Letter From the Editor: Issue 06
"Kitchen Sink": Drama, essential items, and the joy of everyday things.
Hey there, housemates,
A few years ago, an anonymous admin (maybe one of you?) regularly documented and critiqued the wash basins of greater Brooklyn—and occasionally other locations—on the Instagram account @sinkreviews. The page has been dormant for a while, but I always really appreciated the narrator’s over-the-top poetics, and, quite honestly, their aptitude for articulating the finer nuances of handles, spouts, and water flow.
I’d like to think that this issue, Wrong House’s sixth—dubbed “Kitchen Sink”—pays homage to the spirit of @sinkreviews in its celebration of the quotidian. This journey begins with “Daily Toil,” Mimi Zeiger’s observant reflection on Ravenhill Studio’s annual “Everyday Objects” series. The brand taps makers, writers, directors, and other tastemakers each year for their most beloved ordinary objects (which so far have ranged from a fake fried egg selected by Bailey Hikawa to Jill Singer’s favorite long-handled iced-tea spoon). And, fun fact: I actually participated in 2025, contributing my go-to incense burner.
The force of the familiar further surfaces in Ekemini Ekpo’s essay on Nigerian event souvenirs. Ekpo, who currently lives in the U.S., considers the bowls, cheese graters, and notebooks that her friends and family have produced for weddings, funerals, and everything in between, casting them as embodied acts of care.
These pieces also complicate some of the environments we routinely encounter in popular media. In “The House That Reality TV Built,” a conversation with Dwell managing editor and recovering architect Jack Balderrama Morley (whose book Dream Facades: The Cruel Architecture of Reality TV comes out next month), Jesse Dorris interrogates the interiors of shows like The Real World and The Kardashians and the ways they’ve reshaped our own.
And contributor Alex T. Williams is back again this month, too, delivering an interview with self-trained woodworker Abigail Castañeda. Abigail grounds the conversation in a detailed account of her daily rituals and guiding principles. I couldn’t say it better than Alex does himself: “In a world that can feel increasingly loud and jarring, her work demonstrates an insistence on attention, slowness, and beauty.”
To top it all off, this issue also features a look inside recipe developer and editor Anna Stockwell’s new volume, The Butter Book, which is, well, exactly what you’d guess. But in true Wrong House style, we zoom in on the surprising, weird, wonderful ways folks are serving up yellow gold these days. Let’s just say: it’s a big moment for big butter.
If there’s an argument here, it’s that meaning has a tendency to pile up, like dirty dishes, in the places you’d least expect. I hope it’ll have you giving the everyday items and practices in your own life a little extra love.
OK, down the drain you go!
Til next time,
Lila