Before You Redecorate: Learn What Your Home Is Trying to Tell You. Ep #41

In this episode, we unpack the deeper meaning of home and how it profoundly impacts our well-being. I share a personal story about my own journey of finding home, from unexpected challenges in a competitive housing market to the realization that home is more than just a place—it’s an emotional anchor.

We also explore the psychology behind the doorway effect and how it reinforces the importance of room designation. How can you set up your home to support different aspects of your life—work, rest, creativity, connection? And finally, I give you practical strategies for personalizing your space to make it feel like a sanctuary—a place that truly nurtures and supports you.

If you’ve ever walked into your home and felt stressed instead of relieved, this episode is for you. Tune in to learn how to create a home that not only functions well but also feels like an extension of your best self.

Summary

This conversation explores the profound emotional significance of home, the stories of loss and resilience from individuals affected by housing crises, and the impact of the housing market on personal lives. It delves into how homes shape our memories and wellbeing, emphasizing the importance of understanding the role of home in our lives.

Takeaways

Home is not just a physical space; it holds our memories.
The emotional weight of home can be profound.
Stories of loss can lead to resilience and new beginnings.
The housing market can significantly impact personal lives.
Navigating housing challenges requires patience and adaptability.
Home serves as a backdrop for life's milestones and experiences.
Understanding the significance of home can enhance our wellbeing.
Design and environment can influence our mood and productivity.
The journey of finding a home can be filled with unexpected challenges.
Researching the emotional aspects of home can provide valuable insights.

Website: www.yourparo.com
Resources:
Bathroom Serenity Guide www.yourparo.com/bathroom-serenity
Living Room Essentials Guide www.yourparo.com/living-room-know-how
Waitlist: The Power of Home (mini course) www.yourparo.com/miniseries

Transcript

Today, I'm gonna talk about the meaning of home, how it impacts us, and how important it is. I'm gonna share two things that you can do to make the meaning and impact a positive one. I'm gonna talk about a phenomenon called the doorway effect and how that relates to room designation. And then I'll share some tips for personalizing your space and how surrounding yourself with the things you love is like an aesthetic hug when you need it the most.

N Smu (00:58)
Welcome back to Your Home by Design, where we dive into the fascinating ways our surroundings shape our lives. I'm Nico, and today we're talking about something truly foundational, home. What does home mean to you? Is it a feeling, a place, a collection of memories, or is it something more? We often take our homes for granted, but they are constantly influencing us. Our moods, our decisions, even our ability to relax.

or focus. Today I'm going to share two simple but powerful things that you can do to ensure that your home has a positive impact on your life. We're also going to explore a fascinating psychological phenomenon called the doorway effect, how crossing thresholds affects our memory and mental state and how that ties into room designation. And finally, I'll share some thoughts on personalizing your space in a way that feels like an aesthetic hug.

comforting, supporting environment that uplifts you when you need it the most. But first, let me share a moment of reflection that got me thinking about all of this.

N Smu (02:04)
So the other day I was sitting in my chair. It's a chair in my living room and I really love sitting in this particular chair. I actually thought to myself, why do I always sit in this chair? It's like my natural tendency. There's two of the same chairs, so it's not like it's more comfortable than the other one. Maybe I thought it could be the view because where I look out the window, it's sort of, I get to see some more trees. So it's just a little bit different.

And then I thought maybe it could be just the fact that this particular chair is closer to the fire. So over this past winter, I just wanted to sit closer to the fire. So anyway, who knows? But I was sitting in this chair and I didn't notice at first, but my neighbor got home from work and it caught my eye when he got out of his truck and was walking to his front door. And I watched him. Like I watched him because I thought to myself,

He must be so happy right now. Like I pictured times where I had a really long day when I was working outside of the home and I was gone all day and getting home was such like a profound moment. And then as I watched him, he sort of unlocked the door and stood there for a second. And then almost as if I could see the weight of his day come off of his shoulders.

as he crossed the threshold, he was home. Do you ever feel that way when you walk through your front door? Do you feel that sense of relief? Or does home feel like another place where stress kind of lingers? I understand the meaning of home, the impact it has on all of us on such a deep level. And I've been thinking a lot lately about the homes that burnt down in California.

