There is an unreasonable amount of pressure on the weekend.
Friday night has to be fun. Saturday has to be worth getting dressed for. Sunday has to somehow contain brunch, rest, errands, a long walk, meal prep, and enough emotional restoration to prepare us for Monday.
Meanwhile, Tuesday gets absolutely nothing.
Tuesday is rarely anyone's favorite day. It's too far from last weekend to still be reminiscing and too far from the next one to start making plans. There are emails to answer, groceries to buy, laundry sitting somewhere it shouldn't be, and probably nothing particularly exciting on the calendar.
Which is precisely why Tuesday deserves a little attention.
At Amourelle, we're interested in the idea that making everyday life feel special doesn't require turning every ordinary day into an event. Sometimes it simply means refusing to reserve all of life's pleasures for Friday night.
So this is our case for Tuesday.
Wear Something You Were Saving
We have a habit of assigning our favorite things to our favorite occasions.
The good perfume is for dinner. The beautiful blouse is for a date. The red lipstick needs somewhere to go. The earrings feel like “too much” for working from home.
Tuesday would like a word.
Wear one of them.
Not all of them—you don't need to emerge for your 9 a.m. meeting dressed for the Ritz. But choose one thing that makes getting dressed feel slightly more interesting.
Wear the earrings with your sweatshirt. Put on the perfume even if you're the only person likely to smell it. Carry the beautiful bag to the grocery store.
Personal style becomes much more fun when you stop requiring an audience.
Upgrade the Coffee
You were going to drink it anyway.
Make it good.
Walk to the café instead of making another rushed cup over the kitchen sink. Use the pretty mug. Froth the milk. Sprinkle the cinnamon. Sit down for ten minutes instead of carrying it from room to room while accomplishing four other things.
This isn't really about coffee.
It's about giving something ordinary your full attention long enough to actually enjoy it.
That's one of the easiest ways to romanticize an ordinary day: take something you're already doing and make it 10% nicer.
Not elaborate.
Just nicer.
Buy the Flowers Without Needing a Reason
Flowers have somehow become associated with occasions.
Birthdays. Anniversaries. Apologies. Congratulations. Valentine's Day.
But sometimes the reason is simply that the ranunculus looked particularly good.
Buy them.
Bring them home. Cut the stems. Put them in the vase you always forget you own. Place them somewhere you pass constantly rather than somewhere impressive for guests.
Then notice how many times over the next several days you catch yourself looking at them.
For something so unnecessary, flowers are remarkably good at doing their job.
Give Yourself a Tiny Destination
One of the reasons travel feels exciting is that we're constantly going somewhere on purpose.
At home, we tend to move between obligations.
Work. Grocery store. Gym. Home.
So give Tuesday a destination that exists purely because you want to go there.
A bookstore you've been meaning to visit. The wine bar with the pretty marble counter. A neighborhood you've never walked around. A bakery where they make one thing exceptionally well. A museum for an hour. The flower market. A hotel lobby where you can order tea and pretend you're waiting for someone fabulous.
It doesn't have to take all evening.
Sometimes having one little thing to look forward to changes the entire shape of a day.
Put Something Good on the Calendar
If today can't accommodate much spontaneity, give future-you something.
Make the reservation.
Buy the concert ticket.
Text the friend.
Choose the Saturday you're finally going to that museum.
Start looking at flights.
Book the manicure.
Plan a dinner at your house and decide everyone has to dress up for absolutely no reason.
Anticipation is one of life's underrated pleasures. The actual event might last three hours, but looking forward to it can make three weeks more interesting.
An ordinary Tuesday is an excellent day to create a future memory.
Make Dinner Feel Like Dinner
There is dinner, and then there is standing at the kitchen counter eating pieces of something directly from its container.
Both have their place.
But tonight, make dinner feel like dinner.
Put it on a plate.
Light the candle.
Pour the sparkling water into a wine glass. Open the wine if you want the wine. Put your phone somewhere you can't reach it without making a deliberate decision.
If you're cooking, make something you genuinely want to eat rather than something optimized exclusively for efficiency.
If you're ordering takeout, transfer it to your own dishes.
No one needs to know.
That's sort of the point.
Use the Beautiful Things
Tuesday is when the good things tend to stay in the cupboard.
