annie kip

coaching & strategy

Style with intention

A podcast and blog hosted
by ANNIE KIP

#25 – Blindspots At Home and Their Subconscious Messages

Blindspots at home may be sending you subconscious messages. Discover where your blindspots at home might be hiding and how to create a home that gives you a sense of welcome, relaxation, and belonging.


The biggest takeaways from this episode:

  • How the subconscious messages in your environment affect you.
  • Why we get blindspots at home and why the little things really do matter.
  • How your subconscious is always working and processing info.
  • Quick fixes to make your space send you positive subconscious messages.

Hey there,

Thanks for being here today! Welcome to the Style With Intention podcast.

Today’s episode is all about your home, where you might have blindspots at home, and the subconscious messages they may be sending you. After living in your space for a while, you might have stopped seeing things in your environment – but this blindspot is sending you a message that you probably aren’t even aware of! 

Listen in today for my insights learned from looking around my own home and seeing that even I have blindspots at home! You’ll hear some quick fixes that you can use right away to set up your space to make you feel more welcome, more relaxed, and more at home.

Make sure you’re following me over on Instagram @anniekipstyle to hear all of the insights I come up with after the podcast is recorded!

As always, my goal is to make it quicker and easier for you to access more ease, joy, and intention in your life…because happy looks really, really good!

Enjoy the show!

Annie Kip

BONUS CONTENT

If you’re looking for a way to explore what you want for yourself, I suggest journaling – and here are some prompts to get you started!

Click here to download your FREE Self-Coaching Journal Prompts

Self-Coaching Journal Prompts

EPISODE #25

Blindspots At Home and The Subconscious Messages They Are Sending

Hey guys. Welcome to the show! I’m Annie Kip and today we’re talking about what your home is saying to you. I’m talking about those subconscious messages that your home might be sending, the blindspots at home that you’re experiencing but you might not be totally aware of.

When you walk in the door of your house or when you’re spending time with your family or when you just want to relax. Maybe you aren’t really aware of the feeling that you have in your space. These are blindspots at home. In our day to day lives, it’s natural to become conditioned to the experiences we have over and over again, so it would be reasonable that you weren’t aware of the messages that you’re getting from your home.

Today I’d like to invite you to take a step back with me. Look around and ask yourself, is your home telling you “Welcome home!” or “Let me take that for you!” or “Put your feet up here, relax!” or is your home saying to you, “You don’t really belong here” or “You’re not really that important” or “You don’t deserve to relax”?

The way we feel in our homes – even unconsciously – really affects us.

It’s my opinion that we can use our homes to help us feel the way we really want to feel, but to do that, we have to intentionally identify and remove our blindspots at home.

Today I’m going to talk with you about three blind spots at home that many of us tend to overlook and underestimate. Put-Away Paralysis can be part of the problem here. They are 1) unfinished business, 2) chronic clutter, and 3) uncomfortable spaces.

In preparing for this episode, I took a look around my own house, looking for blindspots at home, and I gave it some thought. Now, as a decorator and a stylist, I would say I’m very in touch with my house and I’m aware of most things, but I have to admit that I had some blindspots at home which I will share with you a little later.

Blindspots At Home #1: Unfinished Business

This includes everything from the obvious blind spots like house projects that have been started and haven’t quite gotten finished as well as the things that we’ve gotten used to that we just don’t see in our houses anymore. We all do this. The, the things that are unfinished as sort of blend into the scenery. Maybe we don’t notice that the shower still leaks or maybe the pile of things that you were going to do in the corner has been there for months.

I started thinking about this a few weeks ago. This episode came to mind actually because a friend mentioned in one of my instagram posts that, while I was redoing the guest room, she noticed for herself that there was a baer drapery rod in her living room that had been there so long that she had stopped seeing it. She had just kind of blocked it out.

Now the point isn’t that everyone should have draperies in their home. And maybe the reason the drapery rod is bare for her is that she doesn’t actually want draperies. And that’s okay – but the bare drapery rod is sort of in between. And the point is to own which way you want to go. A bare drapery rod is neither here nor there.

It’s unfinished business.

If you don’t want draperies, own it and take down the rod and if you do want a drapery there, go on and get one! You can order it up on Amazon and it will be there the next day.

Once you identify these blindspots at home, you may realize that the solution is easier than you think!

