“My Big Fat Fabulous Life” star Whitney Way Thore had fallen into a rut while living in her hometown of Greensboro, NC, and filming her hit TLC series there for the last 10 years, so she decided to shake things up by moving to Massachusetts. Now that Thore, 41, is officially settled in Salem, she’s sharing how her new place is conjuring energy for her fresh start.
The TLC star tells Realtor.com® she was immediately spellbound by the New England cottage-style duplex when she first laid eyes on it, and signed a rental agreement in April for the two-bedroom, one-bathroom unit she currently shares with her dog Goosie.
Since the “light and airy” residence came furnished with the essentials, Thore brought few belongings with her, and intentionally left behind her habit of over accessorizing her home. Instead, the reality star curated a select few Witchy City-inspired items to display that keep her more focused on how the simple space feels rather than how it looks.
While the waterfront home is positioned for a peaceful way of life, it’s the bathroom—and in particular, the roomy shower—where Thore feels most relaxed. In the latest installment of our Celebrity Sanctuary series, Thore reveals why she feels safer than ever in her new environment and explains how the external change of scenery led to the internal shift she’s been yearning for.
“My Big Fat Fabulous Life” star Whitney Way Thore has officially moved from her hometown of Greensboro, NC, to Salem, MA.Whitney Way Thore
Salem is full of beautiful historic houses in different styles that I don’t see where I live in the south, so I feel like every property in the entire city is really charming. I think if you watch the show you know this, I’m a very, I like to say decisive person. Other people might call me impulsive. This is really the only place that I looked at, and I loved it right from the first second I got to the location.
This house is by the water and I really just felt very, it sounds so corny, but I felt very at peace there. I think the best word to describe it for me is bright and light. [There are] so many windows in the front of the house that overlook the water, and it’s just the way the sun comes in. It feels ethereal to me, and it feels clean and new. The lightness—and I mean that in terms of the sunlight and the weight of it—it feels so light and airy. I feel like that’s what I’m in: a phase of life, cleaning up the clutter and going for something like that.
I love decorating and putting my own touch on things, and I redecorate my house in Greensboro like every six months, so what’s interesting to me is that when I first saw the place I thought, “Oh no, it’s furnished so I’m not going to like that.” But I saw it and actually loved it. There wasn’t anything that really stuck out to me as something I didn’t like or something I’d want to change. It’s really fascinating for me. I always want to fill up a space with a bunch of my stuff, and the way that I feel in that house is that it feels like it’s already enough. There’s something so light and airy about it that I actually have loved that it came with the basic necessities, and I like the way they look and I have not really cluttered it up. I’m very proud of myself for that.
It doesn’t feel empty. It just feels open and I’ve really enjoyed that. I just brought a lot of very Salem-inspired stuff into the house that I feel like they’re conduits for the light. I brought crystals and gems and then I brought a lot of incense. I’ve been decorating with crystals and gemstones and I feel like those allow the light to pass through. I love incense, so I’ve been focusing a lot on how my space feels and how it smells instead of just bringing a bunch of crap into it, which I feel like is my usual. I’m a tchotchke person, so I’ve really made myself refrain from doing that in this space because I want to maintain that initial feeling that I felt what I came in. I don’t want it to feel weighed down. I want to feel like I can just come in and breathe. It feels like a vacation house for me honestly, so I want to maintain that feeling.
My favorite room of the entire house is [the] bathroom. I want to live in there. It is so beautiful to me. The tile in there makes me feel—like, the actual water is just a few steps outside, but I still love getting in the shower and feeling like I’m in the water. I’ve never really seen that tile before. I don’t think it’s extremely unique, but it’s just not something that I had ever really seen, and I just think it’s so beautiful. It’s so big. I love a big bathroom, too.
To be honest, the bedrooms are quite small so that’s been a big adjustment for me. Even though I’m just a single person, it’s definitely a lot smaller than what I’m used to. But the bathroom is so big and roomy. I am one of those people, I like to process in the shower, so I cry in the shower, I daydream in the shower, I dance in the shower. When I just need to reset from life, when I’m starting to feel bad or anxious or anything, I’m like, “Oh, let me just get in the shower.” So that shower has really become a very significant part of my life.
When you walk in your eye is immediately drawn to the big shower. The tile, it’s this cerulean tile with gold veining that goes through it and it’s calming and it’s gorgeous. It also looks expensive to me, it seems European. All of a sudden I don’t know if we’re in, like, a basilica somewhere or what’s going on, but it is so gorgeous and that’s really the whole [bathroom]. It’s very simple. It’s got double sinks, a toilet, a shower, but the tile is overwhelming in the best way.
The fact that I’m naked in it multiple times a day I feel like really has put my stamp on it. Also, my shower at home in Greensboro is really small, so I never knew that Goosie was a shower dog, but it turns out that she is because she has room now. So every time I take a shower, she likes to lie on the floor right in front of the shower and so that’s an interesting, intimate experience that she and I have just now discovered that we have together.
In terms of actual stuff I brought into that space, I brought my own towels. I went and got these really nice, luxurious fluffy towels and that’s been good. Of course, I have all of my products and things that make me feel like me. I’m really into smells lately. I don’t know what’s going on with me, but I just am always wanting things to smell right and smell good. Besides the towels [and] products, I have brought nothing else into the space. It’s perfect as it is. You can’t compete with the tile, you can’t compete.
For now I’m really enjoying it because I feel like people don’t know that I live there on a large scale because it hasn’t been made public information yet. I would say one of the more difficult things I think about sharing my life is that people, inadvertently usually, will cross a lot of boundaries that they don’t understand. One of those boundaries has been in Greensboro, you know, people coming to my house, walking up to my front door, walking around to the backyard, just coming and approaching me in sometimes very scary ways. Sometimes it’s benign and sometimes it’s definitely not, and when you ask people to leave, they don’t want to. It’s [to] the point where even if I just get letters to my home in Greensboro, I almost feel violated, like, I didn’t give you my address, don’t do this. So in that respect—and I felt similarly when I lived in Charlotte because I was on a lease—it’s like somebody couldn’t Google where I lived. I felt safe there because of that.
Salem is also such a small community that I feel a lot of protection there in a way, although I haven’t been there during tourist season yet. I am nervous come the fall, you know, what that’ll be like, or what it’ll be like when people see where I live. But for now, just kind of having more of that anonymity and privacy has felt so nice. Of course, I meet fans out and about in Salem all the time, but I just feel like the new person in town. I’m able to just blend in and feel safe and protected.
And it’s so peaceful, the home itself. I mean, my gosh, Goosie’s life just got upgraded so much. To go out to that little beach and have a walk every day, she loves it so much. And for me to be able to see all the animals that walk back and forth, it makes my life. I feel like I have a front row show to all these animals, it’s so nice.
[Friends and costars] Ashley [Baynes] and Jessica [Powell] came with me to move up there, so they’ve obviously seen it. My brother has not been yet, but my dad has, and they love it. They think it’s beautiful. I think they can tell that I’m really happy.
When it comes fall, [the] little area to the side with the Adirondack chairs—I have a small cauldron, but I just bought a larger one, so I really see myself leaning into the outdoors because I love fall. I love the cold. I love all of that, so I see myself really turning that space, maybe [add] some lights so that I can be out there in the dark doing my little—this sounds so weird—doing my little spells in my little cauldron and burning bay leaves and incense and stuff like that.