jane says. hi

Yeah, so I started a design thing. It's crazy. Cats and dogs living together. Mass Hysteria.

I know how it sounds. For 35 years, I bored people with internet policy, talked organizations off ledges, managed a multitude of crises, helped smart people make hard calls under pressure - and now I’m standing in your family room having many, many feels about your lamps. It makes absolutely no sense.

Or maybe it does a little...

Here's the truth about crisis and client management: it’s never really about the crisis. It’s about the person in front of you, frozen over too many options and too little time, needing someone calm to say "okay, here's what we do next." Turns out that's also, almost exactly, what happens when someone's been staring at their living room for two years, paralyzed between too many pillows and an aggressive Pinterest board they're now afraid to open. Or staring at their partner's college dorm furniture that’s still in the bedroom. Difficult dynamics requiring creative solutions Different setting, same job.

So that's company number one, now folded a bit into company number two. Jane Design and Home isn't a rebrand or a midlife plot twist (well…). It's the same skill set, just directed at your house instead of a headline. And way more fun.

The "Jane" part is my mother. In addition to being a gifted designer and the mother of a thousand children, she founded a children's shop and design studio called Little Footprints and through both, taught me that a memorable room isn’t about things - it’s how that room makes you feel when you’re in it. My job, whether it’s creating an issue campaign or creating a design plan, is the same - take the noise out, put the magic in, keep what matters and help people make the right decisions.

But here are some things I won’t do:

Tell you that your home needs to be "elevated." I don't know what that means and neither do you. Nobody needs more opinions, they just need to find their own so they can make some decisions already. And not on what’s “in” but on things they’ll actually still like five, ten years from now.

Tell you that you don’t need color. For anyone who argues that no color = clean, I will tell you that without color, “clean” is just a sad desk lunch.

Make you feel terrible. If you've spent two years staring down ten thousand shades of white and accomplished exactly nothing, congratulations, come sit by me. Paralysis isn't personal, it’s on purpose. It’s the result of a 24-7 carousel of choices that tell you that you must do “whatever” is today’s level of cool, which of course changes daily. Ridiculousness. Deep down, you know what you like and it's my job to help you find it. I hereby give you permission to create whatever home that makes you happy.

In closing, I should probably disclose that Jane Says will not always be this polite; mostly likely, it will be more of the “come sit by me” and maybe bring some wine kind of vibe. A little bit of “can this marriage be saved” design advice. Quizzes on Benjamin Moore paint colors. Some therapy about how you’ll do all of this and your guests will still end up crowded into your dirty kitchen. Even some Q&A, if that’s your thing.

So come on in and put your feet up. My ottoman is fire.

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