For me, my unfinished business is the fire alarms that are supposed to be on my ceilings. Over the last year or so, I’ve pulled a bunch of them down for various reasons. Cooking mishaps, the smoke that I make when I’m cooking on the stove. Some of them were beeping incessantly, even after I put new batteries in, and so now I have these wires sort of hanging from my ceiling – and I have stopped seeing them! They aren’t even on my to do list anymore! The missing fire alarms are lurking over my head and in my subconscious.

It makes me feel sort of unfinished when I look at them and it’s sort of a silent nagging feeling hanging over me.

Unfinished Business in your home might be the pictures you haven’t hung. If they’re leaning against the wall, they’re also causing subconscious problems in Blindspots At Home #3: Comfort In Your Space, because you’re probably having to walk around them to keep knocking them over. Or you have to move them in order to clean.

Maybe you’re afraid to commit to putting a nail in the wall.

It’s a reasonable concern. Maybe you’re unsure of how high to hang them. Maybe there’s a really good reason that you haven’t actually gotten around to this, but the point is that it’s Unfinished Business. Either take them and put them somewhere else, if you’re not going to use them or put them up on the wall.

Remember, there is no right or wrong. It’s how you feel in your space.

That is the most important factor and I bet you’ll feel better in your space if you get those pictures hung! Included in Unfinished Business are all the things that you hope to get done on your to do list projects that are sitting, waiting for you to have time to finish them there nagging at you, painting projects, repairs, rearranging, replacing or fixing things.

It might be time to come to terms with projects you don’t actually have the time or energy to do right now.

Maybe they just don’t interest you anymore. I have a bag of knitting that’s been sitting next to my sofa, for uh, forever. It’s waiting for me to get back to it. The truth is that I’ve lost interest in the project, but I feel bad about it. I might be better off just chucking the whole bag instead of letting it sit there and nag me month after month – which leads me nicely into Blindspots At Home #3: Chronic Clutter.

Blindspots At Home #2: Chronic Clutter

We just stop seeing it, but it affects how we live. My bag of knitting is sending an unconscious, judgmental message to me every time it comes into my view. I haven’t even been aware of it until I started working on this episode and looked around to find my own blind spots. I challenge you to do the same thing.

Look around and try to notice the blindspots at home that you might have stopped seeing.

You may have just gotten used to the kitchen counter, having so much stuff on it that you have a hard time finding room for preparing food. Challenge yourself to really consider if everything out on the counter is something that you need within arms reach. There is such a different feeling, when you have fewer things out in front of your sight – it’s lighter, it’s freer, it’s easier.

You probably don’t even realize that you are having that heavy feeling – or missing the lighter feeling – until you take the time to get rid of the clutter.

Once you’ve taken the time to really look at what could be one of your chronic blindspots at home out in the open, check to see what you’ve shoved in your cupboards or behind your closets.

Mail is a big clutter culprit for most people. This is one area I have tackled pretty well. My system is to immediately sort the mail into keep, which is bills and letters to read and toss, that’s most catalogs, most flyers, most advertisements, and I throw those papers right into the recycling bin immediately before they even hit the kitchen table. This almost entirely takes care of my mail clutter and then I put my bills to pay in one place to sit down and pay them once a month.

The trick with any project like this is to set yourself up with what you need near where you’re used to doing the project that you’re doing.

So having my recycling bin right where I’m used to, looking at the mail helps a lot. It takes only a few minutes to do my mail this way and I know that doing it, putting it off and doing it later after the pile is built up requires a lot more time and attention and I just never get around to it, so I try to stick with that plan.

Setting yourself up with systems that can help you accumulate less clutter.

Getting rid of duplicates can help a lot too. And you know, not living with too much stuff. My kitchen is really small so I don’t have a lot of duplicates. I would rather wash things to use them again rather than have a cramped feeling in my kitchen.

Blindspots At Home #3: Uncomfortable Spaces

Getting your unfinished business and chronic clutter under control will go a long way toward dealing with Blindspots At Home #3: Uncomfortable Spaces, but it’s worth looking at as a separate category. You want your home to welcome you when you walk in the door, so start analyzing how you actually feel at that moment. How comfortable is it really? And I’m not talking about just looking forward to sitting on your comfy sofa with a fluffy throw and wearing your pj’s.

