The Lazy Genius Podcast - #175 - How to Create a Cozy Space

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

We’re about halfway into September, and even though temperatures and even seasons depending on your hemisphere are different right now, something about life shifts when we hit September. And whenever I hit a shift, the importance of my environment is more obvious. Creating a space that feels safe and cozy, whatever that looks like for you, is important for your mental health. This episode will give you steps on how to do that, but the important thing here is to name the importance of your environment when you’re in the middle of something long or at the start of something new. Stuff Mentioned Preorder Myquillyn Smith’s new book Welcome Home and claim your preorder bonuses before Tuesday, September 15th. Her other books in order of release are The Nesting Place and Cozy Minimalist Home. Myquillyn’s guest appearance on The Next Right Thing podcast hosted by the one and only Emily P. Freeman. Follow me over on Instagram to see my story highlight where I walked through my entire cozy home process. Download a transcript of this episode. *Books mentioned above are affiliate links. Thanks for your support. This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi there, you're listening to the Lazy Genius Podcast. I'm Kendra Adachi and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today is episode 175, How to Create a Cozy Space. We're about halfway into September and even though temperatures and even seasons depending on your hemisphere are different right now, something about life shifts when we hit September. And whenever I hit that shift, the amount of the moment. importance of my environment is more obvious. In fact, if you take anything from this episode or need to just like peace out right now, hear this sentence when you're in a place of transition or inside what Briné Brown calls day two, that messy middle, pay attention to your environment.

Creating a space that feels safe and cozy, whatever that looks like for you, is important for your mental health. Truly, don't ignore your space. I'm not saying you need to like, decorate within an inch of your life and buy all new things or upend your entire house or copy someone else's style or even has something that resembles like the common idea of what style is. Just pay attention. This episode will give you steps on how to do that. But the important thing here is to name the importance of your environment when you're in the middle of something long or at the start of something new, which in some ways I guess that includes like all life, but that's okay too. So now in this episode, it does not have, we don't have an official sponsor.

in the traditional sense. But this episode is, is gifted to you, we'll say, on behalf of Michael and Smith's new book, Welcome Home. She is not paying me or even asking me to mention her book here on the podcast, especially in the sponsor section of the episode. But I believe in her message and in this book as a beautiful enhancement to your lazy genius life as it relates to your environment. She is my home guru and has taught me everything I know, including a good portion of what I'm going to share in this episode. So while this episode, it technically isn't sponsored by her new book Welcome Home, releasing tomorrow Tuesday, September 15th, I'm going to talk about it and encourage you to consider if it's right for you. I think the likely answer is yes. In my experience, if you like me, you'll like Michael N.

And fun fact, so many of you listen to The Next Right Thing with Emily. P. Freeman, who is my real-life best friend, and a lot of you say that our spaces hold hands really well together, which they do. Well, Emily and Mike Wullen are real-life sisters. A lot of people don't know that. So in case you're one of those people, they're sisters, which is so fun. All three of our spaces are such good companions to each other. Michaelin says all of our books would be friends at camp. So it's very likely if you resonate with one of us, you'll resonate with all of us. Not always, because again, we're all different and I don't know your life, but I would be remiss to not tell you that they both exist and can very much be companions to your life as they have been in mine.

Okay, so let's talk about how to create a cozy space. And I'm so grateful for Michaelan's perspective on so much of this over the years. Okay, the lazy genius step one for creating a cozy space is to wait for it. Name what matters. Okay, first, what matters? What matters? matters is that you have an environment that feel safe, welcoming, peaceful, encouraging, whatever adjective you need for your life. Most of our homes are always in at least a minor state of transition. So don't have expectations that your entire home will feel like perfect or exactly the way you want it to feel all the time and right away, right? I would encourage you, as Michael and has encouraged me to just focus on one space. Start small. So starting small matters.

