New Year, New Focus

Welcome 2019, what will you bring?

Do you set New Years goals? I was at my Burn Boot Camp class this morning (if you haven’t heard of it, you should definitely check it out, https://burnbootcamp.com/) and the program just kicked off a ‘raise the bar’ challenge to challenge you to improve upon your own personal goals. Today was push ups. Ugh not fun. We had to do as many push ups as we could in a set time period and mark that number on the wall. Next Monday, we will do the same, push push push and mark our number on the wall. Over the next six weeks we strive to see our numbers increase.

It got me thinking, we can translate that simple exercise into ANYTHING we do. Our OWN goals are what matter. Who cares what the person next to us is doing, or what the statistics say we should be doing. As long as we are improving upon ourselves, then we are meeting that challenge.

So how does ‘raise the bar’ relate to home design? We are constantly inundated with design trends, hot new wall colors (ever hear of gray) or new home styles (mid-century modern anyone) or new product types (reclaimed wood everything) and we all want those new things in our homes, NOW. But really what we should be doing is to look at our homes individually, what works cohesively in our space, what works for our needs, our inhabitants AND our budget.

Maybe you LOVE clean lined design and want to change your whole home to fit that trend. Before you run through your house with a crowbar to remove all decorative detail, take a step back and look at how you can start to incorporate that feeling and style into your space. Maybe you start with one room and really take a look at it, where can you change things up to be more clean lined? Maybe tone down the paint color, replace the traditional wall decor with a modern piece of art that allows everyone to interpret it in their own way, or take down those heavy window treatments and put up something simple and airy, or call me crazy, NOTHING at all. Maybe you start with one aspect of your home, for example, light fixtures. Where can you update your fixtures to pull in clean lined, simple style. Kitchen Island pendants, table lamps, and flush mount ceiling lighting, are all easy and relatively inexpensive pieces to update. Lighting, both functional and decorative, can totally transform a space!

The point is, we will be more successful in whatever we do, IF we focus on small, measurable steps that WE can do rather than worrying about how we can meet the goals of the world around us.

Happy New Year to you and your family! I hope 2019 is prosperous and filled with lots of fun adventures.