Why is Decluttering So Hard?

Uncluttered but not spartan, this Paris apartment belongs to designer Domitille Brion.

The New Yorker’s Helen Rosner once tweeted that she’d “pay for a service where people with good taste come to my home while I’m out and throw away everything they think is superfluous."

Mother Nature is having one of her snow-and-ice tantrums, so I’m indoors wishing someone with taste would magically apparate and start wordlessly filling garbage bags with all my junk. I want a home that looks like the one in the picture above, even though I recognize that high Haussmann ceilings, intricate mouldings and chevron chestnut floors are in short supply in Toronto’s condo offerings.

Things Aren’t People

I don’t understand people who have an easy time throwing things out. Every item I possess is a friend with its own little soul.

An actual human friend, who is also in the middle of a grand clear-out, put it best: “It’s hard to remember that things aren’t people.” To compound things, like Rosner, I’ve “internalized that throwing things away is morally bad” which led to chaos when I became the self-appointed family archivist for people long since dead. It’s hard to look at items dispassionately when you’ve lived with them since birth. They are a proxy for a house that was torn down years ago.

According to the tenets of Swedish Death Cleaning, the practise of pruning your belongings to leave less trash for your heirs to wade through, you are supposed to start around age 40. So I’m already two decades behind. That sounds about right.

Makeup brand owner Bobbi Brown, who is “self-diagnosed OCD” once told me in an interview that if you get rid of all the things you don’t like, you’ll see the things you do like more clearly. That is the only thing motivating me right now. I am almost jealous that Brown is so tightly aesthetically wound that she is physically unable to sleep if her slippers aren’t perfectly placed on the floor. I would prefer having that tick than constantly feeling guilty like I murdered someone when all I did was dispose of some tea cups (and yes, the teacups were Meissen and yes, I regret it enormously.)

So if anyone has any ‘decluttering’ (I hate that word) tricks, please pass them along. I have the garbage bags. I am ready to do this.

Fairytale of New York: Make This Seasonal Drink

Midday cocktails at a private ice rink at the Palace Hotel, St. Moritz, 1947. Photo: Alfred Eisenstaedt.

In honour of the season and the late Shane McGowan, let’s make a Fairytale of New York cocktail named after the classic Pogues song. A seasonal take on an Old Fashioned, made festive with a spiced simple syrup, it’s from the long since closed Harbord Room in Toronto, and it needs to become a part of your annual repertoire.

The syrup comes together quickly and if you sample it straight you can really taste the pear. Pear, get it? Like a partridge in a pear tree? I don’t think pears get nearly enough representation at Christmas, so this drink rights that terrible wrong.

Fairytale of New York Cocktail

1 piece of orange peel (about 1 by 2 inches)
3/4 oz. Winter Warmth Syrup
2 dashes of Fee Brothers black walnut bitters
2 oz. Canadian whisky

Place the orange peel in a mixing glass, pour in the syrup and bitters, and muddle. Pour in the whisky, add ice, and stir until chilled. Strain over 1 large ice cube in an Old Fashioned glass.

Winter Warmth Syrup
1 1/2 cups water
1 cup Demerara sugar *
1/2 apple, peeled, cored, and diced
1/2 pear, peeled, cored, and diced
12 walnut halves
3 cinnamon sticks, broken up
6 whole cloves
1 whole nutmeg*

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer, stirring until the sugar dissolves, and simmer for 10 to 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and cool. Strain into a clean glass bottle, cover and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks. Makes about 2 cups. And definitely eat the walnuts as they are now plump and candied and perfect.

* I would really rather not use one whole nutmeg just to make this syrup. That seems extravagant, so I just added 1/8th of a teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg and it was fine. #weusewhatwehave

Same with the Demerara sugar. I can’t in good conscience tell you to buy a whole bag of it when you can just use white sugar with a dash of molasses. Or you could just purchase one lone cup of Demerara sugar at Bulk Barn, which is a very Canadian thing to do.

