Recently, I resolved to add “Decluttering” to my daily task list, meaning that every single day I discard something I do not need or organise better something I do need. I might throw in the bin loose old pages with Terms and Conditions no longer relevant or keep my make-up items in a new pouch, arrange in one place notebooks I do not want to part with, collect all packets of seeds, berries and nuts (which I consume regularly as sources of energy because I have reduced my intake of carbohydrates) and put them in one drawer.
These small activities give me a sense of control over my environment, improve my mental health and increase focus and productivity. They have also made me more interested in décor enhancement. I always had a love for good interior design but now I have a heightened awareness of just how much we can do by ourselves in tiny ways using what we have to creative a cleaner, cosier, more visually pleasing personal space for ourselves. Every day I look around—at pairs of pants, ribbons, cartons—and try to come up with ideas. Or what can I make without special expertise, with inexpensive raw materials?
Here are five projects we could consider when it comes to DIY—based on online resources and my own preferences.
1). Coffee Station
Coffee is important for almost all of us, particularly for those who are self-employed and live at home most days. For me, one day without this beverage and I get very irritable.
It makes sense to dedicate a part of your space to the ritual of coffee-making. A list on Good Housekeeping lays out coffee bars that you can design at your home or office, using cabinets or carts, with styles that could be rustic or whimsical.
{Image: A Coffee Station in an old closet designed by Montgomery, Alabama-based interior designer Ashley Gilbreath.}
2). Colourful Wall Art
Colours have a powerful effect on our mind and can influence behaviour—a fact that brand strategists have always known and taken advantage of.
Specific colours can evoke certain phenomena, qualities and meanings (red: passion, purple: nobility, yellow: hope, green: growth, black: mystery) and that put us in certain moods. But the presence of colours in general—mixed, bright, bold, in different shapes or merely in splashes—can instantly energise us and stir us into activity. Anybody can get a few small canvases and pack of paints and prepare a wall art collection with basic designs.
{Image: DIY wall art (Source: Pinterest)}
3). Organisers from Old Denim
I’m very interested in the possibilities of denim. We all have pairs of jeans that we do not wear. You can recycle them to create an “organiser” for small items like keys and sunglasses. The fabric may be opened and sewed to form a surface upon which pockets made be arranged and stitched. The final result may be displayed as a functional wall hanging.
{Image: An organiser made out of jeans pockets. (Source: Pillar Box Blue)}
4). Vision Board
No DIY discussion should miss a “vision board”. In the world of self-help and personal development, one hears a lot about “manifesting” and “visualisation”. A vision board is a place where we paste or pin imagery and words related to our desires—the career, the relationships, the possessions, the places, the pursuits, the lifestyle that we want for ourselves.
Such a practice might almost sound childish to some but the more committed you get to achieving peak performance and learning about how the brain works, the more you understand the logic behind it.
Neuroscientist Dr Tara Swart of, lecturer at MIT and Oxford, explains: “Looking at images on a vision board primes the brain to grasp opportunities that may otherwise gone unnoticed. That’s because the brain has a process called ‘value-tagging’ which imprints important things onto your subconscious and filters out unnecessary information.”
{Image: Example of a Vision Board (Source: Pinterest)}
5). Post-it Goal List
Next, sticky notes carry with them a certain undeniable persuasiveness, whether they are directed from one person to another or one person unto their own self. Their presence is small yet powerful, hard to ignore.
Post-its can be incorporated in your space in many creative ways. One is in the form of a monthly or weekly goal list framed and displayed in your bedroom or dining area. Instead of peeling the sheets from the pad and pasting them here and there randomly, a neat and ordered collection of major tasks upon a simple or more artistic template will incite you to take action and finish the job, so that you could simply remove the sheets with old notes and put fresh ones—a fun and positive way of hacking your dopamine.
{Image: Template for Post-it Goal List (Source: Pinterest)}
Written by Tulika Bahadur.
