Ever feel like your living space is draining your energy instead of restoring it? In this episode, we sit down with interior designer Jessica Blanco to explore the powerful connection between our physical environments and mental wellbeing.

Jessica brings a unique perspective, having transitioned from 20 years in education to interior design, where she noticed that how we start our day in our spaces carries with us through everything else. Whether you're living in a small apartment or a large home, the way your space is organized (or not) directly impacts how you feel.

What You'll Learn:

1. Why "outer order equals inner calm" applies to everyone, not just those on the autism spectrum
2. How Scandinavian cultures design intentionally to support daily rhythms and wellbeing
3. Practical tips for balancing shared spaces when family members have different needs
4. The mental energy cost of clutter; even the stuff you've stopped "seeing"
5. Simple tricks to refresh your space (hint: flowers and charging stations go a long way)
6. Why involving kids in the design and organization process matters for the whole family
7. How adjustable lighting and seating can transform a room for multiple users

Real Talk Moments: Danna gets vulnerable about living in what she calls a "tornado" with her husband and two teenage boys, while Megan shares her experience navigating design decisions with her autistic partner. Jessica opens up about not having her own space in her home—and the creative solutions she's found.

Jessica's Parting Wisdom:

1. Get embodied—pay attention to how you feel in your space
2. Take inventory—what do you love versus what are you keeping out of weird emotional attachment?

Coming Up: Stay tuned for our next episode with Jessica where we'll dive deeper into sensory considerations and designing for neurodiversity.

Connect with Jessica Blanco: https://bit.ly/jessica_designs

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How we start our day comes with us for the rest of the day. And where we spend our time affects our ability to engage meaningfully with others.

Hi, I'm Jessica Blanco, and I'm today's guest on the so Freaking Healthy podcast. I'm an interior designer, and I believe that great design should be approachable, purposeful, and emotionally resonant.

In this episode, we'll talk about how interior design can hurt or help your mental health.

Hey, Donna. How you doing today, Megan?

I'm doing well, thank you.

So today we're talking about our spaces, meaning our physical spaces, where we live, how we live in those physical spaces. That has been top of my mind the last 15 years of living with my husband. How about you?

Oh, My God, yes. 20 plus years. Yes, exactly. But you have the better end of the deal.

Yeah.

Because you have an organized man who likes design and stuff like that, where I have probably another Audi HD guy living with me and is scattered.

Yeah. And you also have three humans living with you, all men, which probably three roommates. A little bit more chaos in your space.

A little bit is a really cute word.

Yeah. Do you have anywhere in your apartment that's just for you?

No.

Long pause.

No. Yeah, I'm, like, wiping off the tear. No, not really. I have my desk. Desk where I'm standing right now, where it is my pottery studio slash office.

But it is in the middle of my open space. Living room, kitchen, dining room area.

Okay.

Yeah. So I get to see all the mess that they left.

You know, if I don't wake up and do the dishes in the morning and I work, I don't feel well because it's right in front of my face. It's right there. So it's rough. It's. It's rough. I have to say, it is very difficult for me, especially growing up with two neurotic parents.

Well, for me, I have kind of the opposite, because I am the messy one in my relationship with my husband. He is autistic somewhere on the spectrum, and he is definitely one of those people where outer order equals inner calm.

And so he really needs to have our shared spaces nice and tidy. And so I do have my own space in the apartment, but we also don't have kids, so I'm lucky in that respect.

I have an office slash craft room slash whatever. But it's my space, my room, and this is the only place where I can just like, let a pile build and not feel guilty about it.

But still, you know, I have to keep the door shut because even Walking past it turns his brain into a little hamster wheel.

So I. I've been very cognizant of this, and technically, over the years, he has helped me a lot with organizing the space, and I do a really good job, I think, of being a space out here organized in our shared spaces. But I definitely have created my little sanctuary in here with my colors and fake plants and books and stuff like that.

But my friend Jessica Blanco is an interior designer, and she's helping us rethink our living room.

And she was really generous and welcoming when I asked her if she would come on the show to talk to us about interior design and specifically how interior design and how you set up your spaces support your mental health. So let's get into it with Jessica.

Hi, Jessica.

Hi.

Welcome to the show. Jessica. It's so good to have you on.

I'm so excited. Our first podcast Virgin.

Yeah, Jessica's a podcast virgin. We're popping her podcast cherry today. So welcome to the show. But, you know, if.

