When her husband Ashton B. Carter, former Secretary of Defense under President Barack Obama, died at home of a heart attack last October, Stephanie Carter was left with many questions about the future.
But one thing she knew right away: she no longer wanted to live in the two-bedroom apartment in Boston where it happened.
“I knew right away that I didn’t want to be in that apartment,” said Ms. Carter, 54 days after the loss of Mr. Carter, she contacted her building’s leasing office to find a smaller apartment.
“I think people underestimate—or at least I did before—how much grief, loss, and trauma inhabits the physical space,” she said. “We don’t think about how our physical environment can really have such a crucial impact on how we feel.”
Planning a radical downsizing, she rented an 822-square-foot, one-bedroom house in the same building for $5,700 a month, with intentions of moving in in early December. That left her about four weeks to design her new home and figure out what to do with her life’s possessions.
For help, Ms. Carter enlisted two professionals with whom she had worked in the past: Barbara Vail, the interior designer who designed the couple’s two-bedroom apartment, and Rachel Rosenthal, an organizer who had assisted the Carters with previous moves and planning your marriage had helped.
For her new home, Ms. Carter didn’t want to select a few pieces of furniture from her old home – she wanted a whole new environment. Planning to sell or give away most of her furniture and accessories to friends and neighbors, she gave Ms. Vail some basic instructions.
“I told her I wanted to be in a Nancy Meyers movie,” Ms. Carter said, naming the filmmaker behind films like Something’s Gotta Give and It’s Complicated, whose sets inspired many true imitators.
Ms. Vail was up for the challenge. “The main goal was to make it healing, comfortable, cozy and welcoming,” she said. “It should have a different aesthetic than her old apartment, which was a bit more modern. It should have a warm, textured and patterned appeal.”
And she didn’t shy away from the tight time frame. While buying new furniture often involves waiting many weeks or months for delivery, Ms. Vail focused on only using stock and vintage items.
The living room, for example, is supported by a green velvet sofa by Joss & Main and a marble and brass coffee table by Anthropologie, which Ms. Vail placed on a vintage Turkish rug along with an upholstered ottoman by Target.
In the bedroom, she used Chasing Paper floral removable wallpaper. “We did this to be tenant-friendly but still create an eclectic, custom look,” said Ms. Vail. Then she added a bed from Maiden Home and rattan nightstands from Ballard Designs, above them sculptural lamps with block-printed pleated fabric shades.
At the same time, Ms. Rosenthal helped Ms. Carter clean up her old home while preserving important memorabilia from her time with Mr. Carter.
“I am a firm believer that physical clutter creates emotional clutter,” Ms. Rosenthal said, helping Ms. Carter donate everyday items that meant little — her husband’s clothes and office supplies, for example — and keep only the items that really mattered were important.
Though Ms. Carter’s new home offers a fresh start, it’s filled with things that evoke memories of Mr. Carter: photos of the couple together, framed handwritten notes, and other items. In the living room, Mrs. Carter fastened one of his favorite ties in a shadow box. She did the same with an old tennis racket, which he obediently brought with him on every holiday, but which he rarely used.
“I like to think we always had so much fun on holiday that he didn’t think he needed to add another sport,” Ms Carter said.
She framed a handwritten note that read “Kwispies for NYC plz” — Mr. Carter’s way of asking her to make brown butter Rice Krispies treats for a trip — as well as a detailed equation that reflected his work as a physicist.
She added some new pieces including Herend ceramic figures of a lion and a squirrel. “I called Ash ‘lion’ and he called me ‘squirrel,'” she explained. “All of these things make me feel like he’s with me in a great way, not in a way preserved in amber.”
Now Ms. Carter is writing a book on dealing with loss, which she described as “a handbook exploring how to put one foot in front of the other in a practical way, with your body, your mind, your spaces.”
The focus is on “everyday, action-oriented ways of moving forward,” she added.
Your new home is one such example. “It’s been so comforting and I feel really lucky,” she said. “It makes a difference for me to wake up here.”
Living Small is a bi-weekly column exploring what it takes to live a simpler, more sustainable, or more compact life.
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