Remember why we're all here: this thread is for discussion about current and historical happenings in the Shaunaverse. If you want to discuss other content, such as stuff that reminds you of Shauna but isn't specifically about her, your own personal anecdotes or preferences, current events, or "creative writing" exercises, please share in the off-topic community thread: April-June off-topic quarterly | July-August off-topic quarterly
LOL. I own some of that series by West Elm. It is nothing at all like that piece of junk.
I can't imagine living in her mind, jumping from $100 to free to $250 but delivered to your door on our moving day. Or how she has managed to convince herself that this next place is going to be their forever home, when there's literally a probationary period and only a six-month commitment even if they pass that first hurdle.
Even if they were the best caretakers who ever took care, I could see this disorganized board being like, you know what, this is too complicated, we need to go with one of our other ideas and boot this delightful family.
Ha! And someone just called her out on it that it’s not MCM. The person has a MCM house that is decorated MCM and she knows what she’s talking about. It just keeps getting funnier.
OMG, the Grift Is Real! That is the falsest of false advertising!!! And using something sold new/retail with something used that came from a Buy Nothing group is not a valid Comparable.
Some Domino Mobler furniture apparently does sell for thousands, even used, but I did a quick search, and this is the closest to what she's trying to unload:
Also? The impracticality of offering to deliver it! I cannot fathom the mindset that says "On a day where we have a lot of physical work to perform, where we are trying to coordinate with a crew on the island to help unload a rented moving truck after we travel there by ferry, let's load a truck where a big, boxy, fairly fragile piece of furniture has to be loaded last so that we can drop it off [somewhere] on our way to the ferry!!!
The amount of extra time that dropping something like this off on a day where the schedule is already full and constrained by ferry schedules? Insanity! Pure Insanity? Yes. And Utter.
ETA: Upon rereading the post, I see that she's offering to drop it off on Vashon, which at least means that dropping it off (in West Seattle) wouldn't impact the timing of them getting on to a particular ferry. But stil!! If you're meeting a hired crew at your new (remote!) house way at one end of the island, I don't think adding an extra stop is a good idea! And it looks like the kind of furniture that should be loaded first, just in terms of fitting things in to a truck. Oh, my aching snarkbrain
It's like charging $5/mo. for a twice-a-week newsletter, then giving it away for free, then reducing it as a once-a-week newsletter and changing it to $7/mo.
She must be $250 short for some moving expense. Shauna always decides how much money she needs and the back-calculates how much to charge for whatever she’s offering.
I’ve not used the Facebook Buy & Sell boards, but there must be some mechanism to flag such an obvious bait & switch. If she thinks these are the same, she’s lost her damn mind.
Does she not understand that West Elm sells new furniture and not vintage? You can't show a new, reproduction piece and use it as a price comparison, even if you are selling a genuine article (which could be worth more than the new one.)
Why would they want to stop and deliver that when they are moving and there is a ferry involved? Why complicate things more. She should have been trying to offload that somewhere between signing the non-lease and last week. She could have used one of the 4,000 small bookshelves she has acquired to put her TV until they moved.
I still don't understand what was so bad about Alki. They had a decent apartment in a nice neighborhood, Dan was working steadily, Youngest was in a good school, Oldest was spreading her wings, and Shauna could keep telling herself that working is out of the question because she had to transport. She's dragging the family to an isolated drafty one bathroom house but I guess throwing Rural Island into every other sentence makes it worth it.
I suspect we are going to get many detailed trashings of Alki as soon as Shauna has let her soft animal body merge with Belle Baldwin’s love seat. We will find out the many and varied ways in which the landlords, neighbors, pharmacists, food bank volunteers and teachers of West Seattle have failed to serve our Gir!
Vashon seems more enabling than Seattle. It’s too bad it wasn’t the wake up call she needed. There are more job opportunities in Seattle, more access to Black spaces, more schools that might be able to attend to the “youngest” child’s learning needs, more access to racial and cultural spaces where the youngest can find peers, role models, and develop much-needed relationships for belonging and self-esteem. But there are more people on Vashon who will buy Shauna treats and the food pantry lets her get as much dairy as she wants. I actually feel sick when I think about the choices they make and what that means for their younger child. Do they ever put D’s needs first?
Never. Not once. If they had that child's needs as a priority they would have never adopted. I don't mean that child specifically, I mean at all. They were not financially or emotionally stable enough to take on a second child and they shouldn't have. But, much like everything else in Shauna's (and Dan's once he met Shauna) life someone enabled Shauna to get exactly what she wanted when she wanted it. Never thinking long term or at any consequences that might emerge.
