Weekly Roundup + Blogging After George Floyd

Hey there. You may have noticed that I’ve taken a month-long break on the blog. My muting started with the murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Tony McDade. It simply felt too trivial to talk about paint colors when we were on the edge of a civil rights movement. Then, I and many others silenced our feeds for a day to listen to Black voices and hear their experiences. Then, many of us stayed muted for a week to listen, learn, and share resources (see mine here). Then a week went by but I couldn’t go back to blogging where I just talk all about me and my home. The inequities that Black people have been experiencing for centuries, the police brutality, the heightened COVID-19 risk, the continuation of slavery through modern-day systems, and the many ways that racism is weaved into our country are too important to dedicate only a week to. There have been so many eye-opening articles, movies, podcasts, books, and activists making the rounds, so I didn’t want to distract from those valuable resources with my renovation stories. Last week, I participated in the #ShareTheMicNowHomeEdition campaign by giving my platform over to Kennesha of Restoration House to share her experiences being a Black woman in America and what “home” means to her (click the link to watch). Then, I took another week-long break, feeling like what I have to share about a renovation was frivolous during our new civil rights movement and pandemic.

I don’t want us to move forward with “normalcy” because “normal” has never been equitable. We can’t pretend that all we needed to do was dedicate a week to facing racial inequities in our country. A week isn’t enough, a year isn’t enough, a decade isn’t enough. We have to dedicate daily lifelong work to balancing the injustices, ending the violence, shifting power, and restructuring our unequal systems entirely.

I’ve decided that my anti-racist work will be most effective when woven into my everyday content. You’ve probably seen me do this in my Weekly Roundup posts when I shared anti-racism books or articles about environmental justice. But I’m going to share more, highlight these resources more, and be sure to share applicable links in general blog content. I will not be silent about injustices, but I will also be returning to sharing what you have come to expect from me: home renovations, design, old house education, sustainability, and even neighborhood cats. It’s also worth noting that this isn’t the first horrible thing to happen while I’ve been talking about lighting or rugs. Extraordinary injustices have been happening every day and yet we still talk about vases and candlesticks. These things aren’t mutually exclusive. Let’s talk about both.

So, I’m coming back. Back to share my home and back to share how we can be better humans.

The book pictured above, So You Want To Talk About Race, is such a good read. I recommended it a year or so ago, and I’ll keep recommending it. I think it’s a good introductory book to learn about systemic racism before jumping into some of the more dense race-related books. The other book pictured on my nightstand above is The Color of Law: The Forgotten History of How Government Segregated America. It’s a great read that has admittedly taken me about a year to get through, so if you’re overwhelmed with reading material, here’s a 17-minute-long documentary inspired by the book. I recommend buying those books from Black-owned booksellers. You can even download audiobooks that support an independent bookstore of your choosing with Libro.fm! Buying the audiobook also relieves booksellers of the current challenge of fulfilling orders of nationally backordered and hard to get books. And here’s a collection of anti-racism audiobooks.

The artwork on my nightstand above is a plaster cast of flowers by artist Ron Nicole. Support Black artists (here are some) and Black-owned makers (here are some) by buying directly from them.

I highly(!) recommend the podcast 1619, a series on how slavery has transformed America. The first two episodes teach a much truer and sobering origin story of America than what we were taught in school. The third is about the evolution of American Music, fourth is about our biased medical system, and the last two are a story of a Black farmer who had his legacy stripped away from him.

The latest Still We Rise auction is going on now. Hundreds of makers are participating in the Instagram auction which benefits several nonprofits fighting racial injustices. You can even bid on the poster of my tree mural print (my auction item isn’t live yet, but it will be this weekend)!

I haven’t been consuming much content beyond anti-racism work and current events, so this Weekly Roundup isn’t too design heavy, but I will share Lauren’s One Room Challenge makeover. Check out that wallpaper!

Please use the comment section of this blog post to share with each other. Please share additional anti-racist resources. Or, share things you would normally find in my Weekly Roundups like things that brought you joy or articles about homes. Share away! I want this blog to be a community with more voices than my own.

See ya next week, folks.