Baking with Booze: Fireball Cinnamon Whisky Apple Cake

This photo is a cheat. Not my table, nor my cake. I’m just trying to class up my trashy booze cake post.

There is a delightful corner of the internet populated by smiley midwestern moms insisting that you start adding Fireball Cinnamon Whisky to your autumn baking.

A 1980s classic from Canada (go team!) Fireball Cinnamon Whisky is more liquid candy than it is booze. Delicious in a ‘I just ate a zillion cinnamon hearts’ kind of way, its very existence offends whisky purists, which I consider a plus. Those cheerless, brown liquor-loving pedants didn’t do Wild Cherry Jell-O shots in university and it shows.

But back to our cake. A healthy glug of alcohol mixed into the batter gives baked goods a more tender crumb (thank you, science) and Fireball brings warmth and cinnamony depth, which you can amplify by drizzling a Fireball and icing sugar glaze on top of your masterpiece. (See recipe below for exact proportions.)

Of course, if you are so inclined, and you want to spend more money, you can even DIY your own cinnamon whisky, but it’s the alchemy of turning a longtime frat house staple into an elegant dessert that’s the fun part.

And in a spooky case of synchronicity, look at this comment that I saw on The Cut’s instagram feed this week. It’s from a discussion about excessive drinking:

This tells me that the universe is practically commanding you to bake with Fireball this fall.

Here I’ve added it to a basic apple loaf cake, but according to the internet moms, you could use it to tart up a box of spice cake mix. The important thing is that you are having fun.

Fireball Apple Loaf Cake

• 1 and 1/2 cups all purpose flour

• 3/4 tsp. salt

• 3/4 tsp. baking soda

• 2 tsp. cinnamon

• 3/4 tsp. cloves, 1/2 tsp. allspice 

• 3 eggs

• 1 cup sugar

• 1/4 cup light brown sugar plus one T molasses (I add the molasses for more depth of flavour)

• 3/4 cup neutral oil, like canola

• 2 Tbsp. Fireball

• 1 tsp. vanilla bean paste or extract

• 2 medium tart apples, grated and then steeped in 2T granulated sugar, a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon and even more Fireball (one or two tablespoons)

For a glaze, mix together 1 cup icing sugar and three tablespoons of Fireball and stir until the sugar dissolves.

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a loaf pan with parchment. Leave it ungreased.

2. In a bowl, combine flour, salt, baking soda and spices.

3. Grate two medium, tart peeled apples on the largest hole of the box grater and macerate in sugar, cinnamon and Fireball while preparing the other ingredients.

4. In a larger mixing bowl, whisk together eggs and sugars until mixture gets lighter in color. You can do this by hand or with a hand mixer. 

5. Whisk in oil, Fireball Cinnamon Whisky and vanilla.

6. Add dry ingredients and mix until combined. Use a spatula, as the batter becomes quite thick once you add the dry ingredients.

7. Stir in the Fireball soaked apple mixture.

8. Pour batter into the parchment-lined loaf pan and bake for 65-70 minutes depending on how hot your oven is, rotating once halfway through. The cake is done when a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean with no crumbs clinging to it. Start checking at the 55 or 60 minute mark depending on how hot your oven runs and how obsessive you are.

9. Remove from the oven and remove the cake from the pan by lifting by the overhanging parchment (how did I live before using parchment slings?) and place on a rack to cool. You can add some of the glaze to the cake when it is still warm to let it absorb and then drizzle the remainder over the cooled cake.

Make This Soda Bread

Happy St. Patrick’s Day. If you don’t feel like competing with the hordes for a pint of green beer at a crowded bar (I look back at teenaged and early twenties me with genuine wonderment) then this easy soda bread recipe will make you feel like you marked the day.

It comes together quickly, requires no kneading and by baking it in a cast iron pan you ensure a satisfyingly crunchy crust.

Soda Bread

Makes one round, serves 2-4.