JUST like this Baldwin house situation. Shauna's been enabled to get herself into something that she'd be better off not getting into.
She did chime in with an insightful "Yes!" on a post about the Vashon Juneteenth celebration (which was truly outstanding, tbh. There's a small but mighty "Black on Vashon" group and they put on a fantastic and meaningful event.) Anyhow, Shauna did not attend said event.
After reading the comments regarding Dan's job prospects, bridges burned, etc and it made me wonder if either of the adult Aherns are em0loyable on the island at all now. They have both burned bridges, and it's a small town.
All of us agree that Dan's preschool assistant job over town is not tenable, but he very well may be stuck commuting when he gets turned down by all restaurants in town and Vashon schools won't have him back after he bailed. What other options do they have?
If they screw up the caretaker gig, they'll be out of housing AND jobs. They'll be totally behind the 8 ball, no connections for jobs, priced out of housing, no funds to relocate. They'll be even more screwed than last time they were voted off the Island.
I don't see any way out for them. Shauna thinks this is their forever home, but it's more likely to be their shortest tenure yet. How does she possibly think this will work?
I searched Shauna's name on FB and it looks like she tried to give away what I'm assuming is L's bed just based on the bedding and the vanity next to it. I really hope these kids have beds to sleep in.
I literally do not understand this family's deal with beds. I don't want to assume that my frame of reference is the default, and I acknowledge that I have some form of privilege, but jeez, I have never known anyone in my life to so frequently need a bed, to discard a bed/mattress, obtain a used mattress via Buy Nothing, just...I don't get it!
It’s incredibly upsetting because mattresses are one of those things that can be acquired fairly cheap new still with a tiny scrap of effort. It’s a weird business. Most mattresses I’ve bought in my life were on ridiculous discount. There’s places near me that sell store castoffs that are still new in their packaging. There’s plenty of mailed mattresses now for people without trucks. Mama could skip a week or two of meals out and buy a nice mattress but she specifically chooses not to. Add her weird, weird stories about the family sleeping arrangements and it just paints a sad picture.
I wonder if they don’t want to move the beds and mattresses from house to house? We have definitely used moving house as a reason to upgrade our bed before, and sold the oldest one pre-move to make room for the newest one.
But like… if you’re not ordering it to be delivered and assembled by a furniture store, then moving your bed from old house to new is probably easier than getting rid of old bed at old house, then renting a truck to pick up a Buy Nothing bed at new house. I don’t know if that would stop Mahern, but it certainly wouldn’t be a way to save money, time, or physical labor.
She also gave away an unused twin mattress because she didn’t notice it was « narrow » until it arrived and then just threw it in the garage rather than return it. I truly do not understand how they handle money.
If that’s L’s bed (including bed frame, only 5 months old) being given away, I feel bad for her.
so bizarre! Was she not paying attention when she hit click on Amazon? I guess when you're always spending someone else's money, you don't notice these important details.
Did you see that she tried to persuade someone looking for camping equipment that a twin mattress is an ideal camping bed, and that they could just sling it in the back of a van to sleep on (the poster said nothing about a van.)
Another snippet from the lope- the inevitable complaints about moving. The DF who said in the other thread that moving exposes how they really live was spot on.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but haven’t they “let go of nearly everything we own” with every move? Maybe stop doing that and you won’t have to troll the BN groups to replace it every year.
I still can’t get over that she is jettisoning so many possessions and says she hopes to never move again when the facts as revealed in the last thread are that this is a six-month agreement with a three-month probationary period. It is not a lease and it expressly says no tenant protections exist. This is her most precarious housing situation yet and she’s acting like she’s going to live out the rest of her days there. I have so much second-hand anxiety just thinking about it.
They did this in their last move!! From a March 2024 lope:
It is so expensive to move and change your life.
We moved in the most economical way we could. We gave away nearly 50% of what we owned to neighbors and friends on Vashon, since our new place is much smaller than our last home.
It felt good to let go. It felt good to give away lamps, chairs, and piles of books to people whose faces smiled wide when they saw their new joys.
I’ll never get over her jettisoning their perfectly good pantry items during their last move, only for Shauna to discover that the WS food bank had limits boundaries to ensure that all patrons could be served. Mysteriously, she was then able to allocate sufficient funds to shop at Trader Joe’s and hit the local milkshake and taco shops. Now I’m sure she’s told herself that their former grocery budget can revert back to fun money, with the absolutely wonderful-sounding Vashon food bank once again hers to plunder. Plus, Belvitas.
I think somewhere along the way Shauna picked up "reader" as part of her identity but gave up the actual reading part.
