EP81 Your Home Is Shaping Your Habits. Whether You Realise It Or Not.

What if your home was quietly shaping your habits… without you even realising?

In this episode, I explore one of the most powerful ideas from Atomic Habits by James Clear, that our environment plays a huge role in the habits we build (or struggle to maintain).

As renovators and homeowners, this is where things get really interesting.

Because your home isn’t just a backdrop to your life, It’s an active participant in it.

I’ll walk you through how small, intentional design choices can make good habits easier, reduce daily friction, and ultimately help you create a home that truly supports the way you want to live.

Whether you want to exercise more, feel calmer, be more productive, or simply make everyday life flow better, this episode will help you start seeing your home in a  new way.

Inside This Episode

• Why your home environment has more impact on your habits than motivation
• How design can either support or sabotage your daily routines
• The power of visual cues (and how to use them to your advantage)
• How to reduce friction in your home through better layout and flow
• Simple ways to design for focus, calm, and productivity
• How to shape your home around the person you want to become

What you see every day influences what you do every day and a well-designed home should make the right choices feel easy and natural.
It’s not only about the big renovation, it’s about the small shifts too. Moving something or repurposing a a space. Small changes in your home can lead to big, lasting behaviour shifts. Making one habit at a time just that little bit easier.

Resources & Mentions
You can download chapter 1 of James Clear’s #1 New York Times bestselling book Atomic Habits here: Atomic Habits by James Clear

Loved This Episode?
If you found this helpful, I’d be so grateful if you left a review on Apple, YouTube or Spotify, or even shared it with a friend who’s renovating, or just wants to create a better home.

*******************

Hi, I’m Tash South — interior designer, renovation consultant, and founder of South Place Studio.

In this podcast, I share practical renovation advice, along with deeper insights into home and belonging.

If you’d like more resources and support, head to:
https://www.southplacestudio.com/freebies

If you’re navigating your own renovation, my RenoVersity programme offers a structured, guided and thoughtful approach to renovating with clarity, confidence and intention https://www.southplacestudio.com/renoversity

Or if you want to get social, you can find us here:
Instagram: @southplacestudio
Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/company/south-place-studio
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/southplacestudio

