How Apartment Decorating Can Majorly Improve Your Life
Living Pretty Ep42 // How Apartment Decorating Can Majorly Improve Your Life & Mindset
Apartment decorating can majorly improve your life and mindset! If you’re feeling discouraged about your small apartment decor, let me tell you: it’s worth it. Because finding happiness within yourself is easier when you can find happiness in your home environment!
In this video, I’m sharing how decorating a small apartment can create a domino effect of positivity in your life. Truly, having a lovely personal retreat to come home to every day can change your perspective, the actions you take, and the people you connect with.
So if you’re in need of interior decor inspiration, small apartment decor tips, or how to improve your studio apartment life, cozy up with me for a bit and I’ll get you nice and motivated to decorate your apartment!
Video Transcript ↓
I’ve made some slight edits in the transcript below so that everything makes more sense in text form. But overall, this is almost a word-for-word dictation of what I say in the video. I’m a much better writer than this, I swear, haha.
So, this might sound crazy, but I think that I met my dream guy because of my apartment decor. Stay with me.
Decorating your apartment can be like knocking over the first domino of positivity in your life. That positive, creative action can reverberate and cause so many other positive things to happen!
So in this video, I’m going to talk about how decorating your apartment can truly improve your life and your mindset.
And by the end of this, I hope you’ll feel inspired to knock down that first domino for yourself.
And stick around to the end, because I’m going to explain what I meant about meeting my dream guy because of my apartment decor.
And if you’re new to my channel, my name is Steffi and I’m the creator of the interior style blog, Moda Misfit. And you’re watching Living Pretty - the place for apartment styling tips and small space decor inspiration.
Just because you rent your space, doesn’t mean you can’t own your style, so if you want to get inspired every week, be sure to subscribe!
Also, if you live in a studio apartment and you want a free resource that will help you jumpstart your styling, I highly recommend you download my free Studio Styling 101 workbook!
First of all, devoting yourself to any act of creativity is going to create ripples of positivity in your life.
And decorating your apartment is one such creative act. And the cool thing about it is, when you’re done, you get to live in it.
1. Decorating your apartment gives you a sense of belonging.
So the first way that decorating your apartment can improve your life overall is it addresses one of our fundamental needs as humans - to feel a sense of belonging. A sense of home and safety.
An undecorated apartment is fine. It’s shelter, which is another one of our basic human needs. But will it give you that deeper sense of belonging? Likely not.
When you put your personal stamp on an apartment through your styling, you’re basically saying, “This is my home. This is where I belong. I may be renting, but I own this space.”
And when you feel at home every day, you’re setting a foundation of positivity on which to build everything else in your life.
Positivity is viral - one positive thing leads to another positive thing, and so on.
So why not have your apartment be that first positive thing that creates a bunch of other positive things? Domino effect!
2. Decorating your apartment is comforting when you’re going through a tough time
Another way in which decorating your apartment can improve your life is it can be a real comfort when you’re in pain or when you’re going through something.
I was so homesick when I was living in New York and LA. Thank goodness I moved back to Seattle, because I never got used to being away.
And I was more than just homesick - I was dealing with depression and anxiety and the typical experience of feeling totally lost in my 20’s… I was not my best self.
And we all have our own pain we have to deal with, unfortunately. You can’t avoid it.
But you can find comfort. And decorating my apartment over those years was a potent form of comfort for me.
For example, my parents and my brother helped me move into my NYU dorm Freshman year, and I was a total mess. I was terrified by the fact that they were going to leave me all alone in New York City and that I’d have to say goodbye.
I was so privileged to be going to NYU but I could not get over how sad I felt. I felt like I was losing so much, even though in reality I was gaining the opportunity of a lifetime. Depression has a way of doing that to your brain.
But one thing happened, one experience with my mom, that was like a ray of light in that experience.
She took me to Pier One.
And she bought me a few pieces of decor for my dorm room. And just like that, I felt a wave of comfort washed over me.
It didn’t solve all my problems, but that one small act of positivity that I was then able to live with in my dorm room, made such a huge difference.
And from then on, decorating my apartments over the years became a huge piece of comfort for me, in a time that was really dark.
Will decorating your apartment cure all your ailments? No. But will it give you comfort? In my experience, yes.
3. Decorating your apartment can attract amazing people into your life
And the third way in which decorating your apartment can improve your life is, in my experience, it kind of became a welcome sign for love.
I’m convinced my decor attracted my dream guy.
So, I moved back to Seattle into this little studio apartment 4 years ago. And like I like to say, I decorated the shit out of it. I poured everything into decorating this apartment.
And that led to posting photos of it on Instagram and creating my interior style blog Moda Misfit.
Now remember when I said that decorating your apartment can be like knocking down that first domino of positivity in your life? This is how it went down for me.
Kobee and I worked in the same office for 2 years. And we interacted here and there, but we kind of just admired each other from afar.
Then I created Moda Misfit. And Kobee, a visual and user experience designer with tons of website creation experience, had something to talk to me about.
We started hitting it off because of our conversations about Moda Misfit! If I hadn’t created Moda Misfit, then our conversations might have never advanced from water cooler small talk.
If I hadn’t poured so much into decorating my studio, I would never have created Moda Misfit. It’s all connected.
Now, of course, I’m not suggesting that you have to create a blog and have an Instagram presence in order to attract a mate.
What I’m saying is that when you take one positive action for yourself, it informs the way you behave, the way you show up in the world. It informs what you create, it informs your attitude, and it informs the connections you make.
So whether it’s decorating your apartment or some other positive action you take for yourself, you’re going to naturally attract people and opportunities you may not have before.
Because you’ll behave differently, even in the smallest ways.
So keep in mind, when you decorate your apartment, you’re not just making it pretty. You’re doing something positive for yourself, and that will reverberate throughout your whole life.
So I strongly recommend you decorate your apartment and knock down that first domino of positivity in your life.
And when I open the doors to my online course, Small Apartment Styling School, in March, I hope that I’ll be able to help you do that!
If you’re struggling with styling your apartment, Small Apartment Styling School is basically going to be a roadmap that helps you figure out your personal style, shop for your decor, and accessorize and arrange your apartment.
It’ll be course curriculum plus a Facebook group in which I can answer all your interior styling questions. I’m really excited about it and I really want it to help people get out of that rut and realize that you are so capable of styling your apartment and making it into a place that feels like a happy, cozy retreat.
So if you want to learn more about Small Apartment Styling School and want to join the waitlist, click here!
And if you want daily glimpses into my studio apartment life and lots of Helo the cat stuff, then follow me on Instagram @moda.misfit!
And for regular doses of apartment styling tips and small space decor inspiration, subscribe to this channel and hit that bell to be notified when a new episode goes up every week!