Linda Varone | Nurturing Spaces Feng Shui

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Gardens that Grow Wonderful Memories

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Gardens are unique as a place for creating wonderful memories. My favorite garden is one I saw on a garden tour in Newbury, Massachusetts several years ago.  It was not the fanciest, but it was the most personal in expressing the lives of the family that lived there for 3 generations.

gardens grow wonderful memories stepping stones on moss covered path in garden
The best gardens invite you in.

Walking up the gravel drive I noticed pachysandra circling the bases of trees.  A shaded patio next to the screened porch was made of old brick pavers with moss growing in the cracks. A wrought iron table and chairs invited conversation and relaxation.  I could almost hear the clink of ice cubes.

Straight ahead I saw a tall hedge with a narrow opening. Squeezing through, we entered an outdoor room, enclosed on three sides by the hedge and on the fourth by a garden house.  The garden house was a small cottage with a roof and three walls, the “missing” wall opened to the outdoor room. It had a soot stained stone fireplace on the back wall and was furnished with well worn upholstered furniture covered with faded chintz. It was the perfect place for a drizzly summer day read or cool spring evening gathering.

The far back of the yard had a large lawn, perfect for games, with the tall hedge corralling both kids and balls, while muffling the sound of excited play.

Back at the house, near the kitchen, was a stand of tall pines.  Clustered under the broad branches I saw several small crosses – the graves of several generations of family pets.

This garden is unpretentious, loved and lived in. It offeres places for different activities and even different age groups.  It is a garden where wonderful memories are made.

Few of us have a multi-generational home on a few acres of land. But we can rethink our garden. We can create areas within our gardens that support gathering, quiet, contemplation, and active play.

Rethink the interaction between inside and outside.

  • In the garden arrange something especially beautiful to be seen from a particular window.
  • Inside arrange furniture near that window to encourage connecting with nature.
  • Think of how adding lights or a fireplace can make your garden more welcoming in the evening.
  • Or simply open your windows and let in fresh air and energized Chi into your home.

What gardens have you known or experienced that create wonderful memories for you?

If you would like guidance creating a memorable garden or outdoor space contact me.

Holiday Greetings: Let It Dough

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Winter has truly arrived and part of the fun of this time of year is baking cookies. My family’s must-have cookie is my Grandmother’s Almond-flavored Spritz. My brother is our master spritz maker. His personal touch is to double the almond extract in the recipe and then add a little more. We pass around the bottle of almond extract, so each of us can get a whiff of that sublime elixir. While the cookies are baking the whole house smells divine.

Creative Whimsy by Christoph Niemann, The BEST Brownie Recipe – Ever, and Feng Shui Tips to Light Your Holiday Table

teddy bear playing with cookie cutters
Making cookies and other treats is fun.

While I can’t send each of you a batch of homemade spritz cookies, I can send you Holiday Whimsy by New York Times’ Christoph Niemann. With dough, cookie cutter and sprinkles he creates a delightful take on the world around us: Let It Dough.

For those of you who spell delicious c-h-o-c-o-l-a-t-e, here is a recipe for the simplest and best chocolate brownies ever.

To make your holiday table and the faces around it glow, check out this Feng Shui design tip.

Photo by ryochiji

Furniture Placement for Connection: How to Avoid Furniture Sprawl

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Tips on Furniture Placement for Connection with Others

Feng Shui gives you insights about furniture placement to maximize Chi flow and to provide a sense of protection. While this is important, it does not address the your most important need: connection with others. Furniture placement for connection is not about the furniture, it is about arranging seating, tables and lighting for relaxed conversation and easy eye contact.

“The most important thing is being able to make eye contact.”– Witold Rybzinski, architect and historian.

People feel most comfortable being together when the degree of emotional connectedness and physical closeness match.

When these two factors are not in sync people feel invaded or isolated, which can be experienced as anxiety or discomfort. And yet, people tend to spread out their furniture to fill the room, no matter the size of the space.

Please Note: The rooms you see in design magazines and online are setup for the best photo composition, not for how the room works in real life. These rooms are totally rearranged for the photographer.

Furniture placement for connection, diagram of interpersonal distances for specific interactions
For true connection and communication to occur, it is essential that you are the right distance from the person you are talking to – otherwise you will experience a feeling of stress, invasion or disconnect.

Interior Psychology calls this interaction zone “Interpersonal Distance”. Knowing how to use this helps you create spaces that make conversation calmer, intimacy easier and privacy possible.

