Small Ways | Wall Hooks

Within reach. Great motivation, there, in two small words. Extend your hand and at your fingertips is just what you’re hoping for, wishing for, needing. Within reach means doable. It means easy(ier). It means the planning, the purchasing, the installing, has already been done and all that’s left is muscle memory. It means freedom, turning the searching moments into doing, being moments.

Within reach is the wall hook. Pure and simple. Hang an apron. Hang a broom. Hang a towel. Hang a mirror. Hang art. Hang a clock. Hang tools. Yes, of course, hang a garment. Please, hang a coat.

Somehow, wonderfully, a wall hook lets the functional be art and the art be functional. A turned vintage finial. A hand forged hook. An antique knob. A peg. A nail. Something that will hold something else so you (or the floor) don’t have to.

We once lived in a house that had no mudroom, no coat closet by the doors, no place for boys and boots and bags coming in and going out, so I co-oped the space at the foot of the basement stairs, a straight shot down from the back door. Right into the open stair stringer, we drilled holes and tapped in doweling cut to peg-size. Suddenly, there were plenty of hooks for plenty of people, in graduated heights to match our graduated heights.

In a recent client bathroom remodel, where an extended two-person glass-walled shower took up space on one wall, and a double slipper claw-foot tub took up space on the other wall, I hung a three-pronged hook in brass to hold his and hers robes, effectively hanging two garments in the remaining wall space where there was only room for one. Posh hotel amenities abound. (My client calls it his bad-ass bathroom).

Most recently, here in my kitchen, a simple iron hook closes the circle of this fully functional space. Now, near the hanging pots, handy cutting boards, and open shelves with their plates and bowls and cups, here within reach, is this keeper of a white linen apron, ready to be donned for chopping, stirring, scooping. (You already know I have a soft spot for hanging garments as art. A linen apron is definitely art. Wink.)

P.S. Goodness! How could I forget? Hang stockings.

Simple. Reachable. Doable. Small ways. They pack enough punch to change your world, or your day. Or maybe, simply and gloriously, they’ll change your moment. Small Ways is a series about small objects, small gestures, small touches. Small ways for living well.

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