How Dog Hair Helps Me See Better
On sunlight, air, and the beauty of a crammed window-space.
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I own a Goldendoodle named Cash. Yes, after Johnny Cash. If I could name him after a Johnny Cash song, it would be “Ring of Fire,” “I Walk The Line,” or Folsom Prison Blues or one of his covers that everyone believes is one of his originals. Cash is a long, non-curly-haired doodle. He’s 50% poodle — his Sire, Rocky — and 50% golden retriever — his mother, Ginger. So, he sheds. A lot. Anyone who tells you Goldendoodles are “hypoallergenic” is the same person trying to sell you a bridge.
Because Cash sheds so much, I must vacuum often. My daughters are assigned to vacuum as part of their chores—a different daughter each week—but I love our Dyson Ball Animal 3+ so much, I just run it for them.
Yesterday, I was running the Dyson and reveling in the magical extension arm—this extension allows me not just to dust, but to annihilate all dust and debris stuck on my bookshelves. So, I kept going.
I pulled my old leather chair away from the wall.
Piles of dog hair.
Sucked it right up.
The chair told me to tidy it as well. So, I ordered all the papers on it, which means I threw most of them away. I stacked the books neatly on the shelf and took my volleyball bag to the mud room. Then I looked at my long window—the lone window in the room. It was flanked by two tall bookshelves and my rower.
“What if I jammed my chair over there instead of in the corner where it’s seldom used except for a large and expensive valet,” I thought to myself.
I did it. And it did not look right.
So, I pulled and repositioned the carpet.
Better. But still odd. Plus, it overloaded the room.
Then I thought about my friend Myquillyn Smith—The Nester. What would she do?
Myquillyn? She’s a rule breaker. Oh, I fully realize she published a book titled House Rules, so technically, she’s a rule creator. But make no mistake: her brilliance lies in her unconventional mind. She sees a space not how it’s supposed to be, but what it could be.
She also created this interior decorating philosophy called “House Hushing.” It’s when you remove objects from a room and let it breathe for a bit. I wasn’t removing the chair from the room, just from its former corner. So, I was half-house-hushing.
Then, I sat in the chair, crammed as it was in the window. The morning sunlight poured on me. My view of my larger bookcases danced with the fresh silver morning. Instead of sulking behind me when I sat in the chair, they waved to me from the front, inviting me with their playful multi-colored spines.
There I sat, bathed in sunlight. And I saw my study anew.
Over the last several weeks, I’ve been writing solely in my journals—even for my client work. I know—dangerous, what will the machines think? But the low yellow light of my study, or other lamps in the house, makes it challenging to write longhand inside. So, I’ll write in the sunlight outside.
Sitting in the window chair gives me that fresh sunlight. Now I can write in the sun from my so comfortable valet-chair.
Curious, I did a quick exploration of the differences between sunlight and lamplight, and why I don’t need my readers in sunlight when I write, unlike when I write by lamplight.
If you look up the difference between sunlight and lamplight, you’ll find a new appreciation for sunlight. We all know this, but I must say it out loud. Lamps fake it.
Even a good bulb only gives us 300–500 lux. But when I write outside, even when it’s cloudy, I’m getting 10,000 lux of light. Sunlight, of course, contains the entire spectrum of light. See? Lamps are con artists.
These cons also trick our pre-loaded circadian rhythm. Sunlight is about 5500–6500 Kelvin. It’s a crisp blue-white, which tells our bodies, “Hey, sit up, stay alert, there’s work to be done!” Lamplight—those tricksters—falls in the 2700–3000 K range. They whisper, “Hey, it’s too cozy to work in here. Just relax.” They are physiologically lying to us. Our brains in low light think, “Ok, time to wind down, maybe pour a drink.”
In this light-dance, I noticed something else.
The light falling into my half-hushed corner looked less like something to see and more like something to breathe. It revealed the book spines well, but it also unveiled the empty space as a thing in itself—something to inhabit. I sat in my valet-chair, marveling at my half-hushed corner, smiling in gratitude for Cash’s hairballs.
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