How To Renovate

EP74 Can’t Relax? How to Make Your Home Relax-Ready

• Tash South

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In this week’s episode was unexpectedly inspired by the  kids’ TV show—Bluey—watching this episode with my daughter sparked a reflection on the mental load many of us carry, particularly mothers and caregivers, 
and how our homes can either add to that load… or ease it.

Inside, I dive into the emotional impact of our home environments and explore how design—both big and small—can actively support relaxation, calm, and our wellbeing. From clutter and storage to sensory cues and micro-zones, this episode offers practical and thoughtful ways to make your home a place where you can actually exhale.

If, like me, you’ve ever felt like you should be relaxing but just can’t switch off… this one’s for you.

What we’ll cover:

  • Why your home isn’t a neutral backdrop—and how it can impact your stress levels
  • How visual clutter affects your brain and your ability to relax
  • Big and small ways to reduce stress through design
  • How to create intentional "micro-zones" for calm
  • The importance of mini systems, and why they’re not just for productivity
  • Simple sensory shifts that make a big impact on wellbeing

Mentioned in this episode:

Bluey – S3 E40 “Relax” (yes, it's brilliant—even for grown-ups)

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Hi I'm your host, Tash South I'm an Interior Designer and Renovation Consultant, and I'm here to help you design, renovate and style your home better. Let's create your dream home together.


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Tash South:

Hey everyone, Tash here. Welcome back to the How to Renovate podcast. Now, this week's episode has been inspired by something completely unexpected. Not a Pinterest board, not a gorgeous home I saw, but an episode of Bluey. Now, Bluey is a kids' show, it's Australian. If you're a parent of quite young children, you'll probably know about it. It's all the rage. And I was watching an episode with my daughter, and it completely inspired me to do this episode. So stick with me. Let's see how we go. I hope you enjoy the episode. Let's get into it. So this show called Bluey, it's an Australian children's show, but they really, really hit the nail on the head when it comes to parenting. So it's a family of four: dad, mum, two daughters, and it's just about their everyday lives, but it's done so cleverly when it really appeals to the parents as well. And I would recommend, even if you don't have children, go and check out an episode or two. It's really cleverly done, really funny. So if you have a moment, go and catch an episode of Bluey. But there was this particular episode that really hit home for me. I was watching it with my daughter who was six at the time, and the episode is actually called Relax and it's from season three, it's episode 40. And in this episode, the family goes away on holiday, and the mum called Chili cannot relax. So they arrive at their apartment and she's doing this, that, and the other. She keeps trying to go sit at the pool and relax, clear her mind, and just calm down. And she goes back to the apartment, still can't relax. And so the whole episode is really about the kind of extra mental load that particularly mothers carry all that invisible work, all the extra mental load of all the things we have to do. And then at the point where we actually come to where we're on a holiday and we really would love to switch off and relax, we just can't do it. Our brains can't do it, our bodies can't do it. It takes a long time to be able to ease into the holiday, into the break, to be able to take a moment because also the work doesn't stop if your kids are there with you. But it really just hit me that so many of us feel this way, and particularly women and mothers, and our homes really can contribute to that feeling. And so it really got me thinking about what we can do in our homes to alleviate that, just to make it a bit better for us, so that it can be a place where we can relax more easily, where everything is not so frustrating and stressful, which of course it's not all the time, certain points of our day, certain points of our lives, certain seasons in our lives, things are always changing, particularly if you have children, if you have a family, you know, nothing seems to stay the same for very long. So you've always got to be ready to change, ready to go. So I think this really contributes why we're we're struggling to just relax and be a bit more calmer within ourselves. And so I thought I'd do an episode on this and how we can do things in our home and what we can do to our home to just help us chill out a little bit and help us relax a bit. What can we do to just make our homes a lot more pleasant to be in? So let's get properly into the episode. So I wanted to talk about how we can make our homes feel a little bit more relaxing, whether it's you know big layout changes if you're renovating from scratch, or just the more little things, the smaller things you can do that can contribute to that feeling. There's quite a lot here actually. When I started to think about planning this episode, there are so many things like sensor I cues, like lighting, even styling and storage and visual clutter, all of those things can contribute to making us feel stressed out in our homes if they're not done properly. So let's look at the first point here is actually why your home might be stressing you out. So I think we often think of our homes as these things which, you know, they're just neutral backdrops, they're just there in the background as we're carrying out our daily lives and you know our crazy busy lives. They're just kind of there in the background. But actually, your home can be an active participant in how you feel emotionally, how you feel mentally, whether you're feeling calm, whether you're feeling stressed. So it's not really neutral, isn't it? It really we really need to think about how our surroundings are affecting how we feel. So if we look at our spaces and we're completely honest and we actually are present and look at your space like you're a visitor, you know, with fresh eyes. Maybe stand in the doorway and just look at the room and think what in this room can be contributing to a sense of kind of chaos, of frustration, of it not being relaxing, and then start from there. So really drill down into what is actually stressing you out in your home. You know, is your kitchen constantly cluttered? Perhaps you need more storage. Are there piles of laundry or unfinished DIY projects or piles of paperwork that still need filing? These aren't just annoyances, they're actually adding to our cognitive load every day because our brains see that, they see everything, and I I know this, I'm very much like this, which I've I've talked about a lot before on the podcast, is our brains see these things, and even though we don't realize it, our brains are mentally putting all of those things that we visually see on our to-do list, even if they're not on our actual to-do list, they're there in our brains. All of that mental clutter of everything that we see that needs to still be done, tackled, sorted, whatever it may be. And when your brain is in to-do mode, it's very difficult to relax in that space. If you can see everything that still needs to be done, how on earth does your brain switch off and go, oh, she wants to relax now? It's time to just take a moment. It is quite difficult, isn't it? So today I really wanted to help you have that sense of relaxation when you walk into home, a sense of calm as soon as you walk through the door into your hallway. So if you walk through your hallway and you feel a sense of maybe a tiny bit of tension rather than a sense of relief and relaxation of being home, I hope that this episode will give you some ideas of what we can do to make a home a little bit more inducive to being relaxed. So next let's look at clutter and how that affects us, not only physically but emotionally as well. So obviously, you have the actual physical problem of having clutter, which generally means you need more storage. If you don't have enough storage, I find that people have a lot more stuff out, and that really does contribute to our mental load and our brain just you know visually seeing lots of things all the time, is not great when you are trying to be in a relaxed state. And so I think dealing with a clutter, first of all, if that is a problem in your home, is going to make a huge difference, and that is more often than not sorted with correct storage. So look at your storage, look at what you can put away, look at what you may need extra storage for, look at what you can hide. If it's putting cabinet doors on open shelves, if it's putting a pretty curtain in front of an area that's very busy with mess, think about just hiding some of it. If you have enough storage but it's all out in the open, think about hiding some of that because that will be a lot more calming to look at. So that's another tip, obviously, after just making sure that you've got enough storage in the first place. So I find that clutter really is is a big one when it comes to spaces not feeling relaxing. So quite often than not, that is the first place I start when someone's struggling with this particular problem. Is we need to make sure there's a place for everything, and we need to make sure that things get put away, and also you can take this further where you can start to soften the room. Because if you have things like soft drapes, curves on the furniture, softer colours, fewer bold patterns and prints, if you're inclined to get stressed out by visual clutter, all