321: How to Design a Home Full of Stories // Carly Thornock

October 16, 2023

Posted in Managing the Home, Study Your Story

LISTEN ON

How do you feel right now about your home? Do you love it? Or does it leave a lot to be desired?

It is a natural instinct for human beings to want to create beautiful, meaningful spaces to thrive with their families. But so often our expectations for how things “should” look don’t match up with the realities of our lives, and that can lead to frustration, sadness, jealousy, and discontent.

My guest today is passionate about helping women create homes that they love, regardless of what their homes aesthetically look like. She cares about beauty, but her definition of beauty goes so much deeper than paint colors and magazine perfect furniture, and I know you are going to find her perspective freeing and empowering.

Carly Thornock is an interior designer and family life coach who leads the movement for houses infused with brilliant humanity, wonder-filled stories, and deeply rooted relationships. She hosts a podcast called Becoming Home, runs a membership community called Anchored Homies, and does one-on-one design consults for women who are designing homes filled with intention. She is also a mom of three, and right now, she and her family are living in an RV and pursuing lots of adventures and memories.

***

3 Takeaways on Designing a Home full of Stories:

The stories we tell ourselves about our living environments have more of an impact on our happiness than the actual realities of our living environments. This is such good news because we can’t always control exactly what our home environments are like–depending on our current financial situation or our employment situation–but we can control the stories we are telling ourselves about our situations. Ultimately, if we want to be happier, we can start to shift our stories and research shows that it makes a massive difference.
When we become aware of our stories, we can change our stories. We are always making choices, which means we are always telling ourselves stories, whether or not we are consciously aware of them. It’s like the fish who wasn’t even aware of the water that was surrounding him and keeping him alive because he was too immersed in it. What stories are we immersed in, and which are life-giving and which are not? When we can start to see the stories we are telling ourselves about our homes, we can start to choose whether or not we want to keep them.
Our home decor can serve as powerful reminders of the stories we want to believe. How do we do that? We simply choose a visual symbol for the kinds of stories that we want to believe about ourselves, our lives, our children, and our homes. Then we weave that symbol into our home decor.

>>>Are these tips on intentionally designing your home helpful? What would you add to the takeaways? Tell us in the comments below.

***