#socialdistancing: Distress to De-stress

Hi, everyone! It's Megan. Normally, you can find me in our Hendersonville showroom. (Now, you can find me on my sofa...in my pajamas.)

If you're like me, you may find yourselves worrying a little more than normal right now. Even while sitting here, I can easily feel anxiety pulling me away from efforts to de-stress.

Our homes are something we take pride in. We worry about decluttering, decorating and renovations year round. Now that most of us are stuck inside, those walls that you still haven’t painted are glaring at you. Or maybe you didn’t realize how much stuff you ACTUALLY had until all 3 of the kids, your spouse, and you were cooped up in the same space together indefinitely. Now, it’s even more prominent in our minds!

Thinking about designing a home is stressful for lots of people, even professionals. Whether it be building your dream home from the ground up or simply refreshing the home you’ve lived in for years, it’s easy to become overwhelmed and fall into that hole of “What am I supposed to do now? I have no idea what I’m doing with this.” There’s a lot of pressure when it comes to creating an atmosphere of your own. At the end of the day, a lot of us worry about what our friends and families will think when they come for visits. We even stress about what coworkers will think of us at the holiday Christmas party we volunteered to host next year. Before you know it, you have a furniture emergency at the top of your to-do list.

Here are 3 tips on how to find confidence when faced with a new design project and making sure you have the best results in the end:

1. Deep Breath and Re-Access! Get some of those nit-picky fears out of the way in the beginning. This will make the process more fun as you go. Look at the big picture and write down the things you are wanting to accomplish. This list can be as long or as short as you like. Once you’ve got your list, take note of which ones are most important to you. Be realistic about your timeline for each one. Will some of these tasks take a few hours? A few days? A year? That’s okay. Just know that some will take longer than others, require more supplies, and sometimes will just take more time to find exactly what you want.

2. Look Around! Tip #1 should bring you here. There’s a reason you have curated your current space the way it appears today. Take inventory of the things you have. What do you like about it? What don’t you like about it? What items do you want to keep? What items do you want to replace, reuse, or recycle? Does the arrangement work for you? So often, we bypass the things we already have because the appearance overall is unappealing. However, it’s best to take a step back and look at everything we have before we start spending money and making changes. You will to understand what about it you think needs to change. Maybe it is the whole room but maybe it’s just a matter of changing paint color, adding a new rug, or changing light bulbs that produce different colors. Try moving some things around. Get rid of things you know for sure you don’t need, play around with furniture arrangements or try moving some of your keep-sakes to new locations and see how you feel about them then. Don’t throw in the towel on everything right away. The smallest changes can often times yield big results. This step can potentially save you lots of mental energy and money! Who doesn’t want that?

3. Get Creative! The number one comment I hear from clients is “I’m not sure what I’m looking for but I’ll know it when I see it.” So go find it. Having the latest and greatest is wonderful, but everyone has to start somewhere. It’s harder to find what you want when you’re not even sure where to begin. Go find inspiration. Start a Pinterest board (or hundreds in my case) and start saving things you love. Browse our Style Catalog. The key is to have ideas and inspiration in your back pocket to revisit later when you’re stuck at a crossroads. Nothing at this stage is set in stone so do some digging. Research, research, and research! Forget about what it would cost. Don’t think about how you’re going to get from A to Z. Now is the time to really hone in on what it is that speaks to you. I call it the step of self-discovery. Find things you love and run with it. There are not wrong answers.

I’m here to tell you that even though furniture emergencies do exist, designing and decorating your homes should not be one of them. The good news about design: it’s all subjective. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” as Margaret Wolfe Hungerford once said. When thinking of your own home, it should come down to what you yourself think is beautiful. Your home is your sanctuary. It should bring you peace of mind, not a headache! Have fun with the time you have to spare (and let me know any tips YOU may have)!

Megan