And once you choose the space that you would like to make cozy, name what matters about that space. I encourage you to choose a space that makes a big emotional impact. Maybe it's the room you hate the most. Maybe it's the room you're in the most. Maybe it's a reading nook that if it served your purposes would improve your life in massive ways on a daily basis, you get to choose. And once you choose, name what matters about that space. Pick your words. Choose its function and how it feels. It's also important to name what season of life you're in, what season of the year you're in, what your limitations are and not ignore them. Sometimes we ignore all the components of a space because it just kind of feels hopeless. It's too much, like having no budget or like we can't get any.

new or we have orange formica countertops that we can't replace or maybe you have a spouse that hates changing anything or you have kids that seem to mess literally everything up so go ahead and name your season and your limitations but don't do it with the intent of letting those things steer the ship or make you wallow in a pit of despair or just make you generally throw in the towel on all the things remember lazy geniuses live in their season and we let that season teach us something. The same can be said about our limitations. Let your season and your limitations be arrows to what is important, not hazard lights about what's wrong. So that's step one. Name what matters and then some other stuff under that. Name your stuff. Pick your space.

Name the stuff about that stuff. It's a big step one. Step two, go in the right order. This is another lazy genius principle. Start small is one. Going in the right order is another. Going in the right order, it makes a lot of difference in so many tasks. Obviously, the right order is relative and is often right for you. But in decorating, Michaelin has taught me that there is an actual right order. There is a right order in creating a cozy space. So let me just give it to you real quick.

Number one, get inspired. Find your style. Just whatever words you want to put on this part. But if you don't know what you want a room to look like and feel like, you'll just be Frankensteining furniture together and creating what Michaelin calls an accidental gallery wall because you just don't know what else to do. You need a direction, a creative direction, a stylistic direction, a purpose direction, something. And her suggestion of the best way to do that, which I completely agree with, is to create a Pinterest board. That's something.

thing that you can do. Now listen, I am, I'm usually not a Pinterest board person. It, it doesn't seem like it doesn't meet any good. But here's how you do it in a way that's actually helpful. You create one board for the one space you're looking at. Don't do one for your home, like your entire home, because different rooms have different feels and functions. So make a board for your one room, your one space. Make it secret if you feel weird about it. Sometimes people feel strange, people seeing their board. so you can make it secret and then pin any picture that gives you some kind of positive response. You don't have to like everything about the photo that you pin, and you likely won't. But if you like a rug or a chair, or the way a room feels, or the color palette, even though the style isn't quite you, any of that, pin it.

Don't edit your pins, just pin, pin, pin. Then scroll through after you have kind of pinned a lot and look for patterns. Have someone else look at it too, if you'd like, and name some patterns that they see. Is there a color palette that you notice? A wall color you're drawn to. Maybe there's always a camel-colored sofa in every living room photo, and you never knew that you really wanted a camel-colored sofa. Maybe there are a lot of plants or lots of mood lighting or no lighting at all, and it's really bright from windows. Look for patterns in your pins to give yourself some direction on what you like.

And remember that naming your style is your choice. You don't have to use style words that other people use. You don't have to be boho or mid-century modern or whatever if those feel too pigeonholie for you. Just say that you like furniture with thin legs. You like rustic texture. You like quirky lighting. It's okay to use your own words for your style. You're probably likely to stick with it more anyway. But grab some from that Pinterest board, some words as you notice what you like. As Michaelin says in her book, she says, do you want all of your home? Stop decorating like someone else.

Okay, then comes the rest of the order in terms of arranging your furniture. This is like a big deal. This is the actual, actual right order. I promise. All right, so furniture goes first. The biggest primary piece goes first. So in a bedroom, it's the bed. In a living room, it's the sofa.

So start with the primary furniture or the primary seating wherever you are. Then comes the secondary seating. extra chairs seats that you need but aren't necessarily the first place that you're going to sit that kind of thing then comes surfaces tables for drinks consoles for TVs those kinds of things do those those after your furniture is placed your beds and your seating next is your rug now that you see the footprint of your furniture and the best places for it buy a rug that fits it Michael and has a great rug rules, like a set of rug rules in her book, Cozy Minimalist Home. I love that. I just called them rug. I won't go into them now, but your rug is likely too small, probably. Now, if you can't afford a big rug right now,