Transcript

Homes Shape Habits

Tash South 0:00

Hello everyone, Tash here, and thank you once again for choosing to spend a bit of your time with me today. Today's topic is one I've really been looking forward to talking about for some time. It is about how our homes shape our habits, and that is whether we realize it or not. So a while back, I read the book by James Clear called Atomic Habits. Now, if you haven't heard of the book before, it's um it's been a huge bestseller. It's sold like over 20 million copies worldwide, and it's been a bestseller on so many lists, so many global bestseller lists. And the core of the book is really just about how small consistent actions shape our lives far more than big dramatic changes. And in the book, apart from many other things, of course, but James Clear explains that our habits are largely driven by our environment and identity. So instead of relying solely on motivation or willpower, we should really focus on making good habits obvious, easy, and satisfying, while making bad ones harder to do. So then, as you can see, over time these tiny shifts compound, leading to meaningful lasting change and of course the development of better habits. So if you've read it, you'll know that James Care talks a lot about identity and small daily actions. But of course, because of um the world I'm in and the work I do, one of the most powerful ideas for me in the book is this idea that our environment shapes our behavior far, far more than we realize. And this is where I think home design becomes incredibly interesting because your home is your environment. It is the thing that you interact with every single day, and often without noticing how the surroundings are affecting us. So when we start to look at our home through this lens, we can see that it's not just about aesthetics anymore. It really can become a tool, a tool that can either support our habits or actually sabotage them. So I thought this would be a really great topic to talk about today. Because we often think we need more discipline to be more productive or to stick to better habits. If you're anything like me, you will know that it's sometimes really hard to stay consistent with good habits, with constantly remaining productive. You know, I'm sure like many of my listeners, I'm a working mother, and we have so much going on in terms of kids and home and work and family life, and really it all can become a bit overwhelming. And so it's really difficult actually to keep up with those habits. For example, I have been trying really hard for the past couple of years to work exercise into my life and into my daily routine, and that has really, really been hard for me for a long time because of how busy I am, and I am slowly making changes in the home that will be along the lines of what I will speak about today to help me just try and make that habit become a little easier and a little bit more regular. So atomic habits really does flip the idea that we need more discipline and more willpower on its head. And it shows us that you know willpower isn't really the problem. Our environment is. We need to set ourselves up properly for success, and our homes can really help us do that. Because if your home isn't supporting the habits you want, you are essentially fighting your space every single day to try and get the things done that you want to get done. And I know that I have seen this in so many homes, and it is a thing so many people get frustrated with, and that's what I talk about a lot when I go and see potential clients in their own homes. So, in this episode, I would love to cover a few things that might help you to design or set up your home to support these positive habits and improve productivity. Because I do think that in one way or another, we all really just want to be a little bit better every day. I would like to exercise more. There might be something you might like to do a bit better every single day or a bit more of every single day. And so let's think about in this episode what we can do in our homes to try and make that happen and try and support that. So I want to cover in this episode number one, how your home design shapes behaviour. So, number two, let's talk about those visual cues and environmental triggers. And number three, I wanted to talk about designing for ease. So this really comes down to layout and it's that friction versus that flow in your home. Number four, I wanted to talk about designing for focus, and um, that's really about protecting your energy. So, what can we do in our homes that can help us to focus and protect our energy so we're not going off doing lots of different things, we can actually design for focus, and then number five, designing for identity and the person you really want to be. Because um, I don't know about you, but you know, I'm always thinking there's always ways that I would like to be better at so many different aspects of my life. So, in number five, let's talk a little bit about that because I'm sure you might be feeling the same way. Okay, let's get into it. Number one, let's talk about how our homes shape our behaviour. I want to start with the idea that our homes are either gently guiding us through all the activities and everything we need to do every single day, whether we are working from home or whether we need to get ourselves and a family ready and out the front door at a certain time. Whatever your movements are around your home on any given day, it is either gently guiding you or it can be quietly sabotaging you if it's not set up right to support you. Because, yes, our environments are really important, and if they're not set up right to support those things that we need to do and make them easy, then we will be set up to fail. We will be set up to feel frustrated in our homes. Because if something is difficult to do, if it's hard to do in your home, you simply won't do it consistently. So, what can we do in our homes to make the right behaviours or the habits that we want to do more the easiest ones? A couple of examples here. Let's take the exercise example, um, which I'm trying to incorporate more into my home. So, a really small thing I've done that doesn't involve a massive renovation at all, it's just thinking about little changes in your home. Because I want to exercise more and I love being in a light-filled space. What I used to do is have all my exercise equipment upstairs in my little office room where it is a lot darker than down in the open plan kitchen where I've moved my exercise equipment to. So, what I've done is I've got a really beautiful it's like a coffee table, but it's also like a bucket with a lid and it's brass and it's very pretty. But what I've done is I've taken all of my exercise equipment and I've put it all in that storage coffee table downstairs in the open plan living room where the light is, where I really prefer to spend most of my time. And I've also moved my laptop to the kitchen island. So when the entire family is out, I work from the kitchen island, which is in the sunny area, and now I'm just much better set up in the mornings to grab some exercise equipment. It's right near my laptop, it's right near the kitchen island, it's in the bright area. I have no excuses, just take the lid off, get some exercise equipment out, get some weights out, and even if I'm doing five to ten minutes a day, it's better than I was doing before when all my exercise equipment was up in the darker office room. So think about small changes you can make like this. Even small changes can make a massive difference. Perhaps your yoga mat is hidden in a cupboard where visually you don't see it, so you're not getting that cue to use it. So