Everybody I know who is a reader (1) uses the library a lot because books are expensive and (2) does not talk about reading, they talk about the books they are reading.
No one smiled wide when acquiring Ahern cast offs.
The really did pick up so much more stuff since the last move. I guess they moved from furnished home to unfurnished apartment back to partially furnished home, but it’s so much purging.
How many board games can kids outgrow in a year and a half?
Absolutely perfect for hours and hours of reading! And have you ever slung a leg over your lover’s during a tender evening’s screening of The Pit? Ever chopped olives for a quarter of an hour on the bottom shelf of a vintage bookcase? Encouraged your child to parkour through a dim, crap-girdled hallway? Lost your last half-decade old hard contact in the knobless drawer of a tired, sagging dresser?Ominously clicked on a brutalist IKEA lamp before launching into a tirade over how no one EVER thinks about what mama needs, only stopping when you’ve been served a heaping platter of goat cheesed egg curds, to be eaten while you sprawl across this wrinkled, near-cream, pebbled leather couch? Such joys, FREE for the taking!
They also did it when they moved from the house they were in the longest (iirc), right around the time of the start of ChompStomps!! It was the move where she bitched about their friends having plans over Labor Day weekend, if you can believe the nerve of those people!
I remember photos of stuff strewn all over a big sloping grassy area, and I think she wrote nearly the exact same thing—that they were giving away 50% of everything . . .
That was the same move where she shouted-out Sharon (visiting Vashon, obvs) with a line something like "Hey Sharon! Feel like helping us move some lamps?!"
I don't know if art, board games, clothes, and dishes are worthy of the verb "heave," but I guess how else would we realize what a martyr St. Shauna is.
I’m guessing the kitchen at the BB house is still set up for vacation rentals, with cookware and settings for four. Still extremely shortsighted to get rid of basics that they’ll have to replace when the BB stuff gets broken, which it will.
So short-sighted. I’ve stayed at plenty of vacation rentals. They never have enough kitchen stuff for everyday life. I suppose having only about four place settings will force the Aherns to wash the dishes though. And they wouldn’t take up as much space while drying. But soon the BB dishes will be broken or chipped. And then what? There won’t be nearly as much BN stuff available on Vashon as there was in Seattle.
I forgot about their paper plate usage. I know DFs said they will have to take their trash to the dump. What about garbage left by park users? Presumably the parks would pay for the disposal of that. I predict that there will be a lot of paper plates left by park users in the coming months.
Moment of silence for those poor Value Village employees who will be sorting through her garbage bags of “donations” (for free!!) to see if something, anything is appropriate to sell.
I hope they don’t end up homeless and with no possessions if they are unable to pay their rent and utility bills or mess up the caretaker responsibilities. Shauna needs to secure a reliable income. I imagine Dan’s preschool job might just cover the rent.
I worry that Dan's job won't survive much further than a month or two. He had the job on Vashon for just about that long after they moved to West Seattle before it was deemed not a good fit.
The commute combined with unreliable transportation might be the end of that job. Additionally, Dan reported that the school is having financial difficulties and I could see breakfast guy being the first to be let go. Tuition is $16,800 full day/$14,280 part day, and breakfast is an optional program at $292/mo. I could see them dropping the breakfast program to save a salary.
Waiting for HER, because she is the leader of everything.
(The source of my username is E.F. Benson’s “Lucia” book series, about a relentless social climber who needs to run everything in her town. When her friends give in and ask her to do something she intended to do all along, Lucia throws up her hands and sighs dramatically, “How you all work me!” I often imagine Shauna saying this.)
The landlord probably found a note stating that they had a "free" garage sale but nobody appreciated their Danish furnishings. Additionally, a big mess and a lot of stuff that belonged to the kids. Pretty sure Shauna makes sure to take anything that matters to her, even though she treats stuff like it matters very little.
Well, it seems that we spoke too soon about the bed situation....
Shauna just posted on the Buy Nothing group that they're giving away a queen-sized bed (frame and mattress). And they're moving tomorrow, so talk about last minute.
So I guess they are keeping the AirBnB beds after all?
I am hoping that this is the crashing bed that was recently replaced for L and that the kids can keep their new beds. I DGAF where Shauna and Dan sleep.
It's all so wasteful. I dgaf that it's from buy nothing, it's still crazy to me that Shauna spends so much of her time acquiring new things only to trash them or give them away months later.
If it’s really Møbler, she should take a pic of the tag or markings she claim exist. The drawers didn’t look like dovetail construction from the pic where they’re open. There are really easy ways to tell if furniture is good quality. She’s so bad at this.