and how those people were impacted. I've heard a lot of their stories and I follow a few designers on Instagram that lost their homes. And just hearing how they speak about the loss is just heartbreaking. Not just the people of LA, but anyone who has lost their home. We can imagine how that feels to lose everything. Speaking from experience, when I didn't have a home,

when we lived wondering where our home would be for just over 10 months with all our belongings in storage. And for those of you that don't know my story, we had moved to a new city and we're renting while we kind of got a feel for the place. We got our bearings and the goal was to, yeah, get a feel for it and to see if we really loved it. And then,

you know, the idea would be that we were gonna look to buy. And well, in that time from moving there, my husband left a family business and started his own. We welcomed our second child, our son, and we decided that I would not go back to my career, which was a design firm that I had been working at for over 10 years. So.

you know, we started renting and we were comfortable. We were comfortable with this considering all of these major, major changes that had happened in a very short time. But so we just decided we're going to continue renting. We're going to continue feeling out this city and seeing the different areas of the city where we could see ourselves living. But then all of a sudden, our landlords decided to sell. And they let us know that

You know, we had to move. And at that time, we hit a crazy housing market where we saw house prices in the city go up as much as 50 % in some cases. Like it was insane. And the rental market followed suit. So it was a craze. You would stand in line to view a home, even just an apartment.

And then it would go for way over asking. You had a very short amount of time to make offers and all of the offers were subject free, which we weren't super comfortable with. And I wasn't working. My husband was growing a new company. We had two very small kids. It was insane. Yeah, so we had multiple houses that...

we wanted to rent fall through because through all of this, we just decided we're not gonna try to get into this crazy market. We're just gonna continue renting. And we saw this one house, you know, and it was perfect. It was on a street that I loved in walking distance to amenities and my favorite neighborhood of all. It was a short drive to my daughter's preschool, which was such a gift just getting into.

That story's for another day, but this house was perfect. It was clean. It had a lovely front garden. It was exactly what I had envisioned. And I even thought that we might be able to buy it off of these owners when they sold, because they had actually mentioned to us that they might consider selling in about two to five years. So it was kind of like, this could be the best case scenario. We rent off of them and then we buy off of them. But then...

something happened and they changed their minds. They decided that, yeah, they weren't gonna rent it. I think they ended up renting it or a family member or somebody moved in. So yeah, it all fell through. And if you've ever felt that feeling of having a home, a prospect, starting to envision your life there and then it just goes away, it's pretty gut wrenching.

We had looked into even doing an investment property after this and we saw some pretty amazing homes with a ton of potential. And, you know, I got excited about the idea of getting and renovating, being able to design a home for myself. You know, the designer in me was just chomping at the bit with this option. But again, timing was brutal. So in the end, we just needed a home.

We needed a place to live. We had to move out. Time was ticking and almost up. So we were in a bit of a scramble to say the least. And we ended up moving in with family. And what it meant was that we actually had to move out of the city, the city that we really grew to love. And we packed everything we owned up and put everything in a storage locker.

and little did we know at the time, it would be almost a year before we got to unpack those boxes. So yeah, the meaning of home, the significance, the impact that it has on our lives, the way it's cherished and holds our memories, it holds our stories. It's often a safety and that refuge, the milestones in life often have a backdrop.

right? And we remember that backdrop. We remember the experiences we had and the moments that we cherish. Have you ever wished you could go back to a home you knew? You know, maybe it was your childhood home or your grandma's kitchen. Just a favorite spot in a home, you know, your teenage window where you stared out at the stars or, or climbed out to sit on the roof.

N Smu (09:31)
So I've spent a fair bit of time researching this topic and I've also lived it. I not only researched this, but I lived it. And it's a funny thing that happens when you lose your home. You really realize how much home means, how much it impacts not only our memories, but our wellbeing. And when we understand that significance, the significance of home,

we can understand the impact that it has on us. Our homes mirror back our lives, but they're also tools that we can use for better living. Because our homes impact us in such profound ways, I think it's important to be intentional about how you set it up, how you experience it, so that it becomes a positive experience.

I know that when we made a home in my family's home, it was hard. know, being in their space and how they set it up to suit themselves was a reminder that I didn't have one and that the way they set their home up wasn't exactly how we needed ours to be set up. We were at different places in our lives. As amazing as it was to...

live with our family. It was also really hard.