For a savory version, omit the sugar and add three chopped green onions and a cup of coarsely grated cheddar to the dry ingredients and butter mixture before adding the buttermilk.

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups buttermilk (no substitutions)

1 egg (optional, for added richness. So yeah, do it.)

4 1/2 cups all purpose flour (spooned into a measuring cup to ensure an accurate amount. Dragging the cup through the flour and then levelling it off packs too much flour into each cup.)

3 T granulated sugar

1 t baking soda

1 t kosher salt (Diamond Crystal if possible. It really is the best.)

5 T cold, cubed unsalted butter.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F and lightly grease a 10 inch cast iron skillet.

Whisk together the cold buttermilk and the egg.

Combine the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt in a large bowl.

Add the cold cubes of butter to the flour mixture and incorporate it with a pastry cutter until it all resembles cornmeal (as if you were making a pie crust.)

Pour in the buttermilk/egg mix and stir until combined. When you have a unified (albeit crumbly) mass, turn it onto a floured board and barely knead for only half a minute until the flour is incorporated.

Shape into a round and place in your cast iron pan. Cut a cross into it almost all the way through, as this will help it bake evenly, place on the middle rack and bake for about 40 minutes. (Start checking at the 30 minute mark. You might want to drape it with foil if it browns too quickly.)

Remove when done and cool it on a wire rack and then happily consume it all in one sitting.

All is Quiet on New Year's Day

The Czechs like to say “Jak na nový rok, tak po celý rok” which loosely translates to “as on New Year’s day, so will it be throughout the year.”

This means you must avoid all work on January first. Just spend the day enjoying the company of the ones you love, going for walks or reading and napping on the couch.

Happy new year!

The Nice List: Gifts For Girl Friends

This homage to the great Slim Aarons was staged at the beautiful Belvedere Mykonos hotel.

As much as I enjoy the festive sparkle of the season, it’s the coziness, as exemplified by these cosseting, mostly beauty-related gifts for friends, that I love the most.

The Biossance Love, Joy and Bestsellers gift set, now on sale at Sephora for only $56, is a tremendous value and a lifesaver for anyone whose skin is just assaulted this time of year by the dry air, wind and cold. (The entire Biossance line is built around squalane, a fruit-derived version of a natural substance produced by the sebaceous glands that accounts for 10% of your skin's oil.) There’s lactic acid in the Resurfacing Serum to gently smooth skin while it moisturizes and you get a full-sized pot of Squalane + Omega Repair cream to soothe winter-battered skin. There’s even a soft pink sleep mask so no uninvited light messes with your sleep!

These Martine bracelets from Suetables are the grown up version of a string friendship bracelet, but they’ll last longer as they are made with genuine semi-precious stones. At $36 each, (fashion pack must-have Carolina Bucci Forte Bead bracelets run close to eight hundred dollars a pop) these are well-priced enough that your friend can go back and buy more if she prefers the multiple bracelet look.

Crémant, a type of sparkling wine made around the champagne region of France, is, according to the booze snobs, subtler than champagne and softer than prosecco which has been the go-to now for a decade plus. Crémant de Bourgogne Brut Réserve Bailly Lapierre, $22.95, lcbo, with its beautiful orange label, is a favourite to drink straight or change up your Negroni Spagliato.

Who are those people running around with smooth, shiny, non-frizzy hair in the winter? They may be using both the gifts in this Kérastase Hydration Essentials kit, $87.75, Sephora.com. The overnight serum does its non-pillow-staining hair-nourishing magic while you sleep and the hands down, best smelling hair smoother there is, keeps your hair controlled for day. (Seriously, I wish the scent was a perfume/body lotion/hair mist.) Not only does it keep hair smooth, but it does it with that wonderful and let’s face it, very high end scent.

