Welcome Home

Your house. Your condo. Your apartment. Your Airstream? Your home. Think about how good it feels to return home after a long day at work or school. We all know that feeling of relief when rounding the corner and your front door is in sight. As refreshing as a vacation can be, that first night back in your own bed feels extra cozy. Whether you rent or own, the place where you live brings comfort and refuge. It is where you can truly be yourself.

Home is where the heart is.

What makes a house a home? Most importantly, it’s the vibe and love you create. There are things that make it functional, personal collections and heirlooms from relatives, quirky online or flea market finds, and likely too many things you impatiently settled for at a generic big box store. We know it takes time, money and effort to create a home, and we know it isn’t easy.

So often we paralyze ourselves with decision-making. What color towels? “I love the green sofa but I’m afraid of the green sofa.” Copy/paste showroom display. White on beige on gray on another gray on neutral upon neutral. [Don’t yell at us if you truly love a neutral tone on tone look. Make it chic, b*tch!] However, what you see at stores, on your social media feeds and in stores isn’t necessarily what you need or even want. In a Washington Post article entitled HGTV is making our homes boring and us sad, one study says, “A pair of professors found that home renovation media leads homeowners to decorate for the masses, not for their own happiness.” The format of most home design and makeover shows reference how hideous becomes beautiful and by beautiful they mean sellable, marketable, and “the goal is to create a place that is inoffensive and that could appeal to many.” We call bullsh*t on keeping up with the Joneses. If your objective is to outdo your neighbors or reach some unattainable level of perfection or timelessness, you will be trying forever. You will waste energy and resources, and miss out on actually living in your home.

We’re not going to dive into all the anecdotes or solutions right now, but what we will do is say this plain and simple, HOMES ON TV AND SOCIAL MEDIA DO NOT REFLECT REALITY. Sure, as you make decisions for your home you must be pragmatic about some things, but assuming that every decision must consider how visitors or future home buyers may judge you is feeding right into the lion’s den of scarcity culture. In other words, you are being told that the style of your home determines your worth. IT. DOES. NOT.

So here’s our invitation… give yourself permission to pause. Perhaps create a quiet moment to do a little inventory. Walk around and think about what brings you joy *wink*, what works and what doesn’t work. Think about the things new and old that make you feel at home in your home. What’s missing that might make that feeling of home a little more magical? How can you be more you, here in this place?

Thanks for hopping on this train we have called Flourish and Foundry. A place where we will support you in unapologetically thriving in a beautiful home, no matter how and where you live, who you love, how you identify, what color you are, how you worship, or where your family comes from. We will challenge you to fill your home with your personality and at the same time learn how to derive value from products that are made by real people, have low impact on the environment and authentically support your lifestyle. We can’t wait to guide, inspire and furnish for a better life at home.

Welcome home,