Do we underestimate how much our environment and surroundings affect our health and mood?
I recently stayed at a friend’s house for a week. She’s a maximalist and loves nothing more than colour and ornaments everywhere. They all mean something to her and they give her joy. I like some colour and a few bits and bobs, myself but I couldn’t believe how much it affected me. Since I am hypersensitive in most ways in life, ‘visual’ and real noise really hurt me! I felt like my nerves were jangled and I couldn’t rest my eyes. I felt headachy and stressed the whole time I was there!
Happily, she had a fantastic picture window onto an incredibly calming sea view so I stared into the distance at that to quieten the overwhelm! Love her to bits but I was glad to get back to my own ‘controlled’ space, you know. Shows how different environments affect people differently, though, doesn’t it?
So, I was interested to read an article in The Guardian at the weekend and discover that I am a natural ‘house husher’; I deliberately make my home and surroundings peaceful and calm; it feeds my need for harmony and quiet. I tend to like homes that have a similar colour running through them, different shades maybe but ‘tonal’, as they call it in interior design. I might have a pop of bright colour here and there, which makes me smile. More than that is just too much; I like my eyes to be able to rest.
Maybe I’ve missed my vocation. I should have been a house husher – or perhaps that is my next career, who knows!?
What is House Hushing?
It’s all about eliminating visual “noise”: anything excessive, jarring, or inharmonious. “Everything in your room has a voice… taking up visual, physical and even emotional space,” according to interiors blogger Myquillin Smith of The Nester. “Quieting your space removes all those voices in a room at once.” According to the hushed-living concept, stuff you accumulate, the flotsam of daily life, but also things you have chosen – ornaments, pictures and decorative bits and pieces – create a hum. You probably aren’t even aware of it – a phenomenon often described, in a perhaps unhelpful mixing of metaphors, as “house blindness”. But the cumulative effect can be a jittery blast, like avant garde free jazz. Fewer possessions, carefully and deliberately selected, can transform cacophony into pure harmony.
The Guardian
I get that jazz reference, don’t you? That jangling feeling of discordance. I’m going through a blue phase at the moment – it reminds me of the sea, and reflects it when we are living by the sea. Here’s our old living room, complete with the beautiful Minniepuss who we sadly lost a few months ago.
Lovely greys and blues, soft textures and a few brighter bits -pink of the flower, badger coasters and William Morris fabrics.
You can see how I continue the blue theme on the outside chairs too in our tiny rented sea flat currently – with new Winniepuss enjoying her seat and settling into her new family…
Blue fluffy blankets, blue-themed cushions from National Trust – I searched everywhere for those!
You maybe don’t have to have calming colours though; it’s more about nothing being too jarring or out of place. In one of my houses, I had hot pink and lime green in the lounge with a gorgeous turquoise in my office. Gold patterned wallpaper on the hall entrance. It sounds awful, but I let the colours sing and kept everything else minimal; it was a joyful house – three storeys with double-height ceilings, so it could take some colour!
I chose deep aubergine for towels etc when I used to do massage therapy many moons ago. I loved that colour – very healing. But everything else was soft white to calm the room down. Here’s Minnie ‘helping’ again as I was trying the room set up out!
Anyway, what type are you: house-husher or maximalist, or somewhere in between? Do you need to declutter and reduce the visual noise to lower your stress levels? If so, I hope those ideas help. Let me know x