If you had to do it with anybody, you should do it with us, because we love you. Yeah.

It's either gonna go great or not. Megan knows me good enough to know I get real excited and I can go off on something, but I also can be really awkward.

Oh, wait, wait, wait.

Can I ask for no reason, can

I ask if there's neurodiversity there as well?

I'm undiagnosed. But, like, we. So my son is diagnosed, my oldest son.

And when we were just recently with his psychologist, and she's like, so is anybody else in the family diagnosed? I'm like, not officially. You just think we know. I think we know.

Like, because I was in education for, like, 20 years before I taught high school in the US and, like, here's the way the universe works. During my student teaching, I had a first grade class, was one of my first internships, and I was like, I can't work with parents.

I need to teach high school. So I immediately went to junior seniors in high school and spent the rest of my student teaching focused on I will teach high schoolers.

I will teach young adults. And then came here and taught preschool.

Oh, ouch.

Ooh. So, yeah, coming all the way around. But I always had a really good feeling for kids who were not going to function in the typical way.

I always right away with like, okay, these guys might need a different approach. Let's break up into smaller groups. I always had a really good feeling for that. Never consider that I might need a diagnosis.

I was like, I'm just gifted.

As we all are. As we all are.

So, Jessica, we're going to talk in general about mental health and we're going to get you into another episode to talk about neurodiversity and neurospiciness, because we are both quite interested in that.

But we thought for people who are not sensory overwhelmed or neurodiverse, how can we focus on interior design for just everybody's mental health for calm, productive restoration? So when you told me you were interior designer and then you started talking about mental health about it, I was like, what?

Oh, okay.

So what made you realize that there was a connection between our spaces that we live in and mental health or what kind of got you started down that path?

So, coming from background in education, my first teaching focus was going to be with young adults.

Then when I came to Switzerland, I started in early years as a English teacher and I went from low income schools, low income families to high income families, highly privatized and specialized individual care.

Totally different age groups, but I was seeing a lot of the same issues and realizing that how we start our day comes with us for the rest of the day and where we spend our time affects our ability to engage meaningfully with others. So it's not like you can just pop into a classroom and suddenly I'm a student.

No, you woke up, you had breakfast, didn't have breakfast, your mom was stressed, your dad was stressed, nobody was home. Who knows what the situation was, how you came into your day, but you brought it with you. It's affecting where you are now.

And the space you're in now is signaling to you how you're supposed to behave. And now you're supposed to turn off all those other things and function in a different way. And that's just not possible.

You know, that's super interesting because the way you said it, I just watched a short video the other day talking about how Scandinavian parents, I don't remember which country, how they don't have like a set bedtime for their kids, but instead they change the environment, they dim the lights, they put on nice music, everybody slows down.

So they actually change the environment to help the child transition from daytime to nighttime rather than just be like, bam, okay, it's bedtime, you got to go to bed now, brush your teeth, put your pajamas on, and get into bed with their mind still racing. So I feel like that is bang on with what you're just talking about, but in reverse, right? How to end your day.

And everybody says having a good nighttime Hygiene is good, but your environment is part of that.

Yeah, well, Scandinavians are too. Like, everybody knows a little bit about Scandinavian design.

Their societies are supposed to be some of the happiest, but when you look at things like exposure to sunlight, they have some of the shortest days. So they have developed design and daily techniques to help their bodies get into rhythm when there is no external sign. Right.

There's not so many hours of sunlight that you can guarantee that's how you're going to work. And you have spaces that might be really dark.

So they have really looked at how they design purposefully to make things have a rhythm when the sun isn't indicating your daily rhythm.

And I think that you just see that quality of thoughtfulness that some of us might take for granted in other places, or we just haven't really considered what does our wellbeing do for how we function in the day. Because we're focused on the functioning, Right? Like, the functioning, especially coming.

I think all of us being American, like, productivity and functionality are like, that's what you need to have. You didn't think about, well, being right. That wasn't. We're not doing that. That doesn't matter.

Yeah. I see these poor women who want to have, like, one tiny space. They have big houses in the States. Right.

So much more space, but they still feel like they don't have their own space.

And they're finding, like, a closet and transforming this into their little sanctuary just to have someplace where they can close the door and not have the kids around them. So I feel like it doesn't matter how big your fish tank is. Essentially, people struggle whether you have a small apartment or a big apartment.

And I think sometimes people who have a smaller living space try to do this more intentionally because their space is so small. Whereas people who have a lot of space are like, well, I have all this space, but it's not as intentional because they have more space. So I.

