Just thinking about some oddly specific lore for my main SDJ AU.
I am thinking about living spaces now and how much they reflect the person or people living in it.
And I think about how Sanne and Joseph's respective apartments looked before they finally settled down together.
Sanne, being a woman from an affluent family who believed in traditional values, lived in a well maintained maximalist apartment. It was an oddly elegant space filled with things she desired to have as a teenage girl but couldn't. Despite her seeming unfeeling and apathetic about life, her space is vibrant and inviting. Ironically, she rarely had guests over at all. That apartment was for her and her alone. And much like her life as a career focused woman, she wasn't going to give it up for someone not worthwhile.
Joseph had multiple apartments throughout his life. Before, he couldn't afford more than the bare necessities, often to his apartment having nothing more than a single couch, TV, fridge and bed. At first, it was liberating. After all, he was free from a home where he felt that he never belonged. But the feeling was always fleeting because it was only a matter of time until he could no longer afford it and faced eviction. Eventually, even that didn't feel like home. When he finally did have a steady income, he brought an apartment already furnished for him.
Then they married each other and, since they desired to start a family of their own, bought a house together.
Sanne, knowing a thing or two about decorating, had ideas about how she wanted to do things. Joseph wanted to leave everything to her at first because of that. But Sanne encourages him to have input, showing examples of decors to help him figure out what style resonated with him. After all, it was their home.
They end up with a maximalist rustic home that they vowed to keep meticulously maintained. The only rooms that stood out were Sanne's sewing room, Joseph's gym and the room they prepared for their future child.
But even before the baby arrived, they slowly but surely broke the vowed.
After all, both had demanding jobs. And even with the two of them working together, they struggled to keep everything in order. There were even days when they didn't even both at all.
It wasn't the kind of house you'd see in a catalog anymore. Things began to show signs of being used and things were placed where they didn't belong simply because there was enough space for it.
Speaking of work, they always got free merchandise from their jobs. Du Desiree giving Sanne things that were simplistic yet practical and elegant while LambsWork Productions dumped a wide range of stuff onto Joseph, merch clearly intended for children, but were too useful to pass up on. Either that or it was so weird that they'd keep it as a "conversational piece".
Now, in addition to the home undeniably being lived in, there were undeniable signs of a child being there.
The home never got too messy, but it also wasn't hard to find some kind of toy just lying around somewhere. In almost every room, there was a randomly placed musical toy. Most of his drawings ended up on the fridge, but it wasn't strange to find others in the sewing room, the gym, his own room and his parents' bedroom.
And just like that, it was a family home. It wasn't perfect, but they loved it. And it would bring them comfort for years to come as the family slowly grew.