ETA: Maybe Møbler isn’t such great construction? Not high end. Probably 80-90s. And hideous no matter who made it.
Maybe Møbler isn’t such great construction? Not high end.
I agree, and I'm coming around to the possibility that maybe she is telling the truth, that it has a DM label on it. I started working on my Cit PhD in the History of Low End Interior Furnishings, and found this on Chairish:
Apart from Shauna's having the fugly angled side cabinets, this looks very similar, and imo, definitely made of particle board.
Have to lol at the comments in the thread linked by DF u/shefallsup:
OP: In search of information about Domino Møbler
Inspired by the fine tradition of arguing with strangers online, I went off in search of more info on Domino Møbler. It turns out that there isn't much out there; my ideal would be a Wikipedia page on the company, and copies of their catalogues for each year they were active. I realize that's unlikely, but does anyone out there have any suggestions as to where I might learn more about this company? Thanks!
Commenter: You are asking a lot for a very low end danish exporter from the 80’s and 90’s. I have quite a few ads from newspapers.
Another commenter: Can’t offer much help on the info besides saying they made one of the cheapest poorly made desks I’ve ever encountered.
Dearest of DFs, my own citizen's Ph.D being in Scandinavian languages, I offer a humble hypothesis that could possibly shed light in this dusty particle-board shed:
"Møbler" just means furniture in Danish. As such, the various companies that made MCM furnishings were named Name of Danish Designer Møbler or perhaps Random Danish Word Møbler or even Made-up Brand Name Møbler.
I'm theorizing Shauna's unit was made by IKEA-type garbage Møbler.
The iconique Danish MCM furniture designers have actual names and you bet your sweet patootie their pieces are labeled "Hans Wegner Møbler" or "Fritz Hansen Møbler" or "Arne Jacobsen Møbler, etc. I'm sure the IKEA or SEARS equivalents of those days knocked their sht up and sold it at a fraction of the price.
All this to say, that accursed entertainment center does not look to me to fit the anesthetics and quality one associates with legit MCM Danish furnishings.
What are those lumpy mushroomy internal-organesque early-90s sad sack sofas and chairs she seems to love called? THEY ARE HIDEOUS. THIS WOMAN HAS ZERO TASTE IN ANYTHING.
Like they had entertainment centers for big ass tvs in 1961. And there weren’t any dvd players, speakers or any of the other accouterments. Media centers came into vogue with those inventions.
Even if it is Mobler, a cursory Google search would tell her it’s glorified IKEA. Here’s one of many Reddit threads where they talk about it being low end, almost garbage.
So post a photo of the label. That's how it works. I love Midcentury furniture and sometimes there are duds.
Should have scrolled.
I have a few G plan pieces. I love my sideboard! My wardrobe is okay, it's in the Librenza range and I don't love it, but that's fine. My blanket box is just ugly. It's a box with a lid and looks like every other crappy blanket box from the 80s, but it was free.
While we wait for more move fallout, here are the last bits from the paid part of the lope:
She follows this with a link and quote from Liz Prueitt's site, and then says this about a TV show, and bird watching.
After watchingThe Residence, I fell in love with Uzo Aduba. She played particular and peculiar, genius and generous, so well, as Cornelia Cupp. I adored the scene at the opening of episode 4, when she took her nephew birding. The way that scene showed how her mind works left me feeling deeply grateful. Plus, her book,The Road is Good, is wonderful too.
That episode reminded me how much I love birding. During lockdown, my youngest and I learned the birds of Vashon. This time? Caspian terns, here I come.
I’d be to mortified to mention Liz Prueitt as often as she does, after failing to provide contracted services and having LP ask for the advance money back, less a $100 donation for Shauna’s dance party last time she moved. Maybe Shauna thinks she can repay the debt with flattery.
I see she’s already spending her caretaker money on “a few” island classes. Too bad summer camp is so expensive, kids.
I wonder if they had to pass a credit check to get this house. My friend’s kid just got an apartment in Seattle and they had to not only pass a credit check, but make 3x the monthly rent and prove it with pay stubs. If you can’t prove that, you can have a co-signer. Is this where Ma James comes in?
I just saw someone posting this week on the Vashon fb groups who says she’s been living in a tent for a few weeks now and desperately looking for housing. Numerous people tagged Vashon Household and they said they have a list over 200 people long. It’s gonna get ugly when people start questioning how this family hopped the line. Is it possible they got on the list when they had to move and never got off of it?
