Transcripts
1. Introduction Creating a Calm Home: Hello. Welcome to this class, creating a calm home. My name is Shelly, and I'm
so pleased you're here. This class is perfect
for everybody. Anyone who feels their
home could feel more supportive more
calm, more relaxed. We're going to look at
interior design elements within your home that may be impacting how your home feels. Then we're going to be going on a guided step by step
process to analyze your home through four clear
steps to give you a fresh perspective on
the items in your home, how they are arranged, and what changes you
could consider to improve that supportive calm feeling that you'd like to
see in your home. Now, you don't need any particular
materials or equipment, but if you happen to have
a floor plan to hand, that would be useful
for making notes and observations as we
move around the home. If you don't have a floor plan, a notepaper and a
pen is all that you need. Let's get started.
2. Your Project: In this class, you
will learn about the interior design
elements that can impact you and others
living within a home. You will then assess
your own home with a fresh perspective, which will identify
opportunities to improve aspects of your home
to bring about that calm, supportive feeling
that is so desirable. With this class, there is a project to support you as
you move through the class. I encourage you to share
this on the project gallery for this class so we can all
see what changes we've made. The project requires you to identify an aspect of your
home that needs a change. This could be as simple as a kitchen drawer or the
front entrance to your home, some aspect that either
needs tidying, update, cluttering, a change of
color, that sort of thing. And you'll need to take a
before photo of the space, then make the changes
and take an after photo. Upload these to the
project gallery and include a short reflection on how you found the
process and whether the space feels different after the changes
that you've made. I'm really looking forward
to seeing what you do and feel free to
upload multiple projects.
3. How Your Home Impacts You: For some of us, life
is incredibly busy, and thinking about
how our home impacts us might seem slightly unusual. But human beings are affected
by their environment. Think about how you feel when
you walk out into nature. It can be like a reset
psychologically for us, very relaxing and calming. Think about the
difference when you step into an art gallery, a large space with
wide open areas, clean lines, no clutter. That feeling is very
different from, say, walking into a small, cozy cafe where there's lots of people crammed
into a small space, lots of noise and
things everywhere. So you can start to see that the elements within a
space do impact us. And when we're thinking about our homes, this
is our home base. We want it to be as
supportive and calm as possible so that we can feel as restored as possible to meet the world with the
challenges that we face.
4. Assess Your Home in 4 Steps: I know life gets busy
and it's so easy to lose touch with what's
around us in our homes. So this class is designed to gently guide you through
a process of viewing it with fresh eyes and to possibly identify some
changes you may like to make. Some of the elements we will be looking at include furniture, furniture placement, color,
texture, lighting, pattern. All of these elements
contribute to how a home feels. So
let's get started. For this class, we're
going to assess your home in four easy steps. The first step involves
assessing your home, considering what the
spaces are used for and whether any space doesn't
feel quite right to you. So if you have a floor plan, grab it now or a piece
of paper and a pen. First, I'd like you to take a moment and think
about your home, write down the various spaces and the key use for each space. The second step
is to walk around the home with the floor
plan and mark down in red, the busy active
areas of the home. In blue, mark down the spaces that are
quieter and less used. For example, busy spaces
may be the kitchen, the dining area, a child's
bedroom or playroom. Quieter areas may be bedrooms and guest rooms and bathrooms. If you're using a
list of spaces, circle the spaces in red or blue pen to indicate
the busy or the quiet spaces. The third step in
this process is to walk around your home with your floor plan or
your notepaper, and I'd like you to mark down areas that would benefit
from a declutter. Cupboards where things have been placed and shoved in and
the door has been closed, and you know there's something
in there that needs to be sorted through and
possibly de cluttered. These could be boxes that
are unopened in the garage, things that you haven't
reviewed in a long time. It could be your wardrobe. There are lots of spaces
in the home where they haven't been regularly
cleared out and checked. So this is an opportunity to
assess your home and think, A, what cupboard needs
a good declutter? Which room needs
a good declutter? The final step in this
process is to look at the floor plan and identify
any internal facing corners. So these are corners that just into the internal
space of your home, particularly if they
then are angled at, say, a sofa or a desk or a table
somewhere where someone sits. These sharp corners
inside the home often benefit from being softened by a plant or furniture
or even fabric. It depends on your home and how you'd like to address them. But at this stage, just circle them on your floor plan or make a note
of them in your notebook.