consider layering a couple of smaller ones, but rugs make a room. I speak from experience. They really, truly do. Then after your rug comes your drapes and window treatments. Drapes are like such a delight. Hang them high. Let them hit the floor. They make your room seem more spacious and definitely warm and inviting. After that is lighting. I personally love statement lighting because you need lights for function. So why not choose lighting with some personality and some presence? It kind of does like a ton of decorating for you. why we go in this order. Okay, then you do the walls. Paint, art, et cetera. Now, here's the thing. Most of us start with paint. But it's a lot harder to match a paint color to an existing sofa or rug than a rug to a wall you've already painted, right? And then come accessories, which we also put

way too early in the process, don't we? That is why our rooms, at least I will speak for myself, that is why my rooms have often felt like like sort of arranged matchy match yard sales rather than put together rooms. We've got to go in the right order. So that was like such a crash course in the right order. That's honestly what the book Cozy Minimalist Home is completely about. It is a full book on the right order and breaks down the steps into further steps and it's so so helpful. Okay. So back to the bigger picture, lazy genius steps for creating a cozy space. So step one, name what matters and all that other stuff. Step two, go in the right order. Step three, be patient. Here's where a lot of us get stuck. We are frustrated by having a house full of messy kids and their toys. Our spouses are not

nearly as interested in creating a cozy space as we are. We don't have the budgets we want or the homes we want. We don't have a home at all. Maybe we've been wanting to say for a house, we're still in an apartment or a rental and that's frustrating. We're a little obsessive. We're a with things being perfect before we even begin. So we don't. We don't begin. We want to start from scratch on everything and get really impatient when we can't. So be patient. Start small. When I made our main living area more cozy last week on Instagram, I got a lot of questions about how long it took and how I did it with kids in the house or, you know, did I kick them out or whatever. So much of that is relative to your situation.

or even the day it happens, you know, it all depends. But instead of being patient with the process just taking longer than we'd like or accepting the fact that we're going to have interruptions from our kids who, you know, they like want to be helpful and stuff, we just don't start at all. We live in a home that we don't love because it feels too hard to start because of all the reasons not to. And I'm just here to say that maybe those aren't good enough reasons anymore. start with one little nook. Refresh in the right order. But be patient with your circumstances.

Don't let your small budget or your small children or your small amount of free time keep you from doing something. People decorate on shoestring budgets all the time. I have three children and I love the way my house feels and so do they. And they still have toys. They have a lot of them. You can do this. But you won't do it unless you start. And most of the time, you're not starting because you're frustrated by any number of factors that you feel impatient about because it's not the way you want it right now so you're just not going to do anything about it. And while, listen, that is absolutely your choice to make. And I encourage you to make whatever choice gives you life.

If waiting and kind of moping, dare I say, because it's not going to be perfect or ideal, if that keeps you from moving, I'm going to big sister you right now, Encourage you to not let that attitude be in charge. Because your environment and your joy in your home are impacted by that attitude in ways you probably don't want it to be. So be patient. Start small. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja or the Orange One. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette. with a flame thrower.

Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. Aw, isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art.

I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of. of awe. A special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. And finally, step four, use your senses. This is why I love Michael in's new book, welcome home, so much. It's basically a guide on how to incorporate your senses into decorating your home and making it a cozy space based on the season you're in. We love for the insides of our homes to reflect what's happening on the outside in the world and even sometimes reflect like what's happening on the inside of ourselves.

I have different energy in the summer than I do in the winter. So welcome home is all about creating cozy spaces that reflect your season. It's all about letting people into those spaces and hosting in a way that's life-giving and not about perfection or performance. Or So step four is use your senses. Last week, Mike Willen was a rare guest on the next right thing with Emily P. Freeman, her sister. And she told a story that was just so life-giving that I want to share it here in a very abridged version. She was talking about engaging our senses when it comes to the season and contrasted how we often feel compelled to decorate for fall, because we're in fall right now in my hemisphere.

Lots of brown and orange things that say grateful or fake pumpkins, whatever else that we can find. And then she said something like, imagine your kids coming home from school in the fall. There's a pot of cider on the stove. You have a candle burning that smells like fall, whatever fall smells like to you. Maybe you have a crackling fire or some nice fall music playing. You're making chili for dinner. How much more does that feel and smell and taste and sound like fall than the look of all the orange and brown stuff that we feel compelled to use, right?

