Discover how to thrive at home through simple design hacks

We recently had the pleasure of hosting a live online masterclass with Carrie Cotton Design called Thrive At Home through simple design hacks.  Carrie is a brilliantly talented interior designer with over 14 years of experience.

Carrie Cotton Designs

She really helps her clients establish a clear direction for their interior design projects so that they can confidently take the next steps to creating a home that they love and that functions for themselves and their family.  She’s all about making design fun and accessible and really stops you feeling overwhelmed, so we were very lucky that she shared some of her top tips with us.

If you’re like many of us, you’ve spent 95% of your time at home since March and are probably yearning for a calm space that you can chill out in?  Perhaps you’d love to discover how to create a little space of your own so that you can enjoy your pot of tea and do your Tea Routines in a relaxing environment?

Top 5 Steps to Create A Home You Love & Thrive at Home

Carrie shared her top 5 steps that you can take to create a home that you love and feel proud of – and ultimately, Thrive at Home!

1 – Establishing your needs… your space has to function for you and it’s important to know how want to feel when you’re using it.  Grab a notebook and pen, start at your front door and walk through your house room by room noting down what NEEDS done.

2 – Establishing your wants… repeat step 1 but this time list your WANTS.  How do you want your hallway to feel?  How do you want your living room to feel etc…

3 – List these by room/area of your home… combine your two lists into one and categorise by room.

4 – Prioritise.. this is an essential step to stop you feeling overwhelmed.

5 – Get to work with your focused, personalised design plan.  Now the fun begins and you can start searching for keywords on sites like Pinterest, Google and Houzz.

To read these steps in more depth, click here for your complimentary copy of Carrie’s informative eBook.

Where to start?

A really good place to start is by walking in your front door and just noticing everything that feels slightly out of place and start to list all the things that need done.  Carrie was very big on getting to grips with how you want your house or your home to make you feel.  It’s also incredibly important to get to know your own personal style and she recommended having a look on Pinterest for images that really appeal to you that you feel would work in your home and then searching further for those terms.  So, for example, you might be looking for a cosy and romantic feel or perhaps a Scandi and minimalist look?  If you search for those terms on sites like Pinterest, you start to get a whole host of ideas.

Carrie also shared some amazing colour tips with us. For example, if you are unsure what colours go together, go to a trusted paint supplier and look at the colours they put together on their wallpaper – which often match their paint colours!

The Rule of Three

One thing that I really took away from the session was the ‘rule of three’, which I find particularly helpful when it comes to displaying items on shelves.  So, the rule of three suggests that you have something vertical, something horizontal and something structural (such as, a vase with a flower in it or something more sculptural).

There were so many tips there that I spent my whole weekend rearranging my house and decluttering and I will certainly be using Carrie’s design skills to help sort out my living room, which is very tartan at the moment (!)

Create a space for your Tea Routines

I think the whole idea of designing a space in your home where you can create a little cosy corner for enjoying your Tea Routine important because you’re more likely to find the time to pause for tea to help calm and re-balance your mind.

Lessons from Japan

From a young age I’ve been obsessed with the Japanese tea ceremony and it’s the perfect example of appreciating the moment to pause for tea.  Japanese beauty is often discovered in the experiencing, not just the seeing.  They also tend to appreciate that the beauty of an object is really only completed by using and treasuring it… it’s only then that it starts to evoke memories.

It turns out that our actual needs are really quite simple and happiness often comes from appreciating the beauty that exists right where we are without the need for lots of extra things and expensive products.  For example, cut flowers are an important part of the tea ceremony and they in turn often communicate a deeper, calm beauty that only comes with a passing of time.  They have the added benefit of reminding us of the natural cycle of life and the importance of living now.

Make the most of what you already have & choose personal objects which will bring meaning…

So, my take home from all this is that it’s super important that we start to seek beauty with all our senses and to look at what we actually have now rather than constantly desiring more.  The key may be to choose objects wisely with meaning and emotion… things that we can cherish and that will mean something to us in the future.

If you’d like to find out more about Carrie Cotton’s services please click this link… And if you’d like to get started on creating your own Tea Routines please check out our tea journey subscription.  Joining our Tea Journey is the quickest and most effective way to get started using Tea Routines to live more NOW!

Please share your thoughts and tips with us on social @eteaket and how you Thrive at Home!

Thanks, Erica