I’m talking about the minute you step in your house.

Do you have a comfortable, easy place to put your keys in your bag and your coat? When these little actions are easy and you don’t have to put any effort into them at all, your home feels really welcoming. You don’t even have to think about it. It just feels right when you walk in.

The key to setting up your entryway with places to put things that will actually be used, is to pay attention to what I call the “single motion rule.”

It’s for things that you use everyday. Expert organizers and space planners all know that you are much more likely to put something in a place that does not require multiple motions. For example, a shelf will be used more than a drawer and a hook will be used more than a hanger.

A hanger takes multiple motions to use. If you think about it, you have to take out the hanger. You have to hold the hanger to put your coat on it. Then you have to push the coats aside before you can put it back in the closet. If you always take your coat off when you walk in the door, it is unlikely that you will walk all the way into the other room to hang your coat up on a hanger in a closet. That’s a lot of motions, so don’t fight yourself.

Find a solution that works with your natural tendencies.

Be gentle and cooperative with yourself. A hook solves this problem really nicely, just like the mail is helped by the recycling. You can work with your patterns that you already have and change things in small ways to improve your experience and deal with blindspots at home.

Next, notice how you move through your space. Is there an easy path or things in your way? Do you have to walk over shoes that have been left in the entryway? Make a small shift.

People are more likely to make a change if you give them an easy way to comply.

A bin that they can kick their shoes off into will be much more likely to be used than a drawer that someone has to bend down and open up and then close every time they use it.

Do you have places in your home that make you feel truly comfortable and at home? This is where we can talk about creature comforts. Maybe a comfy chair with a table at just the right height, a light for reading, and a coaster that you can put your drink on.

These are things you can set up for yourself ahead of time and enjoy over and over again – and just slip into that comfortable space whenever you want to.

Do you have stations to comfortably do the things you need to do, like paying bills and watching TV and eating dinner? Each of these activities comes with their own supplies. They come with their own items that you need to be able to do them and it’s easier if they’re within reach to make it calmer and easier to do them. Stamps and envelopes and file folders if you do paper bills. I happened to do online banking.

I make sure that I have a cup of tea with me when I sit down to do my bills, to make it more enjoyable, and I have a special coaster right next to my computer always there for when I bring my tea into my office.

You might want to light a candle in the TV room instead of keeping the bright lights on, if you’re winding down for bed. Maybe have a throw and some hand cream or a nail file nearby. Think about the things that would make your relaxation area easier and better.

Give your activities some thought and set yourself up so that you could easily slip into them and out of them without a lot of preparation.

If you want to take this a step further, think about what you wish you had room to do in your house. What are the activities that you wish your home had room for? Artwork? Do you want to make some art? Do you wish you had an exercise space or a meditation area? How can you set up the space that you have to allow you to comfortably do the activities you want to do?

Sometimes it requires rethinking how we use traditional spaces.

Bringing your home into alignment with how you want to feel is a lot more involved than just picking colors that make you happy. What I’m talking about today is creating a space that lets you live the way you want to live that makes you feel welcome and safe and relaxed.

Your home should reflect back to you the best of who you are, your taste, your interests, your peace of mind.

You deserve a warm welcome at the end of the day. A place to rest when your work is done. A space that makes it easy to connect with your family and friends and let go of the cares of the day. Your home should say, “Come on in!” “Let me take that for you!” “Sit down and relax!” “Welcome home!”

It’s the one place in the world that is truly yours to control, whether you own or rent.

You have the choice of how you use your space and you can own your unfinished business, deal with blindspots at home, and reduce the clutter and create comfortable spaces that send you the message that you belong there.

Let’s keep touch over on instagram. You can tag me @anniekipcoaching or DM me anytime. Show me pictures of the messages your home is sending you and let me know if you like them! Show me how you’re setting up your space to make it look the way you want to feel!

Until next week, keep trying to make your space look the way you want to feel.

Bye-bye for now.

BONUS CONTENT

If you’re looking for a way to explore what you want for yourself, I suggest journaling – and here are some prompts to get you started!

Click here to download your FREE Self-Coaching Journal Prompts

Self-Coaching Journal Prompts

Header image by Julia Janeta

©2018 Annie Kip. All Rights Reserved.

blindspots at home and subconscious messages