We often start with how our homes look in the seasons, depending on the visual decor, right? To communicate that. when the rest of our senses are even more impactful, they cost less, they take up less space, and they're often the things that we remember for longer. So again, the steps, name what matters, go in the right order, be patient, and use your senses. Buying a bunch of new stuff or thinking you need to hire somebody to make your home beautiful, especially around the holidays, or thinking that it has to be beautiful in order to open its doors to other people. It's just not true. As Michaelin says, it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful. There is so much beauty and imperfection if we just

give ourselves permission to try and go slow. So if you have resonated with any of this, you need Michaelin in your life. This is her stuff. This is her message. So let me tell you just a little bit more about the book Welcome Home and what I like if there's a fun free thing that you get if you pre-order the book today because it comes out tomorrow Tuesday the 15th so first welcome home it helps you create a home that's fresh meaningful beautiful and always ready to host which obviously hosting looks a little bit different right now but it's it's still part of it right the book has step-by-step instructions for different things, beautiful photos, ideas for seasonal rhythms, and it helps you feel confident having people into your home and being a host. I actually endorsed this book. I've got to

read it early. So here's what I've already said about it. I'll just read you my endorsement. Welcome Home is thick with permission and inspiration. And I'm ready to invite someone over right now. Such a delightful, actionable collection of seasonal magic. Now again, Obviously the inviting. It looks a little different in these pandemic times, but it still applies in safe contexts. This is a great handbook on how to create that cozy seasonal space that's also ready to share with your people. Now the freebie. So many authors offer some kind of bonus for folks who pre-order the book because it's, for one, it's such a huge help to the author and the publisher. but it also, like it's a bit of a risk for a reader to buy a book before it's out because you can't flip through it in a bookstore and things like that. So as a thank you, a lot of authors offer a

pre-order bonus and Michael N has created one as well. It is called Welcome Home Prep School. It's about an hour's worth of short videos that walk you through all kinds of ways to incorporate intentionally lovely seasonal living into your home. She talks about home base, a fantastic concept for any lived-in-room, how to create a charcutory board, how to style your sofa. If you're like me, my throes never look like they're thrown. You know, you see those pictures of couches that just really look so welcoming and more of inviting. And I just can't figure out how to get my blankets. Well, guess what? Michaelent actually shows you how to put blankets on your couch. So it looks like even more inviting and cozy than it did before. The videos are so fun. She's just such a lovely

human being. And it's completely free when you pre-order the book in any form. from any retailer. You have to tell her, just like if you were around for my pre-order bonuses, for the Lazy Genius Way, where you order from, they don't know about Welcome Home Prep School. They are not going to give you that. Michaelin does. So you need to go to Michaelin's website to claim those, to claim welcome home prep school. So order and claim. Okay, I will put, I'll put a link in the show notes for you to check it out, by the way, just to kind of make it easy. But I hope this episode has given you some sparkle, you know? Give you a little seasonal sparkle about your own spaces and given you some tools on how to start small and making them feel like home

to you. And a reminder that my entire cozy home process for my whole living room area that I did last week, it is saved to an Instagram highlight at The Lazy Genius. The highlight is called cozy home. I show the whole process. I saved everything. The befores, the afters, the afters, where I got stuck, all of it. So you can check that out if you're a visual person and want to kind of see. And I just, I just have to say real quick, too, that we've been living in this, you know, cozied room for about a week now. And it's, I told my husband last night, I was like, I don't understand how making such, such small changes have been so incredibly impactful. Like, it has been easier to clean up. It's been easier to just sort of be in the space. It feels really warm, but it doesn't

feel cluttered. It's, it has changed the way that I live in my house and my family as well. Like we've just loved it. So all of that again is in the Instagram highlight cozy home. Okay. Also, final word. I got a lot of questions about where I got my furniture and, um, and also what the paint color is on my wall in the living room. So first of all, paint colors never look the same in real life that they do want a phone ever. So if you love, you love, like the feeling of the blue gray that is on my wall or any other color that you see online. Instead of asking the person for what the pink color is, which I'm not saying that you're being rude by asking that. I'm just saying you're probably not going to get. That answer is

really not the answer you're looking for. These are not the droids you're looking for. So what I would encourage you to do instead is know that that's like the vibe. Right. It's like, oh, I love that blue gray. I never would have thought to put blue on the wall. That's not like overwhelming. So go to the paint store and get a, you could even take your phone and show the story to a paint person. But like this is what I'm looking for. Can you help me? And then get a few samples of colors in that family. Then you paint big old swatches on the wall at home that you're wanting to paint and see how the light hits those swatches, how they look throughout the day. Okay. So if you're going to go through the trouble of painting a room, just do a little extra homework on the color that works for your space. don't just pick a color on an Instagram story that you think is pretty. It's probably different than you think in your own home.

