Make Your Space Work for You

Designing a one bedroom apartment to be a shipping warehouse, an update for pen pals and summer reading, a tablescaping contest, and a recipe for strawberry London Fogs.

Happy Monday to you! Today’s edition of the Monday Letter includes a personal story about turning my small apartment into a place to make my dreams function, and how I did it. It’s a tale of scrappy ol’ small business innovation, but the design came together in an impactful way that still feels like home.

This edition also includes:

• A (hopefully really helpful) home decor audit to use in your own space

• A gallery of reader-designed tablescapes that are sure to delight

• An important announcement about the Pen Pal Program

• An update on the Summer Reading Challenge (ending on July 31st!)

• A delicious recipe for at-home strawberry London Fogs for summer

Today’s newsletter was made in partnership with one of my very favorite design brands, the modern and lovely Thuma!

Publishing Tomorrow, July 21!

I am delighted to share that TOMORROW, my color dot calendar will be published and officially available in stores! For six years, I self-published and hand-packed calendars leading up to this moment. It was laborious, expensive, time consuming, but a tradition I still cherished. It meant a lot to me and a lot to the “Calendar Club” — the group of color-lovers who purchased the color-filled calendar nearly every year.

Since the publisher now handles the printing and distribution, I was able to reduce the price from $45 to $16.99. Absolutely nothing in life is going down in price, so the fact that I was able to reduce this cost and get you a higher quality print and shipping experience is thrilling.

Tomorrow, it is available globally! I have no information about which stores and locations it will pop up in. So my request of you is to keep an eye out and report back if you see it in the wild! Please let me know in a comment or dm! Consider this a mass scavenger hunt!

It’s called “The Joy of Color” by Jenna O’Brien, if you’d like to ask a local independent bookstore if they have it available.

Finally, it is worth noting that this calendar is currently on a small sale with online distributors. You can pick up a color dot calendar from Bookshop, Amazon, Books-a-Million, or Hudson Booksellers.

Eager and excited for you to hold it in your hands!

Happy birthday to my calendar! (And me! Haha! July 21st is publish day and my birthday!)

I need a warehouse, but I have a one-bedroom apartment.

The story of turning a 700 sq. ft. apartment into an e-commerce warehouse, and how to make your own space feel like it’s moving you towards your dreams.

Homes can feel like problems, but they can also feel like solutions.

The way we typically think of homes is very limiting. We keep them until we outgrow them or find something better. I used to think every life change meant it was time to find a new space.

All my preconceived notions about “home” changed when I moved to New York City.

I had to urgently decide what values were most important to me, and then inventively rediscover how a space, even an unruly tiny one, can meet those needs with my own design efforts. New Yorkers just make it work.

It is nearly impossible to get everything you want in an apartment here. It’s almost like a unicorn; very hard to catch. Most New Yorkers live in some level of compromise with their rentals. It’s their favorite neighborhood, but no air conditioning. It’s super spacious, but really far from the train, etc.

All my values and goals for a home had to fit into a 700-square-foot apartment. You become inventive and scrappy quickly. I have a fold-out table under the bed for hosting large dinners. The couch is a pull-out for overnight visitors. You adapt, it turns out.

Until recently, when an unsolvable problem presented itself.

This August, I am starting a greeting card company called Feeling! Press. On this entrepreneurial venture, one of the questions I had to answer was, “How will I do this functionally?“

The cards will need to be shipped daily, sometimes in bulk.

How, now that I’m in a tiny apartment in New York, am I going to pull this off? I started researching partner warehouses and saw that the cost of having someone else ship my products would basically choke my business from the start. I felt wary about taking on such a high fee before I had any evidence of how many cards I would sell a month.

I started exploring options further, maybe a storage unit down the street? That didn’t make a lot of sense either. I mean, how were we going to walk inventory home and back? Or do we have to sit in a dark storage unit and pack orders?

There’s no way we can fit a whole other function of life, much less an e-commerce warehouse, into our 700-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment that’s already full to the brim.

Or so I thought.

I sat on the couch, across from Connor at the dining table, and brought the problem up again: I want to start this card business, but there is no feasible way to store and ship my products. I’d researched every third-party warehouse I could find, even outside of New York, and the math was not adding up.

None of it made sense, and all of it was expensive. I was exasperated and started to think that maybe this dream wasn’t possible in our current situation, and I had dreamed too big.