N Smu (10:51)
Have you ever looked at your home as an indicator for what season in life you're in? The things that fill your spaces, the way it's organized. I look back at photos of my kids when they were really little and I think, yep, that looks like that season. It was a bit chaotic and messy. Actually, let's be real. Let's be honest here. It was insanely chaotic and messy. Yeah, I see those pictures and the rooms and the mess and the chaos. I'm like, mm-hmm.

Yep, that was a season. And when I felt like my home was a mess in that season and chaotic, I knew I needed to do a reset. And it always amazed me how when I did a reset, when I did an interior edit of the way the rooms were organized or arranged and set up, it was like a course correction. It always got everyone back on track. I felt more organized in how our days went.

in what we accomplished. I felt like I had some self-care because I would designate spaces accordingly, you know, like our bedroom or our living room. You we had some adult spaces and some kids spaces. And I just felt like everyone thrived when I did a reset, when we kind of got it back on track. There's been some research done.

on a phenomenon that occurs when you go through doorways, and it's called the doorway effect. And studies show that the brain shifts from when it passes through a doorway, especially if the room looks different from the one that you're coming from. And I thought this was really interesting in relation to room designation. So how you call out what your room is for, like, I designate this space for work. I designate this space for cooking.

I designate this space for relaxation. I like to think of it as you're putting up interior design boundaries, both aesthetically and functionally, to protect your innermost emotional boundaries.

So what is the doorway effect? And I'm going to read this from Wikipedia. So the doorway effect or location updating effect is a replicable psychological phenomenon characterized by short-term memory loss when passing through a doorway or moving from one location to another. People tend to forget items of recent significance immediately after crossing a boundary.

and often forget what they were thinking about or planning on doing upon entering a different room. Now, to add to that, I also read in some of the research that a salient event boundary between two environments. So something that grabs your attention as you move through the two environments, and that can be visually.

how things look from one room to the next.

N Smu (13:50)
And this is interesting because our brains segment experiences, like experience zones based on location. So essentially, it treats each room as a compartment or a container. So when we talk about room designation and the doorway effect, this is a naturally occurring thing, mental segmentation. So when we assign a specific function to a room,

we reinforce this natural phenomenon.

N Smu (14:20)
So a home office tells your brain to focus on work and your current tasks. And this is important because if you want to leave work for the day and you work from home, you have to be intentional on how you're creating that distinction when you're not working, if it's a multifunctional space. So you can set it up a bit different at the start of your day and perhaps introduce some sort of routine that you do for closing it down at the end of your day.

and creating that segmentation with something visually. So a bedroom cues rest and relaxation. A kitchen signals meal prep and social interaction. A playroom tells your brain it's time to play or that it's okay if it's messy. So if a space is poorly designed or multifunctional without clear boundaries, the brain can actually struggle with transitions.

which leads to distractions and inefficiency or just difficulty unwinding. Stress as well, if you are trying to relax in a space that you work in, right? Like it can be emotionally conflicting. So it's really important to be specific on the functions of the room. So when we're moving between well-defined spaces, the doorway effect,

it can help us mentally reset as we step into a new environment. But if a space lacks clear designation, we can experience that sort of mental clutter and confusion, which, as I mentioned, makes it really hard to unwind and relax or focus. So open concept spaces without clear transitions may reduce the doorway effect, keeping just your thoughts and your tasks.

kind of like never ending. They're just this continuous thing. Whereas if you implement some things that will make that distinction, then that's going to really help with that. So to work with the doorway effect instead of against it. So what do you want to do? You want to use visual or spatial cues. And you can do this with lighting and furniture arrangement or rugs. And you really want to define the room's function.

Right? And be mindful of multifunctional spaces, making sure that that transition feels really intentional. And then you want to incorporate threshold elements. So things that give you the illusion that there's a threshold you're kind of crossing into. So changes in flooring, that could be even with rugs, even different scents, just something to really introduce that this you're stepping into a different space.

N Smu (16:59)
So the next thing that you can do to ensure you're creating a home that really gives you that aesthetic hug is to make sure the visual and sensory elements in your space provide a sense of security, warmth, and are emotionally uplifting. Similar to being hugged by someone you trust, right? The things we surround ourselves with hold meaning, whether it's sentimental, whether...

they're beautiful or they give you a sense of familiarity. And they play a role in shaping our mood and our mental state. Surroundings that are meaningful and personal and beautiful activate those reward centers in the brain and objects, colors and textures and lighting, those all can evoke emotions and create that sense of comfort. And there's studies done that suggest they can reduce stress and enhance cognitive function.

