Hi guys! Welcome to the 54th episode of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast!
I hope you are all feeling good and happy, I have to say there’s not too much that I am more passionate about than mindset/mind work and then also interior design…so when those two meld together…I just love it…and let me tell ya…those two meld together in our daily lives more than we are conscious of. Our environment affects our mood so much, that includes anywhere that we spend a lot of time…our home, our office, which recently those two have become the same for so many.
So, You guys may laugh at this or you might relate, I don’t know. I hope at least one person at least can relate…Lately I kept seeing the letters WFH everywhere. I kept seeing articles like “With WFH becoming a big thing or one post said hit me up if you WFH…Finally I was like ok I’m googling it…I felt a little silly once I saw what it was…Work From Home! Of course!!!
So Working from home is such a big thing now that it has its own acronym and my question for you is whether you WFH or not…Do you find joy where you spend your time? Do you enjoy your home office? If you don’t work from home, Do you enjoy coming home? Does your home bring you joy?
I’m an interior designer by trade so I appreciate very much how your home can make you feel a certain way. In fact, I get paid to create a certain feel. It is one of my joys in life to create a space that makes someone feel happy, calm, rested, inspired or whatever emotion someone wants to feel.
But is that the key to a home that makes you happy? Does your home have to be perfectly designed? Well just like everything in life it’s different for each one of us. I feel the happiest in an environment that is beautiful, but that isn’t just what it is all about for me and I bet it isn’t for you either. In fact studies prove there’s more to a happy home than just beautiful design and I personally have seen it so many times first hand.
I had a client that I’d been working with a while. She and her husband bought an older home that was being renovated. We had done a lot of work but still had more to do. I came in one beautiful sunny day and I could not wrap my head around how good and beautiful the space felt! IT felt so different from last week, which was odd…I kept saying that and then it hit me….and I said You had your windows cleaned! She laughed and said, it’s like a different house. That was something on the list but once it was completed, you guys the difference that it made…it was just astonishing. That space came alive with that one little move of having the windows professionally cleaned!
Another client I was working with bought a home with big beautiful windows and REALLY expensive plantation shutters on them. Those are the ones that cover the window and you just basically open the shutters and close them but you never really get the benefit of the windows. Anyway, I really wanted to remove them and so to get an idea of what it would feel like we opened them all the way up (by swinging them on their hinges away from the window) just to see the difference it would make and she honestly wouldn’t let me close them back! My point is: Getting Natural light is a mood booster. There have been many studies that show that it can reduce depression and relieve anxiety. So one of the number one things I always say is to open as many of your drapes and shades and get as much natural light into that home as possible.
Who knew cleaning your windows or opening the window treatments could have an impact on our happiness. Sometimes we get so stuck in routine mode, or work mode or busy mode that we stop noticing the things that are sort of stacking up around the house that can subtly affect our mood. So here are a few other things to be aware of that pretty much affects us all:
- Clean Windows
- Opening the window treatments every day so the natural light comes through
- Making the bed every morning (my master bedroom is upstairs, if I didn’t make the bed and open the shades, I would literally dread going up the stairs…)
- Stacked anything…old mail, old magazines, old books. Ive started cutting my favorite picots out of my magazines and either putting them on a mood board or in a folder and then throwing the magazine away. I used to keep them but they were stacking up so I came up with a solution!
- Keeping things you don’t love out of obligation or because you spent money on it. If it doesn’t make you happy and you don’t love it, let it go…You can donate it and it might bring joy to someone else! (Yep this includes things your mom gave you…If you don’t like it don’t have it around, it will mess with your head.
- Have at least one space that is totally clutter free. Your brain wants a clear space to be able to relax and that is hard to do in a cluttered space.
- Finally, fix the little things around the house that bother you but you just haven’t taken the time to do it. Things like crooked pictures, wonky lamp shades, burned out light bulbs…that’s a big one…especially in the bathroom! (I’ll put all of these in the show notes so you can read them again if you want)
Ok guys I hope this encourages you this week to live beautifully and to really be aware of how much your environment affects you! There’s enough going on in life outside that protecting our peace inside is crucial and a big part of that is our home, especially if you WFH.
Love you guys! I’ll talk to you in a few days!