We gazed around our tiny apartment. What if we somehow shipped from here? We throw out a lot of crazy ideas about our space, and our rule is that we always give it a little bit of time before we shut it down.

There was a big, blank space on the left wall of our apartment. We stared at it like scientists.

The tape measure was out, and we calculated that we could spare only one square foot of floor space, but we could work up to the ceiling.

We found the spot, but a design problem presented itself.

Our apartment is going to feel less like a home and more like a garage.

How do you make backstock of product look like it belongs in a living space, to the point where we could still host people for dinner parties and enjoy being in our own living room, resting, watching movies, and not feeling like we’re in an intrusive warehouse?

That was the problem. Thuma was the solution.

Thuma is a furniture brand that I have long admired for their simplicity and quality.

As Connor had the tape measure out on the wall, I was rapidly researching online to look for shelves that 1.) didn’t feel like a warehouse 2.) felt like a living room 3.) were tall and big enough to fit inventory 4.) were not too wide to intrude on our already small square footage. And then I found Thuma’s pillar bookshelves.

A rare design phenomenon happened; one piece of furniture fit every single thing I needed it to do.

It’s like I have a small library or bookstore to drink coffee in front of every day.

We chose the pillar bookshelves in a walnut finish and styled our books and decor on them. I filled some of the shelves with crates for card storage. After stepping back, seeing the gloss of the wood shine and a modest stack of sample cards sitting on the shelf, it felt like I had a charming stationery store inside my apartment. Oh my gosh, it didn’t look like warehouse inventory; it looked like a beautifully styled display! Giddiness ensued.

My business could fit alongside our life, which feels like both a metaphorical and practical revelation.

These shelves are now part of our daily life, and we’ve lived with them for so long that I feel assured that this was the absolute right design choice. Every month that passes where I am not paying secondary rent to store cards proves the shelves’ value once more.

The way we design our space can actually solve our problems, rather than create more. That’s my biggest takeaway from living in a small apartment.

Rather than looking to the next thing, we were able to use what we had, with some good design, to solve the problem.

So yes, we will be shipping every card by hand from our apartment until we can afford to outsource that work!

I’m thrilled, and I’m really grateful to have worked with Thuma to create this beautiful space that functions and feels like home. The dark walnut wood really tied our space together. Though it’s modern, the quality and texture of the wood make it look more like an heirloom piece than something we built out of a box. They are pieces we will take with us, wherever life leads, because they are infinitely customizable, durable, and timelessly designed. I like looking at a piece and knowing it will never go out of style.

The bottom line is that we have more control over how our home feels than we think.

Investing in pieces that enhance your life and solve your problems is one of the best investments you can make. It’s not always about finding a better space; sometimes it’s about changing the one you have.

I hope this inspired you to reenvision what your space could be and how you can use good design to reprioritize your own creative dreams and make them more approachable.

Because of this furniture upgrade, I went from thinking I would not be able to make this dream work in this season of life to believing that I had every capability of starting to sell cards right now.

That’s the power of good design, baby!

P.S. If you are visiting New York soon, put Thuma’s showroom on your list. It is in Soho, and they have a full COFFEE BAR in the furniture store! You can touch all of the furniture and sip a latte. Dream date.

We have three of the 5x1' shelves, which can be attached seamlessly to one another when you assemble them to create a giant book wall of dreams!

A Home Audit:

If home is feeling frustrating or it feels like there’s no space for your dream, here is a guided audit to help you solve the problem, and design your space to fit your life better:

1. Identify the real problem, not the frustration on the surface

On the surface, my problem was “I need more space,” but really, my problem was: “I need to ship and store cards without losing my living space.” Give specific language to the problem.

• What do you need your space to do that it is not doing right now? Dig into the nitty-gritty.

• Do you feel like the problem is truly a spatial issue (like square footage) or a functional issue with dissatisfactory organization and flow?

• What, in simple terms, would you need to resolve the specific problem? (i.e. more storage, less clutter, more furniture, less furniture, a clear space, etc.)

2. Look at your space as if it is blank

Sometimes, we are so used to our furniture placement that it’s hard to envision the space any other way. If you are really designing through a problem, try to imagine the space as completely blank, and you will be amazed the ideas a blank canvas prompts.

• You can determine non-negotiables from there. The TV can’t go on another wall because of the outlet, etc. You’ll find you have more wiggle room than you thought.

• Give any wild idea 24 hours before ruling it out.