The Hugs & Kisses Classic Shea Butter duo, $24, loccitane.com is so much more than a tree ornament, It’s your best shot at keeping your hands from becoming all lobster-red and horribly dry and your lips from getting cracked and peeling off in painful little flakes this winter. L’Occitane’s beloved shea butter hand creme is protective and soothing yet magically lightweight. And when paired with L’Occitane Ultra Rich lip balm, which contains all the shea butter and beeswax you could need, you are now protected against everything winter can throw at you.

In my dreams, I go to a spa for a week with girlfriends and we spend our days having relaxing treatments, hiking and lolling by the pool, reading all the books that had accumulated on our nightstands back home.

To mimic a sensorial spa bath at some imaginary spa, Bathorium’s Amber Glow Mineral Clay Bath Soak, $48 for three ‘servings’, bathorium.com, is a soak-until-your-brain-melts wonder. It’s both relaxing and energizing with sea salt, red clay, papaya seed oil and a gentle floral scent to turn a bath into a detox spa treatment. Rinse off and then stagger to bed for an uninterrupted eight hours.

The model in the original photo was Aarons’ wife, Rita, and apparently she was quite cold and unhappy whilst posing for this shot.

The Nice List: A Free(ish) Seasons x Caudalie Diffuser

In its signature Caudalie Bordeaux shade, this Seasons x Caudalie diffuser is a beautiful addition to any table.

Looking like a ceramic vase or art objet, the Seasons x Caudalie diffuser may be the best Gift With Purchase ever.

If it’s getting a little too fireplace candle-scented in your home, this diffuser, that you load up with the stress-busting scent of Caudalie Beauty Elixir, is what you need to see you through the coming dark winter months.

Caudalie have partnered with Seasons to create this striking diffuser in the signature Caudalie Bordeaux shade to gently and continuously scent your air with Beauty Elixir’s famous “garden’s worth of rose, orange blossom, rosemary and aromatic myrrh” like a magical, unseen house fairy. And because you charge the unit with a USB cable, there’s no ugly power cord attaching it to a wall.

As a free gift with purchase in stores at Sephora through Caudalie, it requires a minimum spend of $300, which I know sounds steep, but a Seasons diffuser retails for around $180 Canadian on its own. So buy everyone on your list a Caudalie gift set (not even joking) and finish off your holiday gift buying in one fell swoop.

It’s just so beautiful. So many diffusers are pretty enough (I’m lying. I loathe most of them) but their ‘spa vibe’ only looks right on a shelf in your yoga room or in the bathroom.) But Seasons x Caudalie is chic and looks at home on a stack of books or on the coffee table. It really ties the room together. (100 points if you know where that quote comes from.)

Here are some favourite Caudalie gift sets from Sephora to reach that $300 mark:

The Vinotherapist Body Moisturizing Duo in just the prettiest pale purple hatbox contains Caudalie’s newest Vinotherapist Hand and Nail cream and a giant jar of their new, heavenly smelling, quick absorbing, vegan Replenishing Body Butter, $95. Sephora.com

The Caudalie Vinoperfect Dark Spot Brightening Solution Set, $95, Sephora.com, contains brand stars like the Brightening Glycolic Essence (a staple no matter what other brands you use) and the very effective yet quite gentle Brightening Moisturizer.

This is a great deal: a bottle of Beauty Elixir to spray in the air, on yourself and to use in the diffuser, along with a pore-clearing Vinergetic C+ Instant Detox mask, $25, Sephora.com. It’s your serene Saturday movie night, sorted.

(Semi-related aside: I am particularly fond of the tableau in the photo at the top of this story, because that is Craig’s winning entry to the New Yorker cartoon caption contest. mic drop.)

The Nice List: Better Gifts For Men

Colin Firth in Bridget Jones’s Diary, which, if you think about it, was a Christmas movie.

This bit of snark courtesy of Instagram..

Men get a lot of nonsense at Christmas, and not just holiday-themed sweaters. A recent gift guide go-to was whiskey stones — cubes of frozen soapstone used as ice cubes that wouldn’t melt and dilute an expensive single malt.

