On Fresh Starts, Sexy Spaces & Living with Less

If you’ve been following my Instagram feed lately, you may have noticed that I’ve been busy working on a few offline projects, one of which is the re-vamp of my living space. A few months ago, I shared with you guys some of the frustrations I was having with my current bedroom situation (namely, it’s lack of sex appeal.) Since I’m still staying with my Mom here on the West Coast, we made the decision together that I would help fix up an area in the downstairs (ground level) of her house so I could make it my own.

At the time, the space that would become my new bedroom and office was being used as a storage room and was full of art supplies, sewing materials and stuff from my Mom and sister’s Etsy business. Most of my free time in May and June was spent sorting, organizing, rearranging and cleaning to get the space ready. Once that was taken care of, my Mom kindly helped me paint and put together my new furniture. Here are some progress shots, curtesy of Joe the Intern who has been overseeing the whole project.

The room went from being more or less a blank canvas…

….to a very cozy abode just for me. My new space has lots of light and floor to ceiling windows that open onto an patio space. It’s bright, it’s airy and really feels like me. I love it!

I’ve slowly been adding more art work to the walls that what you see below, however I wanted my new space to be as minimal as possible. After years of living with a lot of colour, I was really craving clean white walls and furniture with some fun black & white accents. I have a lot of colourful possessions and I wanted them speak for themselves.

For the first time since I moved from Toronto, I have a bookshelf large enough to accommodate my sprawling collection of books and a bed with an actual bed frame, that isn’t squished into one corner. In other words, I finally have the adult space that I have been craving. Even Matilda, our resident office manager seems happy with the new digs. She’s been spending lots of time sleeping on my bed and hanging out with me on the patio while I work.

One of the things I’ve recently discovered is that I love working outdoors. Behold my new “office” for the next month or so. My patio looks out onto a mini-bamboo forrest. It’s pretty awesome.

If my “mini-move” (as I like to call it since I only moved into another area of the house) has taught me anything it’s that “less” definitely feels better than “more”; and we really don’t need as much stuff as we think we do.

I was so excited to purchase new things for this space and finally unpack old ones that I’d shipped from Toronto, however I ended up getting rid of more things than adding new ones.

My bed-frame and bookshelf are new, however I didn’t purchase much else. The desk featured above was found for free on the side of the road and refinished with the help of my Mom. M new desk chair is an old chair from the garage that was painted to match the desk. When it finally came time to unpack my boxes from Toronto, I grabbed a couple of my favourite books and three items: the pottery pieces that you see sitting on top of my bookshelf. I’d been obsessing over unpacking these boxes for so long, however aside from a bunch of photos that will remain in storage, these were the only things I wanted.

I read a lot and have a bad habit of buying books in bulk. When I was getting ready to move all of my stuff downstairs I had to deal with my “to-read” pile which (literally) was waist high. Some of the books I’d recently purchased, however some had been in the pile for years. Even though I love reading, this pile had been subconsciously stressing me out for quite a while. I’d look over at it while I was trying to write and think “I NEED TO READ ALL THE THINGS AND DO ALL THE THINGS RIGHT NOW” which is neither healthy or realistic. So, I did the thing that made me feel scared and exhilarated at the same time: I packed up 90% of those books and shipped them off to the used book store – one of the best and most freeing decisions I’ve made in a while. When I’m ready to read them I can get them out of the library or I might even get an e-reader.

My live/work space now feels much more streamlined, relaxing and well, me. This has definitely made for more pleasant work days and has encouraged me to be more minimalist in all areas of my life. Joe the Intern agrees.

To feel sexy, you have to feel comfortable. Whereas I used to feel at odds with my bedroom, now I have a personal space that’s much more in line with who I am and how I want to feel at this point in my life. And yes, it does feel sexy. Although I won’t be having any marathon sex sessions in here any time soon, if the chance presented itself I could see myself comfortably waking up next to someone in this space and sharing a morning coffee together on my patio – and that is a good feeling.

When it comes to your personal space, what’s important to you?