5. Making Changes to Your Home: Making changes to your home. This is a really fun part of the class where we get to look at the observations
we've made, and we get to consider
some questions to determine whether we'd like to make changes in those spaces. So have your pen and
paper ready to make some notes as we work
through some questions. The first step in making changes to our home to improve
how it feels is to look at those spaces that
you've now identified where some work could be done and
ask yourself some questions. These include, does the
room need decluttering? Does the room need a good clean? Are the windows
clean? Make a note of all of these answers. Consider, is there too much
furniture in the space? Could I remove any
furniture from this room? Now look at the colors. Are there bright, fiery
reds and yellows and oranges or highly patterned
wallpapers in this space? And if there are, how
is it making me feel? For example, let's say you had a very active room like
a child's play room, and it had a bright
red feature wall. The natural activity of the
child playing in the space, the cluttered toys in the
space combined then with the red color of the wall might create an
edgy uncomfortable feeling. It might cause stress. So consider if
that was the case, changing that feature
wall color to possibly a green or blue or
a gray or white. That more neutral color
would stabilize the space. It would calm the space
and be more supportive of that very active play that
was happening in the room. Apply this sort of logic to
each space in your home. Finally, I'd like you to walk
into each space in the home and
analyze the lighting. For more active spaces where you're required
to be productive, such as a work from
home office or a study, you do need a light to be
quite bright and bluer. But for spaces for
resting relaxation, you need the light to be
warmer and more orange light. So for a loundrom, for example, you wouldn't want a
very bright blue light. You want it to be much
warmer a much dimmer light to create that atmosphere, to support the use of the room. Walk around your home
and make notes about the lighting and any
observations that you have where lighting
might need to be adjusted to match
the use of the room. Now walk around the
home and look at those busy active spaces and those alma less used spaces and consider whether they
seem appropriate for use. An unused guest room might
feel a bit lack luster. It might feel a bit forgotten. So perhaps consider adding
a plant to that room or some cushions that are brightly colored to
energize that space. The same for those busier
more active rooms, perhaps you want to
consider how do they feel? If they feel a bit too much, you may like to add
some calming elements. Let's say the loundroom is a very busy
space in your home, and it feels a little chaotic
and a little overwhelming. And you look at your couch and you can see that you've got red cushions and
stripy wallpaper. These things are elements that could be changed quite easily, and they might have
a remarkable impact on how that room feels. If you wanted that lounge
room to be more relaxing, you may change the colors to
greens or neutrals or blues, and then you may also do
the same with the cushions. The third step is to think about the clutter that you
identified in your home. Addressing clutter is not
something we do all at once because it becomes
overwhelming very quickly. I would recommend just simply having a list of the
items identified where you might need to or
the rooms where you may need to declutter and to
work on them regularly, but in very small proportions. So a good starting point could be a drawer
in the kitchen. De clutter that drawer. You could consider a cupboard where some things
have been stored. But that would take
a bit more time, perhaps an afternoon
on a weekend. Decluttering can be challenging because items that we
hold onto are often connected to memories and our history and to
people that we love. Don't let go of anything
that still matters to you. You may find in a
few years time that connection is not as strong and you are able to
let go of the item. But you might also
find there's lots of things that you are no
longer connected to. You don't need them, so
you can let them go. Also things that we
save for the future, like we might need them, we're holding onto them just in case. This is generally
not a good idea. We can acquire the things
we need when we need them, if at all possible,
let go of all of those things we're hanging
onto just in case. We want our home
to be filled with things that are being used now. Otherwise, it's
taking a big toll on our home to store these
items for the future. One area that's common where we do need a declutter
is the wardrobe. We may be holding onto
items that are a size that we no longer fit that we're hoping we might fit
into in the future, or there might be items
that are connected to a past role or a past occupation that
we no longer pursue. So consider letting go of items that don't match
who you are now and who you're working to become you may have shoes that
are uncomfortable to wear. They are a good
item to pass on to somebody else. The
same with clothing. Items sitting in your
wardrobe still with the tags on haven't been worn
for a year or longer. If you were going to wear
them, you would have. So consider letting
those items go. The fourth and final step is looking at the internal
corners that you identified within your home and
thinking about whether you could add an element
to soften that corner. So it might be as
simple as a plant or even fabric if you know, it depends on your space and
what your decor is like. But have a look at
the internal corners, and if you feel like
they are a little intrusive and would
benefit from softening, consider adding
an element there. If you are new to indoor plants, I'd like to encourage you to build up a collection
of them in your home. They really add something to
the atmosphere of a home, and they bring a lot of peace. And there is a really
natural connection between people and plants, if you think about it,
before we lived in houses, we lived among trees
and shrubbery. So people naturally have
an affinity with nature, and bringing that
into the home can be very stylish and very calming. A couple of plants I
could recommend for beginners are easy to care for and can cope with the lower light
conditions inside a home. Firstly, the fiddle leaf fig. This plant grows quite tall. It has big rounded green leaves, a beautiful plant to try
and grow in your home. The second plant
is a peace lily, a very common plant, and it puts out white
flowers when it's happy. It's a beautiful
addition to your space. And finally, for rooms
that are very low light, such as a bathroom that
may not have a window, you can buy bamboo, little sticks of green bamboo that put out leaves at the top. And these are very
tolerant of low light.
6. Share Your Project: So now it's time to
work on your project, to choose an area of your home where you'd like
to make some small changes. Remember to take the before
photo, make the changes, and then take the after photo and share these
to the project gallery, along with a small reflection about how the
process was for you and whether you feel
those changes have made a difference to
how the space feels. You can do this multiple times with different
areas of your home, and I'm always here to help, and to answer questions
that you may have, if you feel a bit stuck about a space and you're
not sure what to do, feel free to pose that question to the class,
and I will get back to you.
7. Thank You: Well, congratulations on
reaching the end of our class. I really hope you've enjoyed it. I hope it has helped you
to see your home and the spaces within it with fresh eyes and a
new perspective. I hope you feel that
you have the tools and the ideas required to make some small changes to your home and to help
bring about the calm, relaxing environment that you would like to have in your home. Thanks for taking this class, and I really can't wait to see your questions and
your projects. Bye.
Shellie Cleaver, Visual Arts/Writing/Creating Calm Interior Spaces