But despite the fact that they don’t really work, they refused to go gentle into that good night, and are now shorthand for silly men’s presents, along with beard oil and anything leather (see chart.)

The gifts below tread the line between silly and practical. They’re also pretty genderless. I’d be happy to receive any one of them.

Instead of, say, a monogrammed leather passport cover*, give him his initial filled with an assortment of delicious Scandinavian candy from Sukker Baby Toronto, ($69 plus cost of letter.) These high fructose corn syrup-free scandi treats make for a gift that will be greeted with true delight instead of polite smiles.

*We all know you have to remove the cover when you reach passport control, so that’s one item that always puzzled me.

Why are contemplative baths only for women? Everyone needs to hide out in a steamy room, submerged in hot, fragrant water. Steeping in a Dr. Hauschka Spruce Warming Bath, $35, Drhauschka.ca, is a powerful sense memory of being in a forest and the bathroom will stay beautifully scented for hours afterwards.

Give a guy a break and prevent him from pulling something when cleaning off the car this winter. The Karcher electric ice scraper, $79, Canadian Tire, will make quick work of that impenetrable ice glaze that covers the windows when the car sits outside overnight and the temperatures rise and then drop precipitously.

We love a shacket, and this toasty, quilted fleece version from Brixton, $180, Brixton.com, comes in pure orange for your favourite peacocking gentleman or in a clutch of more neutral shades if standing out is not his thing.

Now that everyone uses their phone to tell time, luxury watches serve mainly as a way to spend a truckload of money. But an oversized, brightly coloured G-Shock, thebay.com, is fun, a tiny bit silly and has the childlike appeal of a hard-won midway prize.

If your family doesn’t have their Scrabble tiles in a Crown Royal bag, buy a bottle of the famous Gimli, Manitoba whiskey now, ($46.45, lcbo.com), while they are offering the signature purple drawstring bag as a gift-with-purchase. Then drink it with ice, not whiskey stones, or add a generous slug to liven up everyone’s cup of grocery store eggnog.

The Nice List: The Gift of Sleep

Bedtime bliss: fresh linens, a reading lamp and an unimpeded path to the bathroom.

Apparently sleep is the new sex. And while I don’t want to delve into this too deeply, I do know that amongst my friends, an uninterrupted eight hours can be elusive. So here are some holiday gifts to help anyone set the stage for a restful night.

You don’t see lab mice hunched over their phones, doom-scrolling before bed. According to a 2022 study in Biology, copying mouse behaviour and “adopting a regular behavioral pre-sleep routine was found to be more efficient in facilitating sleep than medication”.

And just look at the helpful illustration that accompanied the study. Isn’t the fluffy mouse bed inspiring?

For a human nesting ritual, spray this heavenly-scented and relaxing Body Shop Sleep calming pillow mist, $18, bodyshop.ca, (made from 100% natural lavender and vetiver ) on your pillows and linens. Then throw open the window for that blissful ‘warm bed in a cold room’ sleep.

Simplest solutions are often the best. The Slip silk sleepmask ($70, Sephora.com) completely blocks out all light because even the faintest amount can muck with your circadian rhythms. This unbelievably soft mask is made from pure mulberry silk for breathability and even the filler is silk, as this is no time for polyester to be anywhere near your face.

I loved Flintstone vitamins as a kid so I was charmed by Nature’s Bounty Hair, Skin and Nails gummies. Their latest release, Nature's Bounty Sleep VitaBeans soft chews, $19, amazon.ca contain melatonin, the natural hormone found in our bodies that has a role in our wake and sleep cycle. Each generously-sized VitaBean contains 2 mg of melatonin and they’re a great occasional aid for insomnia or jet lag.

If your insomniac friends ‘partake’, then have them try a THC/CBN combo edible before bed, as CBN acts as a sedative by helping the body raise serotonin and melatonin levels. These sugar free Blackcurrant CBN Gems from Olli, $8.95, are designed to be low enough dose to take during the week with no after-effects the following day.