3. Source pieces that serve the space

For me, the shelves had to pass four tests: don’t feel like a warehouse, still feel like a living room, be tall enough to store a lot of inventory, and not wide enough to intrude on the dining area. Consider:

• Is there one piece of furniture that could solve two problems at once?

• Would going vertical (shelving, wall storage) free up the floor space you need?

• Is there a function in your life right now with no space in your home (hobby, side business, full-on warehouse, hosting, guests)? What would give it the space it needs?

4. Make functionality look like home

The best part of these shelves is that they feel like a quaint stationery store instead of a garage. If you are trying to make a space multi-functional, consider:

• Are utility items (bins, supplies, equipment) styled or tucked away?

• Does the material/finish feel more permanent and less like a placeholder? (Sourcing things like thrifted baskets or more design-forward crates can help with this)

5. Live with it before you judge it

Finally, the beautiful thing about our spaces is they can evolve and change with us. We have so much freedom! There is no limit to how many times you are allowed to rearrange. So give a big change a few weeks of real wear and tear before deciding if it worked.

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If you are working through making your current space work for you, I’d love to hear about the design process in the comments! Please share what you are currently working on, or a past problem, and how you resolved it. This stuff is fascinating and encouraging!

✸ The inaugural Pen Pal Program I put on in late June hit some communication snags. Some issues were an error of my own (I’ve never hosted a Pen Pal Program before!). Some eager letter writers never heard back from their matches. I took a step back and reevaluated some workflow hiccups, and I am going to reopen the program, better than before, this Friday (7/24).

Applications to participate in this round will only be open through this weekend, so please set a reminder if you are hoping to apply!

If you’d like to be matched with someone and spend summer sharing letters, get exclusive access to card discounts, and be creatively challenged with lots of fun prompts for writing, please apply this Friday!

Note that this exciting program is available only to paid subscribers of Feeling! Magazine as a perk for their generous support. Sign up today as a paid subscriber, apply Friday for a match, and spend the rest of summer getting to know your new en pal who was hand-picked for you!

✸ The Summer Reading Challenge is nearing an end! The final date to email me your submission is 7/31. Email me at jenna@feelingpress.com with your completed list of 15 fictional books. Details about what type of books and prizes can be found here. One of the prizes for the randomly selected winner will be THREE free months of a Book of the Month subscription! Another prize will arrive at your front door and make you gasp. Trust me, it will be my best work in the whimsy department yet.

✸ If you are someone who has a lot of ideas but gets stuck on the execution, this free guide I published last week was written with you in mind. I peel back the curtain on my own process for organizing, capturing, and sorting ideas in a way that feels manageable.

✸ Fresh delivery! This batch of wallpapers and printables for the month of July has wall art, gift tags, junk journal paper, punch cards, and more!

Let’s review the creative challenge from last week. As a part of the Summer Camp Series, I asked readers to design a tablescape and share it, and I want to show you all the magic that ensued!

Think of this scroll as a little gallery walk (be sure to say ooo and ahhh a little):

From Meg Smith:

From Aly Arel:

From Martha Schreck:

From Debany Hernandez:

From Reb:

From Deavon:

From ak🫶🏻:

From Paige:

From Anna:

Weren’t these lovely? Little snippets of people’s homes that feel so hopeful and lovely? I’m grateful the winner of the challenge is randomized, because it would be way too difficult to pick one myself.

I randomized entries and ak🫶🏻 was chosen as our winner! Congratulations to everyone who made such a beautiful practice of creativity happen in their home and shared it with us.

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A Moment for Strawberry Syrup:

Summer in the air makes me crave strawberries. I wanted to share my favorite recipe for homemade strawberry syrup, and how to use it to create delicious strawberry London Fogs. Do one or two batches of syrup, and it will last you until the end of August.

I put my recipes on little cards for you to save and use as needed:

I highly recommend drinking in the mornings, with breakfast. Perfect for when you want a hot drink, but still a taste of summer!

Hope you have a delicious week!

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JOY-SCROLLING:

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🐚 Read more thoughtfully created articles here

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Working with brands and businesses helps me make this magazine dream come true! If I do work directly with a brand, I am very picky about it, and I disclose the partnership to you, my readers. A few of the links I included in this article are from ShopMy, which gives a small payment if someone buys a product from a recommendation. This helps fund future creative projects for this publication — thank you!

P.S. Telling my Substack friends before anyone else…new secret Instagram for the upcoming greeting card business is here. I would love to have you join the journey and see some familiar names!