Have a Home That Serves You
Video Transcription
Hello again!
Today is an exciting day in our house. Today is the last day of homeschool. Our girls have finished up their curriculum, finished up their co-op that they're in, and we are ready to celebrate this weekend with being done with school. I hope all your guys' school years are going as well. I just look forward to getting ready for summer stuff in our house and we love to celebrate. Like most things, if something happens in our house, we celebrate and this weekend, we are having the girls plan out their perfect day. We're going to take time to celebrate what we've learned this year and what our hopes are for the summer and take time. We're doing, I think, like a fancy dinner at home. I think they want cream for sure and having them pick out a good book and we're going to do a movie night at our house. We have four kids so we don't really go out to celebrate as much as we take those concepts and we bring them into our home because it's a lot easier to manage. So, that's some of the fun that we have planned this weekend. I hope you guys have some great plans as well. It's supposed to be beautiful weather!
Today, we are going to continue on our design process training. So far, we have talked about the empathy exercises leading into an intention statement and a mood board. We follow that up with how do you get in the creative zone and get inspired. How do you choose your color palette? And then today, what we're going to talk about is how do you create zones in your home so that it serves you. A significant amount of our income goes to our mortgage. If you're anything like us. So many times, we look at our house and we think how can we serve it? How can we take care of it? How can we maintain it? We pay so much for that square footage, how in turn, can it serve us more than just being a roof over our head. How can it really support and serve us as a family and our goals in this life and our purposes?
We're going to take a look at how our home serves us today, before going into the floor plan because we need to figure out these zones that our room needs to support us before we can figure out what do we even need to put on our floorplan. This is why we have come to this first before diving in to the floorplan.
What does it mean to have a home that serves you? For my husband and I, for example, we love smoothies in the morning. So if we were to be working on let's say our kitchen, one of the areas that we could consider adding is like a smoothie station because we have smoothies so often. So, that looks like having a fridge and freezer right nearby the blender. It may be making it part of a little corner in our kitchen or part of our pantry. That way, we have all the ingredients right next to the blender and then the cups also there. So, you don't have to go back and forth around your kitchen. You have this smoothie station in one place and now your home is serving you and it's less clean up as well especially if you have a sink right there.
Some other ideas, we do have a coffee station or coffee bar at our house. So, making sure that you have everything you need for coffee right there. Easy access. We are able to make it very easily for guests that come into our home and we have coffee all the time. So, that was a point and one for us to add to our kitchen. Our coffee maker is there right by our coffee and our grinder and we have cups there as well as tea and that's a look at more of our coffee corner.
Another example would be in our living room. We like to try out different things that could support us before really making it something that we add to our home. For instance, in the living room, our girls love to color and just be a part of the family while we're homeschooling. We have a two-and-a-half-year-old that just likes to be a part of the family while we're doing lessons on the couch. So, how do we keep her entertained? She doesn't always go to the homeschool room and get activities but she likes to be around us. So, we've added a little kids table in our living room corner. That way she can bring coloring books right out there and be a part. They love to set up tea parties with their stuffies as well. It really has served our family well to have a place In the living room that she can be a part of our homeschooling day, but playing more independently. We aren't necessarily a home that has a lot of toys in our living room. We'll get to that next week of how to have kids at home and have a nice living room. We have the toys just outside of our living room because that's what serves us.
Those are some examples on how you can have your home you, because our mortgage is such a significant part of our income. We want to make sure that we're taking a look at our house and understanding how can it serve us, not just how we serve it and take care of it. This is why it's important to look at those empathy exercises. Go back to those exercises for the room that you chose to take through the design process and see, what does our family do in this room? What does our family want to do in this room? How can this serve our family better? How can it support us? Once you understand that, then you start creating these zones. We need a sitting zone. We need a more intimate conversation zone. We need a place for the kids' toys. And you start to get these zones listed and once you get to the floorplan, you're taking these zones and applying it to your floorplan.
Another example that maybe is a little bit more outside the realm and is trickier, is we have a lot of snow pants and gloves and hats and boots and there was no place in our mudroom to actually dry these out or put them away after the kids were done playing in the snow. We updated our mudroom. We had it revamped, but there was no room in the space for this zone of winter gear. So, you start to think outside the box. Is there anywhere nearby the room that you can repurpose? For us, we went right outside the door into the garage and we, my husband, created this amazing drying rack. It's actually what firefighters use to dry out their all their gear after working. When all their gear is wet. It's this big drying rack with this blower that's blowing through everything and they can hang their snow pants, their coats, their hats, their gloves, their boots, everything goes on this rack for four kids and you turn on the drying system and it dries it. We added a heater right next to it as well. So, even if the room that you're working on may not have enough space for the zones that you need, look just outside that area. Maybe you can repurpose something really close by and add it to that room. Really thinking strategically and brainstorming different solutions for this.
Your action step out of today is take a look at your empathy exercises for the room. What do you need out of the space? What zones do you absolutely need to have? Create that list. Then you're going to have a second list of what are those zones that you want to have. That way you can understand, as you're developing your floorplan, you take what you need first and then, you start filling in with zones that you want or being creative on how we can create those zones to ensure that our homes serve us because that's when you're going to start feeling better about your home. You're going to start feeling more connected to your home. It's going to have a purpose to it outside of being a roof overhead or looking like a magazine cover where we are doing all the serving. We're constantly cleaning it. We're constantly maintaining it. But if we can make sure that we have those zones that we need to support our family and how we live and our goals, you'll feel like you are definitely connected to your house and that there is a purpose behind how you designed your room. So, that's your action step. Go back to those empathy exercises and figure out the zones that you need and then the zones that you want and that will prepare us for tomorrow as we dive into floorplans or flow-plans between these zones that you've created. We'll continue on our design process.
I hope you're able to join me tomorrow to talk through that. Find time to do your action step and then as always, if you have any questions during these, feel free to message me. Message me your action steps. I would love to just see what you guys are pulling together. Then as always, please share this. We're always trying to grow our community. I would love to just see that blossom and bloom and I am excited to spend tomorrow with you as we start diving into floorplans. I will see you tomorrow.
I hope you have a wonderful Thursday.
Lykke Haven Design is a full service, purpose-driven interior design firm serving clients in West Michigan. We work with clients from Ada, to Grand Rapids, to Holland (and the occasional out of state). Our mission is to create Intentional Interiors curated with a Meaningful Mission that Cultivate Connection. We do this through a process driven by Human-Centered Design. We would love to discuss your next project and how we can help.
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