It's a really curious topic for me.

So, Dana, we're really similar. I have two boys and a husband. I'm the only girl. And then I got a boy dog that's needed. And I also don't. I'm in my husband's office right now.

Slash, guest room. Yep. Slash laundry room. But he needs a space, so there was no option.

So my desk is normally also in our living room, which is just hard and difficult because you need space to allow your creativity. At least I do. I need a space to let it percolate, especially because what I do is really Tactile. I need materials in my hand.

I need to look at colors two or three times. I want to see the lighting change that. It's in the middle of our living room. It's like, I. I don't have a great space for that.

And I get jealous when I go to Megan's. Not fully, because I know her husband, and I'm like, oh, that is a lot of pressure. Yes. Cannot be that tidy. So I am working on Megan's design.

It's pretty much done, but Megan and I have decided I will present it only to her first so that she can run it. I. I have a yarn filter on it now, but is it enough?

I don't know.

So it's going to have to go through a Megan yarn filter. And then, yep, we'll present it and see if I got it.

Because it's not just like having your separate spaces where you can allow your own process to unfold and not feel like you have to accommodate others and how you're processing something, but it's the second part of wanting to constantly accommodate your partners. And it's really difficult in a home environment where you have so many needs. And I think the really important part is it does have to be adaptable.

It does have to be flexible, but it sometimes. Separate but equal is important. Yeah.

Like in your home, I think having those spaces for everybody, where it's like we each have a little place that's just ours, and then we have these places that have to be flexible because they're shared and I need lived in. My husband's quite on the, like, analytical, highly rational, like minimalist. Everything would be white if he had any control over.

And he has a lot of influence. Like, color has taken 15 years to get into our home. Like, I introduced color very slowly, very slowly over time.

But it's really that balance, too, because it's like, for Megan as well. Our partners chose us for a reason. We bring that grounding, that energy, that light, that love, that laughter, that thing they need.

They need the color. They're seeking it out, but they're not totally comfortable with it.

So it's like, how do you bring it in in a way that feels natural, feels accessible, and doesn't feel overwhelming?

That was actually one of the questions that we had was really, how do you balance creating a space that works for multiple people with different needs? And you started to get there. And I think from my experience. And then I want to hear how Donna balances, because I feel like Donna lives in a.

A tornado. So I'm curious how that happens. But anyway, for me, because I realized very quickly that my husband's.

The outer order, inner calm thing going on directly affected how happy and calm and peaceful he is. Then I set that as my priority because I also enjoy a calm, peaceful space, but I don't need a calm, peaceful space.

So for me, for my balance was let him kind of take point on those design elements that will help him be calm. And then, like you said, Jessica, slowly introduce color and fun and shapes.

And I have my way of dealing with that when we're talking about how to redesign the living room. And he's like, oh, I've decided this, this, and this. And I'm like, okay, is there room for my input on this? Or is that something you really need?

And having that open communication about it? And he'll be like, no, no, no. I just. This is what I like.

And I know that this is also part of his nature in his plane of autism, is that he doesn't think about other people and not a malicious way, but that's just how the brain works, you know? So I try not to take that personally.

But it's also that communication to help make sure that it's clear what he needs and what I need or want as well, which is far less. I feel very much in reverse. Like the normal woman role of getting a new shower curtain. And then she's like, what about this shower curtain?

Or what about that shower curtain? And the man is just like, I just don't fucking care about the shower curtain. But for the woman, it's very important.

And these are definitely the role reversal for us. You know, my husband's telling me, like, do you like this handle for the kitchen or that handle or this handle? And I'm like, does it open the drawer?

Then it works. I'm fine with it. So I think that's acknowledging what each other needs is helping to balance that. Donna, how does it work for you?

Can I cry now? No. Listen, I. How do I get into this without going through my life story? I met my husband very young. We started dating when I was, like, 23.

I already realized right off the bat that he is the most scattered human on earth. Like, every single day, he will not find his keys every single day.

It's been 20 years plus, so I kind of realized what I'm getting myself into from the beginning. I had a few years to try and help him mold into a, you know, more organized person. Failed miserably.

And then the kids came along, and then depression Came along, and then, you know, all the things came along, and then I just lost all track of what the. Is going on. So, yes, I am living in a tornado. Definitely feels like it.

