To her 2.4 million TikTok followers, Mercury Stardust is the Trans Handy Ma’am, a trusted and compassionate home maintenance expert who ends every DIY video with, “Remember, you’re worth the time it takes to learn a new skill.” With her debut, Safe and Sound: A Renter-Friendly Guide to Home Repair (DK, Aug.), she coaches readers in everything from deciphering a lease to “finding the mythical wall stud” to getting back the deposit upon moving out. While repurposing an antique tool cabinet in her workshop, Stardust spoke with PW about her drive to inform, encourage, and empower renters.
Why was it important for you to focus this book on renters?
Thirty-six percent of Americans are renters, and about two books on the market besides mine are for renters. When we were originally proposing the book, we got so much pushback from every single person we spoke to—we had to prove that there was a market over and over again. But every homeowner I’ve ever met has rented for at least a moment in their life. Most renters will never be able to own a home. I wanted to reach people that were often getting left out of the conversation.
This book is not only helping you fix your drains, fix your pipes, and fix your drywall—it’s also helping to bring attention to the housing crisis in America, which is disproportionately affecting renters. And as of 2021 we have 238 people in Congress who are landlords and therefore have an incentive not to do anything about it. It’s very important to have these discussions on large scales, and we hopefully will be a catalyst to be able to bring those conversations in the spaces we haven’t had before.
How do the “emotional reset” passages in your book fit into your advice about finding a home and maintaining it?
The emotional resets say two things: First, I care about your emotions and where you’re at when you’re getting this job done. And second, I suspect you won’t be able to succeed the first time. With the emotional reset, I’m saying, “Hey, I didn’t succeed the first time—it happens all the time.”
Why did you choose to include QR codes that link to demonstration and advice videos?
I wanted to be as accessible as possible. There are plenty of people who don’t find stagnant visual aids to be great for their brains and how they digest knowledge. So if I have the visual aid, the written word, and videos all reinforcing it, that’s a trifecta—we’ve covered as many bases as we possibly can.
What are some of the big picture lessons you want your readers to come away with?
Just because we look different, and we might be different, or we’re in different circumstances, that doesn’t mean that we can’t fix things that are universal problems. We all have homes, and our homes look different. It’s easy to get stuck in what we’re supposed to do and how we’re supposed to be. I want people to feel just as good about themselves as they might about something they’re fixing in their own home.
