t have records lying around?)

Sara Markel-Gonzalez has popped over a couple of times as well. Sara’s a regular contributor to Serious Eats, and she’s finishing up a program at NYU. And she’s currently working under a serious deadline, which is not actually the end of the school year: It’s that she’s pregnant and due to give birth…oh, this week. So I don’t expect I’ll be seeing her again for another few months, but I’m glad we got to meet. And she did come over and totally buckle down to work. She is a model for us all!

Going forward, I’ve got a few more weeks here (till May 21) until I hit the road to Morocco. Any and all Queens-y writer-y types welcome to come over and work whenever I’m home. Drop me a note!