HGTV Stars: Where Are They Now?

(He's a Housekeeper!)

Yesterday evening, as I arrived at Londo Lodge to reset and clean it, my friend Rebecca sent this image, which had popped up as an iPhone memory, to me and our friend Emily Bowser (giving her last name so you don’t assume it’s my other friend Emily Henderson). Rebecca was the design producer on my HGTV shows, which means she was in charge of implementing my designs for the homeowners on every episode. Basically, being the host of a show like that is very time consuming, you don’t have time for sourcing materials and bugging contractors to do it the way you want it done. Emily was in charge of sourcing and purchasing everything you saw on those episodes, from furniture to the accessories we used to fill out the space.

I cannot tell you the gratitude I have for these women. Along with everyone on that small crew, they made the show happen. But in particular they were the design executives who made the design, the heart of the show, come to life. This is how I responded to the text thread:

Now, I’m joking of course. But I’m also not. I’m fine calling myself a housekeeper, in part to de-stigmatize the word. I have had the privilege of having some wonderful housekeepers over the course of my life and I always appreciated their work and saw it as a legitimate and necessary profession that should be treated with respect. So while I am the acting housekeeper for Londo Lodge, I plan to call myself that.

I think the contrast I sought to highlight was just how very different my life is now more than four years ago. But also it’s about how so many of the “gets” I’ve gotten have ended up not really being the ticket to success I thought they would be. Getting into the “right” college then not being able to get a good job for almost a decade. Landing a spot on Emily Henderson’s TV show then having to look for a new job just months later. Writing a book that sold a lot but didn’t make me much money. Getting my own TV show on HGTV that didn’t raise my profile all that much (I gained less than two thousand Instagram followers in the two seasons I shot for them).