Our first home [pictured] was NOT good vibes. It had *no vibes* and was so bland that initially I had zero interest in touring the property when my then-fiancé pulled up the Realtor.com listing.

You see, I had my heart set on a historic home with character. One with high ceilings and maybe even an exposed brick wall. What I ended up with was an 80s cookie cutter with rotting trim and excessive color coordination. What do I mean by that? Everything. Was. Beige. The exterior siding? Beige. Our interior walls? Accessible Beige. Our cabinets are antiqued-off-white, our countertops are tan, and our backsplash colors rival the foundation aisle at Target.

I was wildly underwhelmed, BUT the location was [still is] primo; my best friend lived a block away and EVERY stadium Columbus has to offer is within walking distance. As are the gyms, coffee shops, restaurants, and nightlife. The list went on, so we went in to escrow and moved into the beige-builder-grade two days after our wedding in 2018.

At the time we were both working corporate jobs, so we spent our weekends landscaping, painting, and adding wall treatments for the character I craved. For my day job I modified warehouse environments to produce optimal results in the form of improved productivity metrics. In hindsight, I quite literally spent every waking hour of my days dedicated to the improvement of the spaces around me. And it paid off.

I inadvertently converted industry teachings into residential practices that improved our day-to-day lives. Slowly our city-house *vibes* started to improve and we started to feel more at peace, more joyful, and more relaxed in our own home. At work they taught me lean, but what I was really learning was environmental design. I could glance an overhead of a facility and inherently understand how people and product were meant to move around the space. My teachings and trainings called this flow but it could have just as easily been called feng shui.

My passion projects at home and design work for my day job cultivated in me one not-so-profound belief: spaces have impact. Different spaces produce different feelings. Different feelings evoke different motivations. Different motivations create different outcomes. I believe that to change your environment is to change your life.

In short, there are teachings and practices in industry that have applicability in the home. Tools, both psychological and physical, that are employed to make the lives of workers around the world easier. In the posts that follow I’m going to detail what I’ve learned and how I’ve applied it to improve the day to day lives of the ones we love the most, in our own home.

Spaces have impact…what is yours trying to say?