The interpersonal Distances in Your Life:

Intimate Distance, 0-18 inches, is from skin-to-skin contact to arms length. This is most often used by lovers and parents with their children: for care, protection, passion.  You can speak in a whisper or low voice, touch, kiss.

Personal Distance, 1 ½ – 4 feet, is for connection without touching. This is best for conversations with family and close friends. People will be drawn to seating spaces that are cozier, inviting people to hang out and connect.

Social Distances: 4-7 feet, is the “close phase” of Social Distances, which is appropriate for business or formal social gatherings. This is not a comfortable distance for everyday family time and conversation.

Seven to 12 feet is the “far phase” of Social Distance. At this distance your voice must be projected, the tone of your voice changes and your message becomes briefer. This changes the emotional dynamic of your conversation. Interior designers call this “shouting distance.” Spaces with furniture sprawl are most vulnerable to this.

How to Use Interpersonal Distances in Your Home – Furniture Placement for Connection

In Gathering Spaces: Living Rooms, Family Rooms, Dining Rooms and Kitchens:

Arrange seating to support face-to-face distance of 5 ½ – 7 feet or less (a tape measure is handy). During my consultations I move furniture around to help my clients experience how much better it feels to have a smaller seating area. Their surprised response is “I really like it this way!” Moving furniture closer together is especially important in large rooms where the impulse is to spread out furniture to fill the space = furniture sprawl.

When furniture is farther apart a space feels more formal and people will interact that way. When seating is closer together, what may at first glance look crowded, will feel cozy and comfortable.

Chair Placement for Eye Contact and Connection

Being aware of distance is the first part of arranging your furniture by making it easier to hear and speak. How your seating is grouped makes eye contact easier and more relaxed.

People instinctively gather in a circle when talking together. So arrange your chairs and sofa in a circle or U-shape or even an L-shape. When seated at a table, a round table is ideal.

Want help arranging your furniture for greater intimacy and connect while creating a room that looks beautiful? Contact me.

How do you arrange your furniture to make you feel comfortable? Share your ideas in the comments below.

image by linda varone

Connection is the Secret to Happiness: Arrange Your Home Around This

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Connection is the Secret. The more time you spend having deeper conversations the happier you will be.

”…people who spend more of their day having deep discussions and less time engaging in small talk seem to be happier” – Matthias Mehl, psychologist University of Arizona.

Why is connection through conversation so important?
We need to find meaning in our lives.
We are social creatures and need to connect with other people. 

Connection, Interiors psychology, three people talking and making easy eye contact
Easy eye contact is key to emotional connection and bonding.

Does your home set up hinder or support real conversation and connection with others?

 
 
 
Interiors Psychology identifies interpersonal distance and eye contact as the two most powerful factors in personal connection and bonding.

Arrange your home for connection. Do you eat your supper in front of the television, at your kitchen counter? Or do you sit down at a table with those you love most? Making eye contact with each other while sitting around a table is essential to creating and maintaining personal bonds. This is where conversation happens and sharing occurs. Support the powerful ritual of breaking bread together – sit around a table, not in front of the TV.

Is your living room or family room furniture spread out to fit the room, creating “shouting distance”?  Move your furniture closer together is a simple and powerful way to support connections and encourage conversation. If your living room is large, borrow a tip from Upper East Side New York decorators: create two conversation or sitting areas in a room, instead of one disconnected sprawl of furniture. Illuminate your new sitting arrangements with some well placed lamps. Voila! – both your living room and you will have a new lease on life.

photo by Chip Griffin

Big space or small, get help arranging your home for better connection with your loved ones. Contact me today.

Feng Shui and Touch: The Forgotten Dimension of Your Home Experience

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How you picture your home is visual, but your experience of it is multi-sensory. Think of the tactile or textural experience of your home. This is even more important as winter continues to hang on and we need to snuggle in.

A Feng Shui kitchen is the heart of the home. Picture yourself gathered around a table with friends or family, or sitting on your own with a cup of coffee or tea. Contrary to what your grandmother said, elbows and forearms will be resting on the table or kitchen island.  Do you relax or draw away? What is your tactile or touch experience? If the table or kitchen counter is granite, marble or glass, you will withdraw from its cold hard surface – undermining the warm emotional experience you desire from your kitchen.

Wooden topped kitchen island
A truly welcoming kitchen island

A week ago my friend, Laurie, asked me what to do with her worn kitchen island countertop. Since I love to give my opinion on design issues, I was eager to hear her question.