An epsom salt bath can soothe and relax on its own but the added lavender, chamomile and melatonin found in Dr. Teal’s Melatonin Sleep Soak, ($10.49, Shoppers Drug Mart) will help to calm even the chattiest of brains before bed.

All soothing, all the time. After your bath, the last thing you need is some tastebud-searing toothpaste to wake you up just as you’re trying to wind down. Hello Goodnight lavender & chamomile toothpaste, $6.97, Walmart.ca, is a naturally flavoured, dye-free, fluoride-free paste with lavender and chamomile that harmonize with the subtle mint flavour. It’s an unexpected flavour pairing that works, and a fun way to get more ‘time for bed’ cues.

No screens before bed! Instead, spend some quality time with this reissue of Hotel Splendide, a charming collection of vignettes by Ludwig Bemelmans about his life as a waiter at the New York City Ritz the 1920s, before he hit it big with the Madeline books.

Then turn out the lights and instead of counting sheep, just recite Madeline’s famous opening lines:

In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines

Lived twelve little girls in two straight lines…

Hibernation Nation

On the old Australian tv show, Your Life on the Lawn, decluttering experts would empty the contents of messy houses into the yard, so homeowners could see all their belongings in the bright, unforgiving sunshine.

I could use that assist right now, choosing what deserves to be in my home and what should get chucked and never spoken of again.

It is late November. We are about to be stuck inside with all our stuff for the next four months. Between the weird stasis of early lockdowns and just life in general, things are a bit chaotic over here.

And while I am certainly not the person to offer decluttering advice (I mean, I still want help from an early 2000s tv show) I can recommend these small additions to your home to make things a little bit nicer this winter in your hobbit hole.

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” That’s me, trying to elevate a discussion of toilet plungers with a William Morris quote.

Unless you have a fleet of invisible house fairies who keep the moving parts of your home working without your knowledge (the dream), you need a plunger within reach. This Libman premium plunger and caddy, $16.99, Canadian Tire, stays within grabbing distance, yet almost blending into the wall when stored discreetly in its white holder.

If you have hard water (and more than three quarters of us do) it can interfere with laundry detergent’s ability to do its job. Add to that our propensity to overload the machine while also using less water per load and you have all the elements in place for lacklustre laundry. (I illustrated this story with a beautifully stocked linen closet, because you cannot overstate the satisfaction, nay, the joy of freshly washed and folded laundry.)

Downy Rinse & Refresh, ($8.99, grocery stores) is not a fabric softener. Rather its low pH helps lift product residue and by extension, bad smells from natural and synthetic fibres. So if your synthetic workout gear doesn’t smell as good as new despite repeated washings or your university-age children bring their laundry home, Rinse & Refresh could be for you. And the Fresh Lavender scent is wonderfully light and non-cloying.

Now that it gets dark by 5:00 p.m., it’s time to lay in an unholy number of votives (and it pains me to say this) but not the IKEA tea lights in their little tin sleeves. These Crate & Barrel votives, ($39.95, crateandbarrel.ca,) come 50 to a box and their sleeves are clear plastic, so when lit, the candles glow like little lanterns.

Extend the life of your wooden cutting boards, kitchen utensils and even that 70s wooden salad bowl if you have one. Clapham’s beeswax salad bowl finisher, ($23, Home Hardware) is a blend of naturally antibacterial beeswax and mineral oil which won’t go rancid like natural seed oils. It’s like moisturizer for your kitchen. Clapham’s is meditative pleasure to use, smells wonderful and brings all your kitchen bits back to life with a warm sheen.

Even if you can’t or won’t ‘Marie Kondo’ your lingerie and sock drawers into rigorous order, these Santa Maria Novella scented wax tablets impregnated with the citrus notes of Acqua Della Regina (classic eau de cologne), will make your jumble of socks and underwear smell very fancy. Queen Caterina de Medici would be very proud of you.