The crystal glasses. The linen napkins. The fancy hand cream. The silk pajamas. The expensive candle. The plate you bought on vacation and are terrified of breaking.
Use one.
Beautiful things don't need to survive us in perfect condition.
They're allowed to become evidence that we lived here.
The glass can get scratched. The linen can wrinkle. The candle is supposed to disappear eventually.
We wrote an entire defense of beautiful things for a reason: sometimes pretty really is reason enough.
Especially on Tuesday.
Change the Lighting
This may be the highest-return lifestyle improvement available to humanity.
Turn off the overhead light.
Seriously.
At approximately 6 p.m., become someone who has never heard of it.
Turn on lamps. Light a candle. Let the last bit of daylight stay in the room. Put tiny lights somewhere slightly ridiculous.
Suddenly you're not answering one final email in your living room.
You're answering one final email in a Nancy Meyers movie.
Environment has an extraordinary ability to change the way an ordinary moment feels, and lighting asks remarkably little of us.
Take the Long Way
Not everything needs to be optimized.
Walk the prettier street.
Drive along the water.
Get off the train one stop early.
Take the route with the old houses, the little shops, the trees, the architecture, the thing you always say you don't have time to look at.
We spend so much of adulthood attempting to eliminate unnecessary minutes.
But some of the best parts of a day happen in the unnecessary ones.
Leave ten minutes unoptimized.
See what happens.
Order Dessert
This is both literal and philosophical advice.
Sometimes, order dessert.
But also: leave room for the part of life that exists exclusively because it is pleasurable.
Read another chapter.
Take the bath.
Watch the terrible movie you love.
Stay at dinner for one more glass.
Buy the ridiculous pink thing.
Listen to the song again.
Call someone and talk for forty-five minutes about absolutely nothing of consequence.
Not every minute needs to produce something.
Pleasure is allowed to be the outcome.
Put Your Phone Down—and Make It Pretty When You Pick It Back Up
We spend an extraordinary amount of our ordinary days looking at our phones.
So there are two things worth doing.
First: put it down sometimes.
Watch the people in the café. Look out the window in the Uber. Eat without scrolling. Let yourself be temporarily unreachable.
Second: when you do pick it back up, why shouldn't the object you carry everywhere be beautiful?
Choose the marble. The mosaic. The ridiculous cherries. The color that makes you happy.
Your everyday objects become part of the scenery of your life. They might as well look like they belong there.
Do One Thing That Tomorrow-You Will Love
Romanticizing your life doesn't mean abandoning every practical responsibility in favor of croissants and flowers.
There is something deeply satisfying about taking care of yourself in advance.
Change the sheets.
Clean the kitchen before bed.
Put the coffee maker on a timer.
Lay out tomorrow's clothes.
Fill the car with gas before the warning light becomes emotionally aggressive.
Transfer money to savings.
Book the appointment you've been avoiding.
The version of you who wakes up tomorrow deserves a little romance, too.
And Then, Do Absolutely Nothing
Some Tuesdays do not need improving.
Maybe you're tired.
Maybe work was terrible.
Maybe the most luxurious thing available to you is taking a shower, putting on pajamas at 7:14 p.m., ordering noodles, and refusing to accomplish another thing.
That counts.
Making everyday life feel special isn't about manufacturing a picture-perfect existence.
It's about becoming better at asking yourself:
What would make today feel good?
Sometimes the answer is flowers and a martini.
Sometimes it's clean sheets and being left alone.
Learn the difference.
Tuesday Is Your Life, Too
We spend a surprising amount of our lives waiting.
Waiting for Friday.
Waiting for summer.
Waiting for vacation.
Waiting for the relationship.
Waiting until we have more money.
Waiting until we're less busy.
Waiting until life becomes the version we've decided will finally be worth fully enjoying.
But your life isn't only happening on rooftops in beautiful cities.
It's happening while you're making coffee on Tuesday morning.
It's happening in the car.
It's happening while you decide what to make for dinner.
It's happening in the fifteen minutes between meetings when the sun hits your kitchen in exactly the right way.
You don't have to turn every one of those moments into something profound.
Just don't miss all of them.
Wear the lipstick.
Use the glass.
Buy the flowers.
Take the prettier street home.
And if absolutely nothing remarkable happens?
That's okay.
It was only Tuesday.
But it was yours.
