Correlation between Our Emotions and Our Home Décor

Our state of mind

First, I wanted to share some great personal news with you. It’s been a long and complicated process to bring three people, refugees from Ukraine to our home in Massachusetts. Anastacia, 19, Valerie, almost 17, and her mom, Olga, have been living with us for five weeks now! The girls will be attending a local community college and probably staying with us for 2 years. Hopefully they will do well and go to a university after two years. So, they will have a brand-new life here in the US. It is a lot of work to get them situated here, but they are sweet and full of wonder, and it is fun to introduce them to the local community and culture. Wherever they go, they experience lots of love and care, and this is all healing and life changing for them.

My other great news is that my book “The Soulful Home Design Guide” is moving along through publishing steps and undergoing an interior layout phase now. We are aiming to publish it this fall.

I wanted to share today an idea from the book that is a result of my observation of people and their homes. It is about the psychological aspect of home design.

“Our state of mind (positive or negative) and our emotions are reflected in how we decorate our homes. Below is a list of some common blockage scenarios that I often see when working with people in their homes.

I hope you don’t feel embarrassed or judged while reading it. You are not alone; everyone has some subconscious issues going on—things that are not quite visible. I treat my clients with the utmost compassion and understanding when it becomes obvious that a certain underlying issue from their life is represented in their home’s décor. In fact, it works best to gently but truthfully bring light to these hidden underlying core issues and bring them to the surface. Only then are you able to deal with them. Be assured that I, too, had a few things going on that are listed here. This list is not comprehensive; these are just the most common scenarios. However, it is enough to help you bring awareness to your environment and start recognizing your own blockages that are reflected in your home.

Blockage Scenarios

This set of blockage scenarios relates to how your state of mind influences the environment, which can reveal an underlying issue:

• The house has few decorations, despite being occupied for some time. It could be a few years since you moved in, but the walls are still bare and the house furnishing and decorating is still unfinished. This issue usually correlates with indecisiveness – not knowing yourself well enough or not trusting yourself well enough to decorate. In this scenario, you are not open yet to experiencing life fully.
• The house is too full. Every possible surface is occupied with keepsakes, decorations, and other small items, and the walls are busy with art and photos. This situation correlates with indecisiveness too, but also with insecurity and feeling unloved. Decorations and objects provide a sense of comfort and warmth that is otherwise absent from your life. Most likely, as a child you didn’t experience enough warmth or affection and felt unloved. There is an emptiness and numbness inside that you are trying to fill.
• As a variation of the previous issue, too much clutter could also relate to a number of issues such as avoidance, procrastination, attention deficit, clinginess, inability to let go, and fear of uncertainty.
• Art is predominantly dark colored and emotionally sad. Some art depicts autumn scenes of bare trees or dark, stormy water. These choices point to sadness inside, often depression, as well as loneliness and feeling unloved or disconnected.
• Pictures of lonely women. Lots of single women are attracted to images of lonely women. Often the women depicted in their art choices are beautiful and strong but rarely joyful. More often they are sad or proud, and this perpetuates loneliness.
• If your environment doesn’t have much color (mostly gray, white, or beige), it means that a certain sweetness and ability to feel joy might be missing from your life. It could also reveal that you follow fashion rather than your heart’s passion.
• If you have many small art pieces but not a single large one, it shows that you may feel unworthy and never fully go for what you want.
• Old, run-down, unmatching, or even broken furniture says that your mind is set on poverty and you are having difficulty letting go.
• A perfect, clean, and well-organized house might be great, but not always. Sometimes it points to too much control and an inability to let go, relax, and enjoy yourself. When you become obsessed with cleanliness and organization and every little thing that is “off” bothers you, it reveals that you are out of balance.
• The same décor for a long time, unchanged, in most cases means that you became stagnant, disengaged, and lost touch with the flow and juices of life.
• If the house is uncluttered but the closets are stuffed, it can mean you are hiding behind a façade, you have low self-esteem, or you have hidden emotional issues but are reluctant to deal with them yet.
• Children’s toys in every room and children’s projects and art on every surface show that you have lost touch with yourself and children have taken over your universe. Usually an adult cohabitating relationship suffers in a household like this.
• Piles of mail, magazines, and shoes at the entrance and in the kitchen point to a lack of organization, which creates an additional tension and stress in the family.

After reading these examples of potential blockages and identifying some of them, you probably have a sense of what you want to let go of in your life. It might be wise to choose two or three aspects to begin with, but if you feel like you want to let go of more than that, go for it! It works differently for different people. Some people, when they see the blockage and how it holds them back, want to change everything quickly, while others are more cautious and prefer to go slowly. Follow your instincts and go for what feels right.”

Please let me know if this makes sense to you. I would be very curious to know if you could identify with anything in the list and whether you feel inspired to change your décor so it projects a different emotion.

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