So much so that at a certain point, I actually rented out a small office space because I needed to get out. I could not. I mean, this was already also when I was burnt out. So I completely was, you know, neurodiversity plus burnout plus. Oh, my God.

And so you can't be in that space at all. I removed myself in there. Oh, I loved it. I had, like, two pictures on the wall. I had. The desk was always clean.

Like, there was nothing on there except for a couple of things. It was just heaven for me. So I know that there's a huge dissonance between how we're living and how I would want to live, in all honesty.

And now having two teenage boys is even harder because they don't listen. They don't. They. They don't seem to care. They probably do care in some. A certain level, but they don't really care.

So I do have certain things where I try to be like, look, this is my desk, and you do not put your phone, your chapstick, your anything on here. This is my space.

It's not organized.

It's my organ organized mess. Right. I know where everything is. It's not beautifully organized, but it's. It's my organization.

And then with some of the other rooms, I have one kid who's apparently Scandinavian, complete minimalist. Has, like, nothing in his room. Perfect. Cleans his room on a weekly basis. Happy days.

And one who's a hoarder, like, his dad will keep every single thing. I mean, my husband will pick up stuff off the street that says free on it just because.

So he will keep a broken chair when we replace it, because when that one breaks, we'll have the broken one to replace it. Like, it makes zero sense. But that's the guy I married. So I need to often put my foot down. I pick my battles.

And there are certain things where I'm like, look, this cannot continue this way unless you want me to go back to the clinic. So that's kind of a very short way of saying it. Like, I. Certain things that will always be organized my way.

Certain things that will not come into my house. Certain things that I'll be like, no, this is not happening. And other things that I just hide when they bring it home.

Yeah, so what? I. I am like a magpie, too. So I can identify with your husband. There I can think of 55 uses for this thing.

And it's a kind of agreement that my husband and I created.

We have a house and luckily we have like in the seller level there's like a hobby room and then like a room that was kind of finished, but it's not heated or anything. So he got his gym and I got my hobby room.

But even there I took in stuff from my past life and education and brought it into my home when my kids were little because we first had just an apartment. So like big things that you just have to get on no matter how much you hate them. Quarterly cleaning, like quarterly deep cleaning with your kids.

Go through.

What have they not played with in the last few months? What have they not worn in the last month? What doesn't fit? Is the younger sibling gonna keep or use any of those things?

If not, they get donated if they're worth donating, if not, put em in a trash bag. People don't want your trash. That will help you so much. Plus when you do that with your kids all the time, they get used to doing it.

You would think so.

They know the day is coming.

You would think so.

My kids.

How old are your kids, Jessica?

They're nine and they're gonna be 10 and 14 in the next few months.

Listen, I have a 16 year old and a soon 18 year old. Nothing that I taught them throughout their years stuck. Their brain just goes stupid for a few years and it just doesn't.

So again, see puberty coming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Brace yourself. Brace yourself. I do the quarterly cleaning, I go through their stuff with them. We toss shit, we give a lot of stuff.

Perfectly good stuff that probably was not used. We do that quite often, as often as I manage to get them to do it with me. And sometimes I do it alone. So I hate, I hate, hate clutter.

Like I can't deal with too much stuff and I need to know where everything is. And of course, living with three men, the fridge, blindness, it's everywhere, blindness. They don't see shit. Like they don't know where anything is.

But somehow, somehow in this very small space that we have, it doesn't last very long. So I don't know. I don't want to make this episode about me because I'm assuming there are other people like me on this.

So what I do with my oldest, that is super challenging at the moment. Wednesday afternoon is the only half day he has and literally I make him take everything out of his backpack.

I make him take everything up off the Floor. And he has to separate it into topics. All his school topics. And as he pulls the topics apart, he has to go through and be like, did I miss that?

Did I forget that? And it literally is two hours of my life every single week. And it's just school stuff.

He has to clean the room over the weekend, but in the middle of the week, he has to organize all his school stuff. And it starts to get him a little bit to realize he feels calmer when he knows what's done and what's not done and he knows where it is.

He still fully resents it. And every week, it's like, the most horrible that he never thought was gonna happen. That happens every Wednesday. Yeah.

But he kind of starts to realize it's super hard as a mom, because the other thing you get to when your kids start getting to that teenager age and you know they're becoming young adults, is like, I want to know this young man. And I don't want all of our interactions to be full of stress and frustration. So it's like, when do you push and when do you let go?