of these things can help to reduce that. So really think about that when you're planning your room, when you're planning your storage. Think about how you function best and how you're going to feel, and actually think about how you're going to relax in that space because it's really important that we are able to relax in our homes and that they're not constantly stressing us out because, as we all know, there's enough stuff in the world already stressing us out, and the last thing we need is for our homes to contribute to that. So think about it, plan it, it's really important. You know, we've got to design with kindness, and we've got to design with our mental health and our wellness in mind as well. It's not just all about function and all about aesthetics. We need to think about how we feel in the space. That's really almost primal. It's something we really, really need to drill down on so that everything else we do contributes to the fact that we can relax in our homes. And so the next thing I want to talk about is creating zones in the home for relaxing. So we can take this as big or as small as you want. So there can be things that you plan at layout stage where whether it's something important to you, like including a gym or a sauna or a steam room into your home design. It can be as big as that or it can be as small as just creating a little microzone of maybe it's your arms big bathroom, maybe it's just an area around your actual bathtub where you can go if you're feeling overwhelmed and you can deal with that feeling. So think about what you do when you generally are starting to feel a bit stressed out and not yourself, and you need to relax. Think about what you like to do, and then try and bring those elements into your home. Perhaps it's a workout, perhaps it's a long bath. So think about that and include that into your home as well. And it doesn't need to be big, they can be small, intentional areas, a little corner that just signals to your brain that this is where I slow down, this is where I go to calm down, to relax, to just re-energize so I can be ready again the next day. And these little micro zones, they can be, you know, the spots where you carry out your little rituals that you love, whether it's lighting a candle, having a bath, whether it's even just your bedside table with you know whatever your nighttime routine might be. It can be really small, but it just needs to signal to your brain that it's time to take a step back and to relax. So that when you go there, your brain and your body knows what to expect. And it can be overwhelming to start with a whole house. So start small. So perhaps start with one corner of a room or one room and work from there. Work through your home if you're not renovating, if you're not in a position to kind of lay out with a home gym. Start with one area in your home and start making that better. Start making that the place you go to to relax, and then just kind of broaden out from there room by room, make every room a little bit more functional, a little bit more organized, a bit more storage, a bit more calming to walk into. So start small if you're feeling overwhelmed already, and then just do maybe a bit every day or a bit every week and move through your home. And then next, I want to talk about systems. So I find that having certain systems within my home really helps with kind of knowing what needs to be done when, and then also that almost kind of buys me time and buys me relaxing time later down the line because I know there's a system for that particular thing. So you need to figure out what is stressful for you and what you may need a system for, and then you can work with it to really make it work hard to make your home more functional, to make you productive within your home, so that you feel like you've you've done enough and your home is tidy and you actually have the time to put your feet up and relax. And again, I find if you have kids, if you have your own business, if you have a high-intensity job, whatever the reason is that is making you feel like you can't relax or you can't be calm, you need to kind of look at that and then find a system that's going to support you to that point where you can take a few moments or a day or an afternoon to be calm and to relax. So, systems I love to have in my own home or things like just having systems for the laundry, kind of which point are you at at which time? Where does it go? Where maybe only have one place where everyone in the whole family puts the dirty laundry? We have three bathrooms, and I intentionally don't put a laundry basket in each bathroom. I'll put one laundry basket in the utility room and one laundry basket in one of the bathrooms. So when it comes to gathering the laundry to do the wash, we only have to take it from one other place and it goes straight to the utility room. So that's a really simple example of what a system can be. But just kind of having those in place where everyone in the family knows what's going on, so that not one person is starting to feel resentful for always tidying up or always doing that particular thing. If you have a system in place that everyone's aware of and everyone and you remind everybody to stick to that system, it just takes the pressure off. And you can have this across so many things. It doesn't obviously have to only be laundry, it can be across almost anything in your home that you need to have some sort of system or some sort of organization for. So I really encourage you to look at some systems. It might be just a simple system of everyone puts something away when they take it out. Just having these really simple rules and systems within your home is really going to contribute to that end goal of just having it run a bit more smoothly, of having it perhaps more clutter-free, and then just being able to make it a more relaxing place to be. So create some systems and stick to them and make sure everybody in the family knows about them. And then just to end off this episode, everybody, the last point I wanted to talk about is just adding in those little what we may think are luxuries into our home that really contribute to calming all of our senses, really. And this is where we can play around with the design, with the textures and the fabrics and the scents and the colours and the furniture and the lighting and the music, all of these things all make a home. Think about them all, bring them all into your home to create a space that is yours where you feel like you can put your feet up, you can be calm, you can enjoy your space with the rest of your family. Why else are we doing it? Why else are we paying huge amounts of money for our homes, paying massive mortgages, spending so much money on our renovations when they are not contributing to making us feel better? But that brings us to the end of this episode, everybody. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you have got some ideas of how to make your home a much more relaxing space to be. It really is important to us. If you enjoyed the episode, please do subscribe. You can give us a like, send me a comment, send me a DM, give us a five-star review, maybe. We appreciate everything. So if you do that, it also helps other renovators to find us, to find the podcast, which really, of course, helps me as well. So I hope you enjoyed it and I can't wait to see you next week. Bye for now. For more information on my five-pillar process for successful renovation, you can go directly to southplacestudio.com forward slash pillars, where you'll find an introduction to the process which covers each of the pillars and what they cover. We also have a number of other free renovation resources. Go now to southplacestudio.com forward slash freebies. I have created some amazing freebies for you there. There is one on the process, like we just said. There is one on um planning permission, there is one on kitchen design, there is another one on lighting planning. Go and check those out. There's so much free information there to help you with your innovation.