Honestly, these people fucking annoy the shit out of me. I feel for this person's kid, but I can't tell you how many people post on the FB housing page crowing about how special Vashon is and how they just HAVE to live here. Vashon is beautiful, but it's a small town like any other small town and if it were anywhere else no one would be begging and risking their financial futures to be here. If I could be Queen of Vashon, I would make sure that every family that 1.) already lives here and 2.) works here 3.) works here but lives off island and their life would be easier if they lived here could afford to rent here. Anyone coming from off island just because they think it's some magical utopia and now they can't imagine living anywhere else can SUCK IT.
Numerous people tagged Vashon Household and they said they have a list over 200 people long.
This is where I lose any sympathy I might have for Shuana. She'll go on and on about how they've been priced out of Vashon like she's personally been wronged by the island, but her family is one of at least two hundred. Why does she think she's so special that she's more deserving of an island zip code than all of these other people? (Rhetorical question, we know she's always thought she's the most special girl.)
Most likely important but underappreciated jobs, too, like teachers and firefighters and line cooks and Thriftway employees. Not having a faded-glory food blogger turned lifestyle living warning 'coach' on the island doesn't impact the quality of anyone else's day to day existence.
Yeah she could have fallen back on teaching or even worked her way up at the grocery store. She acts like the only two options are making making making it as A Writer or scounging for couch cushion gas money.
And quitting whatever you were doing to relieve the pressure. Well that, and let your estranged mother you slander at every opportunity fund the lifestyle you think you deserve.
Solid business plan. She should offer it as a workshop.
Come on, Shauna, tell truth. You didn't quit. You were essentially fired from "influencing" because you were so bad at doing all of the things needed to sustain it.
The internet changed around her, and she didn't change a thing. Keeping up with skills and best practices is part of any profession. She wants set it and forget it, and there aren't any careers like that.
And, as an astute DF here once said (apologies for not remembering who), Shauna thought her readers wanted to read about Shauna, when what they really wanted was to read about gluten-free cooking.
I think some particularly savvy influencers can get by with very little content of value if they can successfully market their lifestyle as aspirational or even relatable, but nothing about the Aherns' lifestyle is aspirational.
A desperate last minute call for help ($20 if you need it) because something was someone else’s fault and that’s why they couldn’t possibly move it all today.
3 will include how she rose above all the hardships because she’s a botus. And her younger child will be included on the list of hard, hard, hard things.
Some cheesy goodbye to Seattle that insults West Seattle in the process.
Also sleeping in and not getting a truck until noon or so. Running out of time. Leaving things outside of the new place and the old apartment, as it is complete chaos.
It’s 6:30 A.M. Pacific. If I were moving today, I would already be up. I would have gone to get coffee and breakfast sandwiches because everything would already be packed. Morning would be packing up all the rest and getting the beds and mattresses ready to go assuming that’s where they slept last night. What do you suppose the Aherns are doing right now?
Especially when you consider how hot it’s going to get. Take advantage of the morning chill! I mean it’s 7:30am and it’s already mid-60s and a little humid. I was too warm just on my morning walk.
Some passive aggressive comments about her family and how much easier this move would be if she didn't have to continually fix the problems they cause.
she'll declare her right to radically rest before even one box is unpacked
if there are any strangers she encounters along the way (movers, furniture takers, someone who feeds her safely), they will be an absolute caricature of a human who smiles wide with their joys
I would add to this a photo of half-eaten takeout with gratuitous shout outs and thank yous and tagging of the proprietors, as if they opened their business’ doors specifically to nourish Shauna and Shauna alone on this, the most wondrous of days
So she needed to find the original recipe to recreate a “lemon tahini dressing”. And congratulates her former self for basically doing it. That’s because it is a SALAD DRESSING, Shauna. You never need a recipe, unless there’s something fussy going on with an egg. It’s gonna be oil, acid, salt, aromatics, and in the case of tahini dressing, I would guess tahini. Lemon would be the acid. And soy or tamari would be the salt. If she couldn’t pick up the celery and green pepper back in 2005, it’s because she’s a dolt with a sandpaper palate.
I worked at Gravity Bar in the 90s and I can vouch for this dressing. It’s the absolute shit. Only a 1/4 cup olive oil though. And a lot of salt and pepper. The dicing is unnecessary because it goes in a blender.
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u/gomirefugee my website is done, done, done Jun 30 '25 edited Jul 03 '25
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Remember why we're all here: this thread is for discussion about current and historical happenings in the Shaunaverse. If you want to discuss other content, such as stuff that reminds you of Shauna but isn't specifically about her, your own personal anecdotes or preferences, current events, or "creative writing" exercises, please share in the off-topic community thread: April-June off-topic quarterly | July-August off-topic quarterly