But what I'm trying to teach him and what make it already observe in her partner is not just for people who might know that they're autistic. Everybody, your outer order is your inner calm. It simply has the strongest correlation.

And I'm not an expert on hoarders or anything, but I think all of us have seen enough reality TV or have had enough personal experiences to realize hoarding is a direct correlation with your emotional well being.

Yeah.

There's no way around it. That is an extreme example when you meet somebody who literally can't let go of things. But it's also in the tiny examples in your home.

And it's like, what commercial was it that talks about going nose blind? I think it was Febreze. Have you ever seen that? Like, your nose blind, like, you don't smell your own dog anymore.

Okay.

Like, but other people walked in your house and they know you have a dog. Like, you've gone nose blind. We all do that in our homes. And it's not just sense.

It's like that coffee cup that has two paintbrushes because the kids water painted last week, and I just didn't pick out that coffee cup with the two brushes there. And now I don't see it anymore. Right. It is taking up mental space. I'm avoiding seeing it, which is already taking energy.

Exactly.

But I also don't want to deal with it. So it's super hard to Balance that. One of Megan's questions was like, what is like a cheap trick you do to like care about your space?

I buy myself flowers twice a month. I am not waiting for no man to buy me flowers because I know when I bring my fresh flowers in and I choose what vase I want to put them in.

And I put them in a vase in the middle of the table. Now the table has to be clean because I have this beautiful flowers in the middle of it.

And once I've cleaned the table, then I realized, crap, I gotta vacuum the floor. So it's like that's this little trick that I do for myself. Like having a fresh flower in my space, it brings joy, it brings color, it brings life.

I feel good about it and then I want the space to reflect how I'm feeling. And that's like a tiny thing that works for me. I'm not saying everybody needs to do that. Like, maybe for other people it's just changing your feet.

It can be the littlest thing that suddenly like that space has fresh air in it again. Right? Those little tricks are really helpful in getting the habits that will help you maintain it.

And the other thing is too, I think, like, boy, mom, I don't want to say that. I think we're all socialized. Women are the caretakers, we're the catch alls.

We're socialized to just make everybody comfortable, even when we're not comfort. And it goes so deep into how we raise our kids too.

And it's like, I will just clean it up around you because I want to avoid conflict or because I'll be faster doing it myself or whatever it is. But we are also not doing our children a great service.

I love that you bring that up because I actually raised my kids. I was a neurotic mom. Honestly, like, okay, I wasn't too, too bad, I think. But there was no organizing toys without my kids.

There was none of that shit. Like they always helped to take clear the table.

I was really adamant that they would be a huge part of the process of organizing and dealing with stuff. Because I'm not the only one living here. I'm not the only one making the mess. So I'm not going to be the only one to clean it up.

But yeah, I would love to talk to you in about 10 years. I know you were a teacher, so I know, I know how it is. But like, I really am curious to hear how you, if you managed because.

Oh my God, I don't manage.

Oh, well, I'm barely managing But I just know these things have to happen because it's like the check in, it's the routine. So do the work so that you can appreciate your space and it feels like yours. I also always include kids in the design process.

If I'm working with a family with kids.

Yeah, you have to.

Right? Because what we interpret as important to our kids might not be what they think is important. I love that.

So it's really important to remember, like, trust, that you've also given your kids that ability to recognize for themselves and you have created those patterns. They're not going to tell you. Yeah, but if they're alone in a room with me, they might be like, yeah, I know, I feel better when it's cleaned up.

Or like, I probably should organize that as a third person coming in being like, hey, let's talk about your space. What would be your dream? What do you need to happen in here?

So actually, you brought up a good topic. And I would love to know, how do you balance creating a space that works for multiple people with different needs?

Like, what's the one thing that you can give us as an advice to kind of tackle that?

So for me, what I really love is charging stations. Like charging docks. Does that sound like. Like everybody may or may not have one.

But it's really helpful when you have a spot where all your devices go one, because you can see whose devices are maybe not with, maybe are in their bed under their pillow and you don't really want them in their room right now. But also because this is the catch all spot for our electronics.

If you can have a good docking station that's organized for devices, you remove a lot of clutter from other spaces, you get rid of a lot of wires. And this topic that we all have to think a lot about with our kids is how much screen time are they giving? Are we managing it? How do we police it?

Well, maybe you don't have to police it. Maybe you just create an area where these things go at the end of the day, then they're fully charged. We don't have stress.

We know where to find them. That's something I would recommend for every family to think about. Where do we want to have a docking station?

