The Cottage, a home decor and gift shop, recently opened in downtown Wheaton.
Rick West
The wood floors are original. There’s an antique hutch against the brick wall. The tables were built by her husband. And the Midwestern-made candles smell fresh, like lilac and jasmine.
Jonna Kelleher’s customers may feel like they’ve strolled into her living room when they visit her new shop, The Cottage, in downtown Wheaton.
For someone so accustomed to scrubs and blood-pressure cuffs, Kelleher seems a long way from a hospital emergency room. But it’s not all that different from her job as a nurse.
“I’m taking care of people in the hospital, and I’m taking care of people here,” the Geneva resident said. “I want you to be discharged home from the ER and be healthy and happy and feel calm, that you are OK. And same thing here.
“I want you to come in and be like, ‘I feel like I’m in my own home. I feel comfortable. I feel warm. I feel like I could just lose myself in here for hours.’”
The Cottage has a new and larger home at Hale and Wesley streets in downtown Wheaton.
Rick West
Her store has a feel-good mix of vintage and new furnishings, tons of throw pillows, botanical prints, ceramics and tableware. Kelleher recently moved The Cottage to Wheaton after her business outgrew its “tiny but mighty” space in Geneva.
“The addition of a home goods type of store has been extremely well received,” said Allison Orr, executive director of the Downtown Wheaton Association.
When the corner storefront became available, close to the hustle and bustle of an outdoor dining scene, Orr reached out to Kelleher, who had been on an ongoing waiting list of retailers looking for “that perfect spot” downtown.
Jonna Kelleher, an ER nurse from Geneva, has coffee blends in her homey shop, The Cottage. The Downtown Wheaton Association helped her find a space for her expanding business.
Rick West
“She was ready to make the leap from a small space,” Orr said. “Her space in Geneva was absolutely so cute. But it was about 450 square feet.”
The Cottage is now about three times that size. Kelleher has the room to display a 12-foot antique sideboard she found in Michigan. “It is quite a statement piece,” Kelleher said.
She’s too humble to call herself an interior designer. But it’s clear Kelleher gets her creative side, her love of antiquing, from her mom, Jill.
“She just is such an inspiration. I miss her so much,” Kelleher said. “When I opened…I just wish she was here.”
Kelleher’s mother died of breast cancer when she was 12, and her father died of sepsis when she was 16.
“I just know how people feel,” she said of choosing ER nursing as her career. “They’re scared. They don’t know what’s going on. And I just wanted to help. If I could make a difference in one person and help with trauma they’re going through, that means a lot.”
“We used to go antiquing together all the time,” The Cottage owner Jonna Kelleher said of her late mom, Jill, a “creative soul.”
Rick West
After losing both her parents, she went from home to home. When people ask how she got here, Kelleher acknowledges “it’s not really a happy story.”
“But it’s definitely a story that I hope can inspire others, that things can get hard, but you’ll get through them as long as you work hard at it,” she said.
She’s worked in an ER since she was 19, first as a secretary, a tech and then as a nurse. You could say Elmhurst Hospital is her other home.
Jonna Kelleher
“I’m still an ER nurse. I still work one day a week. I’m very proud of that,” Kelleher said.
She went after her dream of opening her own shop in 2022. Kelleher had developed her “cottage farmhouse” style renovating her home with her husband, Sean, and helping neighbors decorate theirs.
“I know what it’s like not to have one,” she said. “So that’s why every single person who comes in here, I want you to feel like you can just talk to us, feel like we’re your friends or family, that you feel comfortable.”
It’s so warm and homey her Yorkshire terrier, Maisy, curled up on the floor on a recent morning. This Friday night, she’ll host a health care appreciation event during National Nurses Week. All health care workers are invited, regardless of their specialty. They’ll enjoy snacks and a store discount.
“It’s probably just as big as our Christmas event,” Kelleher said.
She also spotlights nurse- and veteran-owned brands — Craft+ Foster candles, for instance — in The Cottage. Her husband, a teacher, built the dining table. They’ve already welcomed in repeat customers who have made the store a “go-to place” for gifts, Kelleher said.
“It’s been really just more than we could have dreamed of.”