Home Design for the Highly Sensitive Person.

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Jess shares a little of her story, plus 5 of her home design tips for the Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) and/or those with Sensory Processing Sensitivities (SPS). written in 2019 One piece of knowledge that dramatically changed my life was learning about having Sensory Processing Sensitivities (SPS), or being an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person). This explained how not only my immediate environment affected me... Click here for our FREE Interior Design Guide! ...but how EVERYTHING…

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What We Use for Natural Cleaning.

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I had started to describe more about the natural cleaning products featured in our final laundry room post, but that was making it waaaaaaay too long so I needed to start a new little post about this. I did NOT think I would be talking about our move to more natural cleaning on our blog, but it just happened naturally. (No pun intended. Really. Matt is the king of puns, not me.) So here we…

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Why We Ripped Out Our Small Shower.

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First, we gave a full master bath tour in our upstairs house tour. Now we're going to show you our master bathroom remodel floor plans! Let me tell ya, we are SO excited to share this one with you! It's big! It's brilliant! It's...going to be beautiful! (Aha! I knew I could find another B word.) The complete list of our master bathroom remodel! Q: "Why are you changing the floor plan?" A: It started…

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Why We Ripped Out Our Small Laundry Room.

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We're moving our laundry room. Here's why: Tell me, do you feel any sensations when you look at this space? You can find the after of this room here! I do. Oh boy do I feel some. If you want to jump ahead you can see what we turned this small room into here! A few of the sensations I feel in this laundry room are:    Anxiety.  Shortness of breath.  Claustrophobia.  Panic. Why?  …

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Painting Over Old, Frightening Cabinets.

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Q: What’s black and grey and staring you right in the face when you walk up our stairs? A: The linen cabinets! Feast your eyes on THIS! (And ignore the frames—they belong to the prior homeowners as this pic was taken during the first inspection, before we took over.) Yep, this is what they called “the linen closet.”  Except it’s not actually a closet.  Clearly.  I want to say to the real estate agents, “It’s…

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Why You Should Instantly Paint Before Moving Into a New House.

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Do you paint walls before or after you move into a place? Do you do the work yourselves or hire that work out? In our first house, we did all the painting ourselves before moving in. That took us a lot of time, but we did save money. (That was also 14 years years ago when we were a bit younger and zippier, sans children.) A (before) tour of our downstairs! When we lived in…

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A Private Upstairs (Before) Tour.

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If you're just coming to us from our downstairs tour, you'll remember we're now standing in our entryway. Not many people get to come upstairs in our house, but today is your lucky day. (Well, keep in mind that none of our stuff is actually showing in these pics yet...) If you haven't had a chance yet, a (before) tour of our downstairs can be found HERE! Wanna come upstairs? That black banister is beckoning…

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A (Before) Tour of Our Servantless Downstairs.

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When I first wrote the word "downstairs" in this post, it reminded me of "Upstairs, Downstairs" and how that distinguished between the homeowners and the servants. We do not have servants living in this downstairs. This is just a regular old 1980s downstairs. I guess there IS what they deemed a 4th bedroom downstairs, so I guess technically we could have someone living there, but really...it's not the same. With that clarification over, let's begin.…

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Small Kitchen? Add a Kitchen Island Cart!

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originally published 2014 Small kitchens need islands. Even if it has to be a kitchen island cart (as it did for us as renters)! You'll have seen in this tour of our favorite flat in New Zealand that the kitchen was on the small side. Check out our California kitchen! That photo shows the whole living space. All of it. The "dining area" is on the right wall next to the door to the garage,…

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3 Ways to DIY Indoor & Outdoor Patio Seating for (Almost) Free!

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The (very inexpensive!) indoor and outdoor patio DIY seating projects we came up with in our last flat in New Zealand. You'd think because I'm go-go-go most of the time, I wouldn't get many chances to sit down. Thus, I'm not sure why I love creating cozy seating so much. Maybe it's because once I finally DO sit down, I want it to be AWESOME. I want my body to sigh with sweet ecstasy over…

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