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Myquillyn Smith is a lifelong home-lover, three-time guest, and the author of House Hushing — you might know her as The Cozy Minimalist. In this conversation, she walks me through backwards decluttering: her method for clearing a room down to almost nothing, living in it that way for a day or two, and only letting things back in once you've proven you actually miss them.

Somewhere in the middle of it, I found myself naming something that's been rattling around in my head for years. Myquillyn trusts the gut — how does the room feel — and I love that. But I also love having one very literal, stopwatch-able way to check the gut's math: if it takes you more than ten minutes to get a room back to feeling right, you have too much stuff in it. Not too much by anyone else's count. Too much for you. I'm calling it the Ten-Minute Threshold, and once you start using it, you can't stop measuring every room in your house by it.

We also get into her three categories of “soulful objects” — past, present, and future — worth keeping around, and why the goal was never to own less. It's to own only what earns its place.

Support the show and subcribe here: https://slowstylehome.supercast.com! You'll have access to ALL full length audio and video episodes each week!

Use code: style10 to take an additional 10% off your purchase at Aura House. Elegant diffusers. Clean, pure scents.

Subscribe to the show to access future episodes! Going forward, we'll continue to publish 1 free episode per month. If you'd like to have access to the other 3-4 episodes each month, please click on the subscription link, above.

Take the quiz: What's Your Style DNA?

Aura House + Slow Style Home: Elegant diffusers, clean scents, non-toxic.

Text me your thoughts or questions on this episode!

None of the designers I bring on this show share the same aesthetic, and they don't need to. What I'm looking for is the Slow Style philosophy in practice, whether or not they've ever heard the term.

I recently toured the home of designer Amy Dutton — a 1920s bungalow on the New Hampshire seacoast that she and her husband gutted and rebuilt while raising three kids. It turned out to be one of the clearest examples I've come across: without setting out to, she hit every one of the five design elements I talk about in my book, and all three of my design principles were quietly at work throughout.

Subscribe to see the full home tour on video — the antique that still adjusts itself with the seasons, the design rule she breaks on purpose in two different rooms, and the values decision hiding behind a square-footage choice.

Support the show and subcribe here: https://slowstylehome.supercast.com! You'll have access to ALL full length audio and video episodes each week!

Use code: style10 to take an additional 10% off your purchase at Aura House. Elegant diffusers. Clean, pure scents.

Subscribe to the show to access future episodes! Going forward, we'll continue to publish 1 free episode per month. If you'd like to have access to the other 3-4 episodes each month, please click on the subscription link, above.

Take the quiz: What's Your Style DNA?

Aura House + Slow Style Home: Elegant diffusers, clean scents, non-toxic.

Text me your thoughts or questions on this episode!

In this guest episode, I sit down with Ali Milam, managing director of Porta Romana, the British lighting and furniture house, to swap some of the best origin stories I've heard in years. If you're the kind of person who loves a historical novel about an artist or architect — the drama around who really painted the portrait, who sat for it, who bought or stole it over the centuries — this episode is going to appeal to you the same way. Every piece Porta Romana makes has a story like that behind it.

Earlier this year, I got to live out a total design-geek dream and tour their workshops in the English countryside. This episode is me bringing you along.

Subscribe to hear the full conversation: the museum exhibit that sparked an entire lighting collection, a sculptor casting mussel shells one by one, and an artist collaboration that started with draped fabric and ended in cast metal.

Support the show and subcribe here: https://slowstylehome.supercast.com! You'll have access to ALL full length audio and video episodes each week!

Use code: style10 to take an additional 10% off your purchase at Aura House. Elegant diffusers. Clean, pure scents.

Subscribe to the show to access future episodes! Going forward, we'll continue to publish 1 free episode per month. If you'd like to have access to the other 3-4 episodes each month, please click on the subscription link, above.

Take the quiz: What's Your Style DNA?

Aura House + Slow Style Home: Elegant diffusers, clean scents, non-toxic.