She has a cherry wood counter top on her kitchen island, and after twenty years it is looking worn. Another friend suggested simply adding a granite top to the wooden surface, but Laurie was not sure that was the best situation.

I asked her how she uses her kitchen island. Laurie’s family shares meals at the island and her teenagers do their homework there. Clearly her kitchen island is an important gathering place for her family.

Granite is an elegant kitchen work surface, but it is also hard and cold. A gathering table or kitchen island needs to be warm and inviting. On a subtle level a granite, marble, stone or concrete counter will be unwelcoming. Because of its cold, hard qualities, you and your family and friends will avoid it and may not know why. More importantly you will loose a gathering place in your home.

Laurie’s friend is a serious home cook and her kitchen island was not used as a gathering place. In that case granite is great.

Think of touch and texture when you are selecting items for your home. Wood is the warmest and most welcoming. Formica and Corian are practical and neutral. Stone, concrete and glass are cold and hard.

The same tactile issues apply to a kitchen or dining room table – or even a desk. Think about your total experience of the material, not just its appearance. How welcoming is a glass-topped table? Is the table a gathering place, like a coffee table or dining table? Or is it an elegant decorative piece? Think of how you are using the piece – that will guide to make the best selection for your emotional and decorating needs.

Still, ever-ready to give advice to my friend – I suggested that all she simply refinish the solid wood counter top so it doesn’t look so worn. Ideally she can work with someone who will do minimum sanding to maintain as much of the patina of the wood as possible. One of the things we love about wood is the character it develops with time and wear – just like us. 😉

Update: Visiting my friend’s home recently, she was so happy that she kept her worn and warm cherry wood kitchen island counter top – and you can see why.

One of my favorite things about winter is having an excuse to snuggle up with sweaters, quilts and throws.  A quilt or throw that has been washed innumerable times until it is deliciously soft is a wonderful treat. I find that natural materials are the best for warmth and comfort. A rayon chenille throw can feel plush, but is just does not keep me warm. Wool is warmest. Quilted silk or cashmere, if you are lucky, is purr-inducing. The tactile delights of summer are soft grass under your bare feet, freshly laundered cotton and linen and the silkiness of flower petals.

photo by author

 

Living Room and Family Room Furniture Placement: Close the Gap and Avoid Shouting Distance

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“A number of relatives whom I love dearly suffer from progressive hearing loss significant enough to require the speaker to shout. I find it nearly impossible to do this when carrying on a conversation without sounding harsh and without my sentiments eventually changing to match my voice. How do I maintain a conversational tone when speaking at top decibel.”

The above was a letter to a Boston Globe etiquette advice columnist. The writer brilliantly identified the problem: that when she had to shout to be heard, her emotions soon followed with harsh feelings.

Couple sitting too far apart, straining to talk.

While you may not have relatives with significant hearing loss, the wrong arrangement of furniture in a gathering room can have the same effect – people shouting at each other with voices and feelings becoming harsh.

Architectural Psychology has studied this phenomenon and measured what is the ideal distance, face-to-face, for relaxed conversation.  It is 2-4 feet, the measurement nose-to-nose, or more significantly eye-to-eye and ear-to-ear. Beyond that distance you will have to stretch your voice and energy to connect. And then you wonder why everyone avoids that room, or why television watching is the only activity in that space.

An example is the photo at right which shows a couple seated on park benches too far apart for easy conversation. The woman in the photo is sitting on the edge of her seat and leaning forward in an attempt to bridge the interpersonal distance between herself and the man.

Most people reflexively place their furniture against the walls. This is often shown in decorating magazines and television shows with the thought this makes the room look larger. What is lost is a sense of connection and coziness.  But furniture, even in smaller homes, should be arranged for ease of conversation.  Ideally, cluster your furniture for relaxed speaking and good eye contact when you gather with friends and family.

  • Working with a client I reconfigured her sectional sofa, so the seats – and her family members – faced each other, instead of the television. She was extremely happy with the significant improvement in family interactions this simple change created.
  • Another client told me moving her son’s favorite chair 18 inches brought him into the family conversational circle and a greater sense of inclusion in her family – and no was aware of his feeling of being on the periphery until after the change.
  • The solution can be as simple as moving chairs and sofas 6 inches closer to each other.
  • Or you may need to “float” a conversational grouping in the room – and anchor it in relation to a fireplace or window.

Photo by  clairity