So when we have meaningful objects, they can help us emotionally. They can act almost like emotional anchors. And this is if you are surrounded by the things that you love, you know, or the things that you have very intentionally chosen to bring into your home and display or use. You know, the things that you would be most upset if you lost or were not surrounded by, right? I mean, these things could be your grandma's recipe book.

a favorite piece of art, a book collection you've been building for years. Having personal possessions that are connected to positive memories can trigger oxytocin, which is the same hormone linked to bonding and trust. And another thing is just being connected to natural elements, right? So being able to see the outside and connecting to natural elements, you've heard the term biophilic design. This is incorporating nature

into your interiors or experiencing natural elements, right? So you could incorporate natural textures, plants, fresh flowers, organic shapes. This really helps create a peaceful environment and can help reduce anxiety. And if your home is overly cluttered or just visually chaotic, it can cause cognitive overload. So if you're intentional,

and your home is well curated, reflecting who you are and what you love, it'll foster a sense of wellbeing and control.

So intentionally and thoughtfully surrounding yourself with things you love means way more than just how it looks. It is never just about aesthetics. It's not just what's stylish or what's trendy. It's actually a form of self-care and emotional security.

N Smu (19:45)
So I just want to share some last sort of quick tips and solutions to reconnect with your home if you feel disconnected from it. I'm going to share three, and then I'll go into a recap and some key takeaways that you're going to want to hear. So the first, the three, our first one is notice the emotional energy of your space, like your emotional energy. Do you feel at ease in your space?

Just focus on like your emotional state. What are you feeling as you're using a space? Ask yourself, do I feel at ease or, you know, do I feel relaxed? Do I feel energized? Whatever outcome you want from the space, ask yourself if you're feeling that. And if not, why? Try to answer why you think that might be happening. Number two is to tweak one small thing. Even a simple change, okay, like clearing away some clutter.

adding a cozy chair, shifting some lighting. This can really change how you feel in the space. And it's amazing how when we do one really intentional small change, it's really uplifting and we really notice it. Our eyes just kind of go to it and I think we can appreciate it when we've been intentional, when we feel good about that change. So number three is to infuse your story into your space.

Home should be an anchor. And if it doesn't feel like one, what is missing? So try to incorporate things that tell your story that you love. And these can be things you've picked up while traveling or things that are from or remind you of a place that you really want to go. It can be heirlooms or...

you know, just things that really do infuse your story, your family's story.

N Smu (21:36)
Okay, so now I just, let's do the recap and key takeaways. Okay, so the first one is the meaning of home. Home is not just a physical space. It's a place of identity, comfort, and emotional connection. Losing or changing homes can be deeply unsettling, highlighting how much our spaces shape our sense of stability. Number two, the doorway effect and room designation.

The doorway effect is a psychological phenomenon where crossing a threshold triggers memory shifts and mental segmentation. Clear room designations help reinforce focus, relaxation, and productivity. Your brain thrives when spaces have clear boundaries. Multifunctional spaces need intentional design cues to avoid that mental clutter and stress. Number three, creating an aesthetic hug.

Personalizing your home with meaningful objects enhances emotional well-being. Surrounding yourself with familiar, beautiful, and comforting elements activates the brain's reward centers and reduces stress. Biophilic design, those natural materials with textures and plants, improves mood and creates a calming atmosphere.

N Smu (22:51)
And just some closing thoughts. Home is not just a roof over our heads. It's the backdrop of our lives, shaping our moods, decisions, and experiences every day. By being intentional about how we designate spaces and personalize our environment, we can create a home that truly supports us. So take a moment to reflect. How does your home make you feel?

Are there small changes you could make to reinforce the positive impact it has on you? I hope this episode inspires you to see your home in a new light as a tool for wellbeing, not just a place to live. If you enjoyed this conversation, I'd love for you to share your thoughts with me. You can connect with me on Instagram at nico.smu, S-M-U, or over at yourparrow.

or leave a review to help others discover the show. Until next time, remember, your home should be a place where you can truly thrive. Let's create space for better living.