Plus, I can't remember the name of my paint color anyway. Okay, the second thing, I got a lot of questions about where I got my furniture. Okay, so every single thing we own, we have owned for a really long time with the exception of just like a couple of chairs and like a shelf that we bought. And because I am choosing, ready for this? This is a real act of lazy genius guys. Because I am choosing to not be a genius about a post that has all my house resources because a lot of the things aren't even available anymore. I am just going to be lazy and tell you about it right here. I'm just going to tell you what stuff is. So if there is a piece that you were curious about, listen in. I'll tell you where we got it and likely why you can't get it anymore, which is so annoying, right? Okay, so our big tan living room couch, we have owned that for over a dozen years.

it used to be red when we bought it. It was red. We had it reupholstered when we moved into this house eight years ago or so. The room was just too small for a giant red couch. The living room we had before was a good bit bigger. And red, it would just like swallow the room. Plus, you guys, I don't really love the color red. I think we picked red in the beginning because it felt, I don't know, like statementy and grown up. So, which it could be for you. It just, it really isn't for us. How we learn our style over the years, you know. So we originally got that sofa at a furniture store that has been closed for six years. So there's that. All of our white storage pieces. So everything you see that is like a cabinet, a bookshelf that is like white or kind of creamish, all of those are

from IKEA, all of them. I don't know if they're still there, but IKEA, you know, a couple of have of them have like different doors that you can choose and all that kind of stuff but yeah they're all from ikea um let's see our dining table in our like main living area the smaller one that we eat out all the time is from pier one and we have had that longer than we've had our couch so i know that's not around anymore our white upholstered chair that's like in the corner with the salt pillow on it that is also from ikea um the but we bought it again uh six six six six seven, eight years ago, something like that. The blue rocking chair that's in the living room, like it's navy with a dark brown wood. And then the leatherish looking barstools at the kitchen

island are both from at home stores. And, okay, let's see, the gray sort of mid-century looking chair that's in the living room that's next to that blue rocking chair. It was actually left in our house when we bought it. It was just there. And we loved the lines of it. It had a really ugly fabric, but we like the shape, and so we had it re-apulstered. My desk, the one that's kind of like a maple-looking one, that's probably not the right wood, but it's like a light wood. My desk is from Target, bought it a couple years ago, so it might still be there. The tiny sideboard table next to the dining table that has the baskets on it. It's by our side door, as well as the giant dining room table in the main main dining room that has the white chairs around it both of those

pieces that console and that table were both custom made the dining table i found like a i just had our builder like build it when we was working on our house and then the console we got at the farmer's market there was like a little woodworker and it was so cute and so we got it um okay let's see the other things the white those chairs at the dining room table the white kind of modern looking chairs we got off Amazon and the gray couch that I always sit on for Instagram lives it is actually from a local place called area that makes furniture here in North Carolina. Oh and the light fixture over the dining table the one that looks like a basket like an upside down basket that's from IKEA it's pretty old Michael and used to have that in her laundry room she still might I don't know the one with

the jars hanging over the big dining table that is for from pottery barn, I think. Is that it? I think that's it. So, IKEA at home, custom pieces, or local places, and Target, or places that no longer exist. I'm such a good home blogger. Okay. That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you feel a little bit inspired for your own space. And if you do change anything up, even just like a vase of cut branches from your yard, tag me if you share it. I would love to see. I appreciate every single one of you. And until next time, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Check that link in the show notes to pre-order Michael N's book, Welcome Home and get that

free pre-order bonus for Tuesday. Second birthday. I'm Kendra. And I'll see you next week. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that more dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A-plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.