So I, I'm hearing you guys talk a lot about clutter. We talked a lot about clutter.

And when I think about interior design, obviously clutter and everything, having a home, I mean, over and over again I hear if, if something doesn't have a home, then it's going to sit out somewhere or go into a junk drawer. So I think part of creating that outer calm is making sure everything has a home, which I think my husband has done a very good job.

Everything has a home. I know exactly where everything goes when it needs to be put away. Not so much in my room.

It's funny because Megan and I, yesterday, we were talking about recording with you, and we were also talking about how certain things become white noise. Like, again, that cup, it just becomes this white noise where it's there, you see it, but you consciously don't see it.

And just now, Megan, when you were talking, it made me realize that those things that are scattered. And we once said, like, we'll do it later, and now there's a new permanent spot for it.

It's like the to do list that we have in our head, and we don't write it down.

Oh, yeah.

It feels like the same thing for me. Right.

It's like I see everything that I need to do, like, thinking about everything that I need to do, but it's not written down or I'm not actively actually doing anything about it. So it's just staying this, like, heav of. And then I still need to pick up that cup. Yeah, right.

Yeah.

But we don't and say it. We don't. Like, we're just like, oh, yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, sure. It's still there.

And, like, the embodiment, too. We will start to avoid it. Our body will physically start to turn a different direction.

Don't walk into that room. Don't walk into that room.

I'm just not gonna go there. And like, I didn't think about it. My body was like. There was a feeling somewhere inside that was like, not today. Just not going to open door thing.

When we're looking at spaces that have to work for multiple people. And I think a lot of us have this situation with the open dining room living room also, entryways are, like, problematic areas for families.

So storage solutions are super important. Obviously, clever storage is important.

Another thing that I think for living room dining room situations that you could spend a little bit more time thinking about and investing in is adjustable seating and lighting. So multiple seating and lighting options so that it's never too bright, never too dim, have multiple sources of light and adjustable lighting.

And the same with seating. There could be a bean bag on the floor for the kid who needs to wiggle around. There doesn't have to be like, matchy matchy chairs at the table.

Maybe one kid needs a chair with a little spin to it because they're going to wiggle.

That's me. I'm that chick. I'm that kid.

You. You need this mini chair.

Oh, my God.

I get it. I totally get it. So think about making it adjustable. It does not have to be matchy matchy. There isn't one size fits all.

You can be thoughtful with patterns, materials. There can be elements that bring them together, but they don't have to be a perfect set.

And I think that there's never going to be one space that is perfect and everybody likes. But it's making sure that everyone has a space or can adjust the space.

They can grab a pillow, grab a blanket, curl up on that chair, curl up on that beanbag, make it adjustable and use different little accessory pieces so that each person can personalize it for themselves.

Good advice.

We're going to get into this in the next episode with you about sensory stuff, but I'll leave it to the point where my husband has been automating our home. And I didn't realize it till just when you said this, like, adjustable stuff. I'm like, oh, my gosh.

He's been spending the last year automating everything so we can create scenes.

So if we just tell our Alexa that we're watching television, the blinds go down, the lights go down to create a scene, and now every light in our entire house is automated so we can have all these different levels of like, I have a work mode in the kitchen for when I'm going to start cooking, and I can just tell it work mode, you know, but if I'm not working, we can keep it cozy. So I'm excited to talk more about that in our next episode on sensory stuff that also touches a little bit more of the neuro spiciness.

Before we wrap up this particular episode, though, any final thoughts or encouragement for someone who's feeling stuck in a space that doesn't serve them? Is there something that leave their roommates

and find another place to live that you know, like, solution, please.

Two things. You've got to become embodied. You've got to get in your body. How am I feeling in this space? Am I feeling fatigued? Am I avoiding it?

Am I feeling a good stimulation? Ooh, I'm feeling energized. Or am I feeling over stimulated, like, I can't sit down now? Really pay attention to those signals from your body.

And the second one, Take inventory. What pieces do I love and what do I have because I have some weird emotional attachment to it? Take inventory. What is needed and what is not needed.

And then once you know the pieces that are really central to you, start designing around those and eliminate the pieces that have just claim to space but maybe aren't necessary.

And we're going to leave it there. Donna's getting dirty.

Glad you read between the lines.

Donna's moving out of her house.

Okay.

Thanks, Jessica, for the talk today. And we'll see you in the next episode.

So excited about that one, right?