Clearing An Emotional Path to Solo Home Design
Embrace Solo Home Design
Can we be frank? Money is a huge stress point when you’re changing up your home design. You’re afraid of hidden costs or don’t know if you’re being charged fairly. Or it’s been so long since you bought a new sofa, that you’re surprised at the cost. It can be nerve-wracking. So, here are some good ways to get your budget under control.
- My home will never look like those pictures
- I don’t know where to start
- I don’t know my style
- It’ll be too expensive
- I don’t want someone else’s style
- Home design sounds intimidating
- I don’t have the confidence to know what I want
- I don’t know all of the “rules” of design; I won’t do it right
- I’m overwhelmed by the amount of options
- My style is changing but I don’t know how to bridge to my current taste
- What I have is good enough
The list goes on. It’s exhausting and you’re still looking at the cabinet fronts you’ve hated since you moved in.
But there’s a word that is probably undercutting everything: Deserve.
You Deserve To Be Happy.
Wait…what’s this psychological stuff doing in a design blog? Simple. I, and many of my interior designer friends, know the reality of working with clients on changing their homes is there’s a lot of emotional stuff that comes up – sometimes overt, sometimes showing itself in hesitancy or indecision. We’ll get to the practical and pretty parts of doing some home design changes on your own in more depth later (you can start with my 5 Steps to Overcome Home Design Anxiety.) It’s helpful to know that so many people put up with broken doors or tiles from the 60’s or the accent wall that doesn’t go with anything anymore simply because they aren’t in the business of equating creating a home they love with giving themselves what they deserve.
If you’re 50+, there’s been a lot of time for you to define yourself by your job or your family or to be defined by others. You’re also likely at a time when you have the need and desire to redefine yourself and be full-throated about who you are at this stage of life. But you hesitate because you’re still not sure you deserve to spend your hard-earned resources on yourself. You may shop for clothes or trinkets or get a mani-pedi on a regular basis. That’s low hanging fruit. We’re talking about a project that could take time and thought. You would be spending real time and money on something just for you, that is all about you.
“Deserve is a word that is fraught. For a lot of women, it feels defiant, like you have to fight for this ‘thing.’ And sometimes you do. Other times it brings on guilt. We think we don’t deserve something if it’s more than a loved one has or if people might think we’re too fancy. Does this sound like you? Well, deserving is not a pie. Just because you have some does not mean that others have less, or that they want a slice of the exact same thing.” A client was thinking about reupholstering her sofa (that had a stain on it the size of her late dog). She wanted a luscious mohair. But she could not give me the ‘go’, because her mother would think it was too decadent to spend money on. She had the funds, she had the desire, but she didn’t think she deserved it.
She finally got the sofa and her mother said once it was ‘lovely and it looks like you’, and never mentioned it again. It turned out to be an affirmation, not a criticism, after all. So, let’s take all the negative out of the word. Let’s see it as the culmination of years of education, hard work, care-taking (probably multi-generations worth), mentoring, going with the majority, putting things off because you weren’t ready, learning to handle your finances, copious amounts of ‘I’m sorry’s’ and embracing setting boundaries on where to put your energies. Some of this adds up to a huge amount of time and effort spent going away from you.
It took me months to get this blog post started and done. I didn’t want to do a blog on ‘The 10 Best IKEA Hacks’. I felt it would be more productive to write about the non-tangible things my clients and peers go through. It’s easy to see the beautiful draperies, the comfy sofa or the custom cabinetry. What you don’t see is the angst that went with it. I was hesitant to start a blog with this subject; I thought a lot of people would think it was weird and what was I doing. But I also thought it would be helpful to some people, and decided to focus on that. There’s more to decision-making in home design than what color of paint, especially if you’re doing it on your own and it’s not your usual territory and there’s money involved and you want it but think it may be perceived as frivolous.
“I know turning around your mindset takes time. I hope this is a start. And I hope to share lots more info with you as you embrace ‘deserve’ and all the good that comes with it.” – Joanne