perhaps put it out somewhere where you can see it because if visually it's there, or if it's more easily accessible, we really will just do the thing a lot more easily and a lot more regularly as well. So you could take this concept, really big or really small. You could use the same concept if you're thinking about a massive renovation. You could think about where I could design for a space that has some of my exercise equipment there. Perhaps you're lucky enough to have a bit more space, or a smaller room you can change into a home gym. If everything is out and everything is there, that behaviour comes a lot more easy to do. So really think about that. You know, think what is my home currently encouraging me to do without me even realizing that might be a good thing or it might be a bad thing. But my aim in this episode is to try and make it for more of the good things. Moving us really nicely on to number two, which is visual cues and environmental triggers. So our brains are incredibly responsive to what we see, and we're not always aware of this. Our habits are often triggered by visual cues. So your home can prompt the behaviors that you want. So let's use that as a tool to make our homes work better for us, to help us to be more productive, to help us create these better habits within our lives. So, for example, it could be something as simple as having your fruit bowl on the counter and not in the fridge, because then you'll eat more fruit when you see it there. It could be a book on your bedside table versus your phone, so that when you go to bed at night, you plug your phone in in a different room and you actually read. If that is one habit you want to develop more, is to read more, your book is there on your bedside table instead of your phone with Instagram or TikTok. If you want to write more, have your laptop somewhere open or a notebook. Like I said, I have my laptop open on my kitchen island most of the time, and I spend most of the time in that area. So when I'm doing other things and I get an idea, or I have an idea for a podcast episode or a concept or a design idea, my laptop's right there, and so it gives me that visual cue, and I quickly open up my notes app, make a note of that idea so that it's saved for later when I've got time to go back to it. So we can all kind of use these little visual cues and designing for those. So keeping in mind when we're designing our home, again, this could be on a much bigger scale when you're renovating, or it could be a really small concept, like just putting that fruit bowl out on the countertop. This also ties really into that um decluttering philosophy that I have because you know, all the clutter competes for our attention and increases our mental load. So that is that is almost flipping this idea on its head, but it's a negative thing because if we have lots of clutter around us, that then makes our brain incredibly responsive to that clutter, and it starts making us think about all the things we need to do with that clutter. Do we need to do the washing up? Do we need to put some stuff away? Do we need to drop that thing off at someone else's house because they brought something over for dinner in it? So all of those things are subconsciously, or sometimes consciously, constantly making our brains work and then distracting us perhaps from the things we really want to do and the habits we really want to build. So use this in a positive way. Flip it with positive things that are going to make you have better habits, like the fruit bowl, like the book on your bedside table, like the yoga mat that's somewhere you can see it. Because when it's visible, it just becomes actionable. And if something's hidden away, it's forgotten. So really think about that, and this is also very much what James Clare talks about in Atomic Habits, um, in the section that really drew me in about our environment, is he talks about these things being there when we need it, making it easy for ourselves to develop better habits. Like I know in the book he talks about having your exercise clothes, your workout clothes just laid out, ready to go in the morning with your trainers and your water bottle and everything you need, so you can just grab and go and not even really have time to talk yourself out of it. So I think this idea of visual cues and environmental triggers is so powerful, and we can use it in our homes in just so many different ways. And we must also make sure that we know that we can use it for good, but also that these visual cues are also things in our lives and in our homes that can be frustrating for us, whether that be clutter or mess or whatever it may be. Okay, number three, let's move on. Let's talk about designing for ease and that friction versus that flow. So, this is really where we come really into the renovation part of this concept. It's because good layout and good design can help to remove a lot of that friction from daily habits because a poor layout can cause really these kind of micro frustrations and this resistance in our space. So, on a larger scale, in terms of layout, think about how you want to move through the house in the morning, in the evening, the activities you and your family need to do in the home, what would make your life easier within your own home, whether that's to do with tiny things like having your coffee station set up the night before and planning for a space for that in your kitchen at planning stage, or if that's on a much larger scale in terms of whether you want an open plan space but you still want that connection with your family. So perhaps your habit goal or your habit aim is to be able to chat with your entire family every evening and have that connection, then you can plan for that. You can plan for a space where you can all come together for an hour or two in the evening. It could be a kitchen diner, it could be an open plan living area with the option to shut off the living room with perhaps some doors or some sort of screening when you want more privacy. So this concept of designing for ease can be seen again as a really small thing or a really big thing if you're thinking about it in terms of a big renovation. So, other little things that you can do is at planning stage again, think about what are your frustrations in life? What could you do in your home to build those better habits? As an example, let's say one of the habits you want to develop is getting out of the house on time every day. Perhaps, like a lot of us, you're one of those people that you find it quite frustrating to get out of the house, you can't quite find where everything is, you need to make sure the kids have got what they need for school. All of these things, you can make it easy for yourself, you can use your home as a tool, you can have a place at the door or in your hallway or in an area in your living room where everyone's backpacks are ready the night before, where everyone's shoes are, so they're not scattered all around the house. You can think about it in terms of setting up your kitchen for a smoother morning where everyone can get to what they need to get to easily, so you're not getting frustrated with each other. One person trying to do one thing and another person trying to do another. So you can really think about your entire morning and how your whole family uses the house and moves through the house in the morning, and then think about the frustrations and then plan for that better, smoother transition into the morning, and how everything could be made a little bit easier and therefore a little bit faster, and also think about things you can do the night before, which goes back to our previous point of visual cues and