A Sustainable Amount of Aesthetic

I have a habit of romanticizing my life.

Not in the grand, dangerous way where I pretend everything is beautiful and nothing is wrong. I am, unfortunately, very aware that life is often inconvenient, exhausting, expensive, humid, and held together by caffeine and spite. I still touch grass, if you know what I mean. And I still know the world can be deeply unreasonable.

But I have also decided that if I must wash the dishes, I may as well do it while Bach plays in the background.

That is the sustainable kind of romanticizing.

It does not require a new wardrobe, a ribbed glass cup, a handmade ceramic spoon, or an entire kitchen renovated to look like a palace. Sometimes, it only requires classical music while mixing coffee. Sometimes, it is English Breakfast tea with cheap creamer, which may not be aristocratic in price but still somehow sings London Bridge in the cup.

Sometimes, it is watching the sunset from the safe side of the window because while the light is beautiful, it is also too bright, too hot, and personally hostile to the skin despite SPF 50.

We admire aesthetics, but we also protect the skin barrier.

I used to think this habit was unhinged because so much of “aesthetic living” online seems to be overconsumption with a white and beige filter. Everything looks curated, expensive, and suspiciously untouched by actual life. The counters are always clean. The mugs always match. The linen is always gently rumpled in a way that suggests no one has ever had to panic-fold laundry before a visitor arrived.

Real life has counters that need cleaning tomorrow. It has laundry in one suspiciously dramatic corner. And real life is making milk tea at five in the afternoon with cheap creamer.

And maybe that is where the better version of romanticizing begins. Not in pretending that ordinary life has disappeared, but in giving it a little more ceremony.

A boiling kettle becomes a ritual.

The backyard becomes estate grounds.

The sea beyond the house becomes a view from the manor.

The dishes become domestic warfare.

The kitchen counter becomes tomorrow’s duty.

Nothing has been erased. The chore remains. The heat remains. The bills remain. The imperfect parts of life remain exactly where they are.

They just get cello music. Or piano.

That, to me, feels like the difference between overconsumption and attention. The first says, “Your life will be beautiful once you buy enough things.” The other makes you realize that there is already something there. You just need to notice it and make it beautiful.

Of course, not all my aesthetic choices have been effortless or free. My room... is dark academia in vibe, and I will admit that it was not exactly a zero-peso transformation. Dark academia is not always a minimalist aesthetic. It likes texture, books, frames, and lamps. It likes wood tones and moody corners and the feeling that someone will receive an acceptance letter from a gothic univesity.

In my defense, I work. I earn money. I can afford it. And when someone asks why I spent money on making my room look that way, the simple answer is: because I can.

I think there is something fair about using a portion of hard-earned money to make rest feel worthwhile. Not every reward has to be practical in the strictest sense. Sometimes, the practical thing is emotional. Sometimes, it is creating a room you actually want to return to at the end of the day.

My room already had the bones for it anyway. Brown wood-designed tiles. Light taupe walls. Wooden cabinets. A wooden table and chair. Two lampshades. It was practically begging to become dark academia.

Yes, I have a fake sword.

Now, it feels like either a university office or a manor bedroom, depending on the lighting and my level of delusion for the evening. There are picture frames, though the “glass” is plastic because I enjoy beauty but not shards. There are candles, though the real ones remain unlit and are only smelled from time to time like decorative relics. For ambience, I use battery-powered candles because the room may be gothic, but it does not need to become a historically accurate fire hazard.

There is a vase of fake roses and a few fake vines. Tasteful. Not Victorian forest. I have no desire to cultivate real roses in this heat. Real roses are dramatic. Water them slightly more than they require and they perish like Victorian poets with wet sleeves.

The fake roses, on the other hand, understand the assignment. They look romantic, ask for nothing, and never punish me for humidity.

Even the laundry basket matches the palette. Which, I think, is utterly important. The laundry may live in the suspiciously dramatic corner, but at least it does so with visual integrity.

The art is curated too. Two classical paintings. Two landscape illustrations. And a portrait of myself wearing an imperial gown, because why not? I could have included royal portraits, but I do not particularly want to sleep surrounded by dead people’s faces. A bedroom should have atmosphere, not a museum of deceased monarchs judging my screen time at two in the morning.

This is the version of aesthetic living I can stand by: beautiful, but livable. Dramatic, but safe.

And maybe that is the lesson I keep returning to.

Life does not have to be completely transformed to become more bearable. Sometimes it only needs small rituals. A song. A lamp. A cup of tea. A safer candle. A fake rose. A room that feels like it receives you instead of merely storing your body while you sleep.

There is nothing wrong with wanting beauty. There is no shame in making a few corners of life softer, warmer, stranger, or more poetic. The world is already very good at being harsh. We do not need to assist it by making every part of our lives plain and joyless.

Of course, aesthetic will not save us from everything. It will not clean the counter. It will not fold the laundry. It will not make life suddenly simple. But it can make the tea nicer. It can make the room gentler. It can make the evening feel less like tragedy and more like... a life worth living.

And honestly, sometimes that is enough.

The world may still be ridiculous, hot, difficult, and occasionally shitty as hell. But the kettle can boil beautifully. The room can glow softly. The fake roses can carry the vibes with elegance.

But I do know that I can can retire at night to a room that looks like a scholar’s corner, even if tomorrow may very well still call me to work and participate in capitalism.