Ronda Kaysen - The New York Times: Right at Home

W hether we rent or own, our homes serve as a backdrop to our livesthe place where we raise our families, celebrate our accomplishments and seek refuge from the complex world outside. But a home can also be a source of tremendous angst. Set out to buy one, and you may enter a market with high prices and fierce competition. Sign a 12-month lease, and you may not know how to make the place feel like home. Once you get the keys, you are handed the dizzying task of organizing, decorating and maintaining your largest investment. Where do you begin?

Thats why we wrote The New York Times Right at Home: How to Buy, Decorate, Organize and Maintain Your Space. Consider it a users manual for homeownership, filled with information and tools for how to care for your homewhether thats a two-bedroom apartment youre renting for a year or the house where you plan to live out your life.

Some books look good on your coffee table, full of glossy images and captions that glorify homeownership. Others dictate a strict set of rules. Our book is meant to offer you guidance on your journey through homeownership, based on your own values and style. It may also look nice on your coffee table. But if you dont have a coffee table yetor dont like the one youve gotdont worry. Well help you find the right one for your living room, and keep it from getting cluttered, too.

This guide will be there for you at every turn, whether youre unpacking the kitchen for the first time, moving in with your significant other or figuring out what to do with all those baby bottles and sippy cups now that the last child is out of diapers and the cabinets are bursting. Eager for an enviable living room, but not sure how to take a decorating risk? Weve got you covered, with advice drawn from interviews with the countrys top interior designers and organizers. Our goal is to offer concise, practicaland sometimes entertainingstrategies to help you navigate the often daunting privilege of homeownership.

Youre in good hands. Together, we have spent a combined 25 years reporting for The New York Times, frequently about homes, including how to buy, decorate, organize and care for them. In our columns and cover stories for the Sunday Real Estate section, weve written extensively about New Yorks heady housing market, toured hundreds of apartments and interviewed many of the countrys most influential architects and designers about the latest trends. As The Fix columnist, Michelle has explored how best to renovate a kitchen on a budget, decorate with children and find the perfect paint hue, delivering insider advice on home renovations and dcor. As the Ask Real Estate columnist, Ronda has answered just about every question there is about housing.

Years spent interviewing industry leaders and experts and culling through the latest studies and data has taught us that good home stewardship is a skill. And just like any other skill, with enough research, information and practice, it can be mastered.

We also know this because weve lived it. Ronda has spent seven years slowly renovating a century-old house she bought with her husband, David, in the New Jersey suburbs. Before becoming a homeowner, she lived in a dozen different rental apartments, most of them in Brooklyn, N.Y., and many of them in need of love and creative decorating.

Michelle spent her childhood covered in paint and sawdust in a 19th-century farmhouse in upstate New York, which her parents lovingly restored, before moving to a mid-century-style home. After apartment hopping for more than two decades as a renter in Brooklyn, she and her husband, Greg, bought the mid-century-style home she grew up in. They are now in the process of renovating it.

In these pages, packed with the deeply sourced reporting youd expect from writers for The New York Times, we will guide you through the buying process, dispelling the mysteries surrounding mortgages, brokers, bidding wars and even the wistful buyers letter. Wondering how to get your credit history in order so you can qualify for a mortgage? Weve got you. Not sure what happens once you actually make an offer? Well take you through the process from your first open house until the keys are in your hand.

Once you move in, well offer advice for how to best organize, decorate and maintain your home, taking you room by room with suggestions on everything from how to choose paint colors to the safest place to store your medicine. (Hint: its not the medicine cabinet.)

If your home is woefully cluttered, well help you restore order and calm to it, so you can arrange everything from your refrigerator to your bedroom closet in a way that works for you.

If youre renting and at a loss for how to make a sterile space feel like home, we will provide you with creative and innovative ideas that will make the place your own without spending a lot. There are fun and economical ways to customize a space without risking your depositin other words, you dont have to paint the kitchen cabinets to make them pop.

If youve never established a good home maintenance routine, or didnt even know one was needed, well help you get started, walking you through all that needs to be done, season by season and room by room. Keep on top of the annual tasks that your home asks of you, like cleaning the gutters and servicing the furnace, and you will come to understand how your home operates, and how to respond to it when it needs your attention.

Flip through this book for guidance and inspiration. Turn to it as a trusted source. Use it to build confidence in the choices you make about where and how you live in your space. Over the years, you can return to this guide for instructions at each new twist or turn that modern home life brings. With the skills youll gain, your home will look and feel as beautiful and welcoming as you envisioned it, setting the perfect backdrop for your life.

Welcome home,

Michelle and Ronda