environmental triggers, and all of those together you can use to support yourself to make sure that you can get out of the door on time. Because if everything's easy and everything has a place, and we get our families to work together to help keep that system going, then it just becomes so much easier and so much more pleasant for everybody involved. And I really think this is where design can really help us improve how we feel within our homes, how we use our homes, improving our habits and improving our productivity as well. And speaking of productivity, that brings us really nicely on to the next point, which is number four, designing for focus and protecting your energy. So this is a slightly deeper, kind of more emotional angle on the concept, but our environment really directly impacts our ability to focus and to think clearly. I mean, it whether it's clutter, whether it's noise, whether it's poor lighting, all of that is just cognitive drain. Our brains are trying to do one thing, but our environment is feeding it all of this stimulation. And we can really plan so that we can avoid a lot of this in our homes. Because if we want to build those better habits, we really are going to need better focus and more energy to concentrate on them. And so we need our homes to support that. I really do think that productivity isn't always about pushing harder, it's about creating the conditions around us that help us to focus more, that feel that feels right to us, that makes us feel we're in a good place to do our best work. And I find that with myself as well. I have a routine in the morning, I get the kids out of the door, and I have a little routine where I make sure everything is away, everything is clear, you know, as best as I can do, dedicate a small amount of time to that every single morning, and I really set myself up for the day, whether that's setting up to be ready to completely focus on some exercise, whether that be like today, to be ready to record a couple of episodes of this podcast. I just get myself mentally in a really good place where there's nothing else distracting me, everything that I need to be calm and to support me, to do whether it's this recording or some exercise and not get distracted, I'll do those first. And having certain things in my home and having my home a certain way really does support that, and then I do really feel like that gives me the time and the energy to be productive and to do things like recording this podcast every week. And we can do this in lots of different ways. We've already talked about natural light, and you know that light helps with alertness, it helps with motivation. I know it certainly does for me. The clear surfaces helps with our calmer minds. I've talked about that quite a lot already. And another thing that really helps is having defined zones because that really gives us our mental boundaries. So whether you're the type of person who prefers to work in an office, that gives you a clear mental boundaries so that when you go to that space, your brain knows that you are in work mode. So it's all about how you feel. Whereas I definitely feel I want the light, I want the openness, I want the calm before I can be productive. For someone else, it might be I need to go to a dedicated, smaller space and only have that to focus on. So it's really important as well that we realise what we need within our own homes to develop these better habits. And then moving on to number five, everybody. Our final point here today for this episode, but I wanted to talk about designing for identity and the person you want to be. So that person we kind of see when we think about ourselves, you know, having all these better habits, being more productive. We really can try and design for that. And you know, you don't have to just design for what you do, you can design for who you want to be. So your home can really support you to become that person that you want to be. And again, you can use it as a tool to do that. Let's say, for example, you want to be a person who cooks more, you want to do more home cooking for your family, or you want to learn how to cook an amazing meal to have your friends over for a dinner party. So, you know, think about that when you're designing your home or when you're Organizing or planning your home. Design that kitchen that invites you in, where it's really easy to find things to move around, where you're not having to dig to the bottom of a drawer to find that saucepan you need to cook that particular thing. So think about these things when you're thinking about what you want to do more of and the habits you want to build. We could go back to the point of wanting to read more. Perhaps you can create a tiny little reading corner that you're drawn to in your home. Perhaps it's a cozy corner with a nice lamp and all your books on a shelf. Or perhaps you just want to be a bit more calm in your home and want to slow down a bit more. So I talked about this in a previous episode where it's designing for pause points within your home. At layout stage again, it's thinking about how you move through your home, where the light might come in, where it might be a really good place for a window seat or a chair, somewhere you could sit and have a coffee or a glass of wine and just take a moment for yourself. It all ties directly into kind of our deeper emotional, our deeper personal identities, and just showing that our homes are not just functional, you know, it's more, it's more than that. But just to end off this episode, um, I want to just talk about what I love about atomic habits. It's that it's not really about massive overwhelming change. I mean, if we're talking about doing a massive renovation, then obviously that's different because we can we can plan for that, we can think about it on a larger scale, but still think about how we're going to use our homes and how we can include for those little things every day that are going to make a massive improvement to our lives. But the book is more about these small shifts that can compound over time. And honestly, that's how I think about home design as well. You don't always need a huge renovation, sometimes it's just about moving a few things, rethinking a layout, or setting up one little corner a little bit differently, or reorganizing one cabinet, or switching one area for another. And so we often think that our habits are about discipline, but more often than not, they're just really about design and how we set our environment up for success. And when your home is set up to support you, you know, just kind of quietly, consistently, in the background, just being there, being that framework that you live your life through every day, that's when real change starts to feel just a little bit easier. And James Clear says that if you want to build a habit, you have to make it obvious and you have to make it easy, and really we can use our homes as tools to do that for us. And that is also exactly what I think good design is. It's removing friction, it's just setting things up so the right choice is the easy choice without us having to think about it too much. But that brings us to the end of the episode, everybody. I hope you enjoyed this one. I really loved researching this topic, and I loved the connection between habits and how our home supports us, and I hope it was really useful and valuable to you. If you love the episode, do give us a review. It really does help other renovators and other people interested in the same topics to find us. And if you want to hear more from me, you can subscribe and follow on with all of the other episodes to come. But it's bye for now, everybody. I hope you have a really good week.