Lockdown: At Home - Deborah

What’s your name and what do you do?

My name is Deborah Sloan and I work as a lecturer at Ulster University.

Who lives in your home?

There’s me and my husband, both working from home at the moment and four girls, age 16, 14, 12 and 9 all home schooling!

How would you describe your home?

Full of items from Maven!! Very Scandinavian, contemporary, lots of glass, with endless bookshelves to house my vast collection of books.

What have you enjoyed about your home during the lockdown?

We are very fortunate as we really have the perfect home for lockdown. We have plenty of space for everyone to escape from each other and lots of light flooding in to enable us to enjoy the beautiful weather we have been having. 

Is there a DIY job you've got round to that you're proud of?

I leave all the DIY to my husband but he has gradually ticked a few small items off his list over the last few weeks - such as creating a picture wall, and other exciting stuff like hanging toilet roll holders and towel hooks to put the finishing touches to bathrooms we recently renovated.

If you could change anything about your home, what would it be?

I’d move it beside the sea! 

What’s the most recent thing you’ve bought for your home?

A grey Hay DLM side table and two Kinto sepia cups and saucers (from Maven of course!) to enjoy a special cup of tea in the afternoons!

What’s been your go-to meal in the last few weeks?

We’ve treated ourselves to a couple of fish deliveries from Mourne Fishboxes so we’ve been enjoying lots of fresh fish, very simply cooked accompanied by crushed new potatoes and asparagus or a healthy salad. We're not always that healthy though. The girls have been doing a lot of baking so we have to work our way through a lot of banana bread and chocolate brownies! 

Is there anything you’ve started to do during lockdown that you’d like to continue as ‘normality’ resumes?

I’ve found it harder to concentrate during lockdown and I read that doing something creative can help focus your mind so I’ve started doing a bit of writing, just picking a topic, putting pen to paper and letting the words flow. I’d like to keep going with that.