New Apartment Decorating PART 2: Rediscovering My Interior Style (After Losing Touch With It)
I've been in my new apartment for about a month now, and even though it’s coming along nicely, there's one crucial ingredient missing: me. My essence, my personality, my… me-ness.
I personally think that an apartment should be the physical embodiment of who you are as a person, at least to a degree.
If you've watched the drama unfold in this video and/or this video on my YouTube channel, you know that the last couple years have been very tough for me. I feel like I’ve completely lost my sense of self, and when you lose your sense of self you lose touch with your sense of style. Self and style are inextricably linked!
And in this post, I'm going to share how I'm going about rediscovering my personal style after losing touch with it.
So if you’re struggling with discovering (or rediscovering) your personal interior style, I'm hoping that by seeing how I'm approaching it you’ll have a little bit of guide on how you can do so it well.
So let’s dive into the personal interior style discovery process!
Would you rather watch than read? Here’s the video! ↓
1. What do you love? What do you geek out about?
The first thing I am zeroing in on as I'm rediscovering my personal interior style to actively think about what am I loving these days.
What do you love? And how can you work what you love into your decor? You can do this in a literal way, in an abstract way, or what you love might not actually physically appear in your decor. But I think just having the sense of what you love as a person can only help your styling choices and make them more authentic to you.
So when it comes to decorating my apartment and doing so in a way that actually connects to my interests and my personality, I'm literally asking myself, “What am I into these days?”
So here are some things I personally love that I want to incorporate visually in the space.
I love music, specifically rock and roll. So I would love for my apartment to have a bit of a rock and roll vibe.
I also love like dark witchy, moody things, both visually and in the things that I watch (like TV), the things I listen to (I love dark moody music).
I geek out about things like anime and video games, specifically Legend of Zelda. I used to have a straight up Triforce hanging in my studio apartment, haha. So that was like a very specific way that I was incorporating Zelda in my decor.
Then in terms of the actual interior styles that I'm gravitating towards, I'm really loving groovy boho vibes with a dark edge.
These are the kinds of pins I’ve been saving lately:
So all of these things I love can either literally be incorporated in my decor, or just consciously having them in mind can inform my choices in some way. And this little exercise of actively thinking about what you love and how it can affect your styling is definitely something I recommend to you if you are trying to discover your true, authentic personal interior style!
2. What are you not into anymore?
The next thing I'm consciously thinking about to get back in touch with my personal style is to think about the things that I'm not really into anymore. Identifying what you're not really aligned with can be just as useful as thinking about the things that you're loving.
My style hasn't drastically changed since decorating my studio apartment a few years ago, but there are certain things that - while I still like them - aren't really where I'm at these days in terms of where my personal style is going.
Specifically, my studio had a lot of rustic industrial elements to it, and I'm not really going to be doing that in my new apartment, for the most part.
My bedroom will still have a bit of a rustic industrial vibe to it, mainly because of my headboard, which I still love. But I won’t be actively pursuing that look as I decorate my new space.
So as you're reassessing your personal style and what you're gravitating towards, don't just think about what you are loving. Also think about what you don’t really love anymore, and that will get rid of some of the mental clutter in your styling brain. It's overwhelming enough to decorate a new apartment and pinpoint what your tastes are, so let’s lighten the load a little bit and eliminate the things we know that we don't want!
3. What’s missing?
The next thing I'm addressing in order to reconnect with my personal interior style is to simply look around and ask myself: what's missing?
Try doing the same. Physically look around your space right now and ask yourself, what is missing in here? What ingredients are missing from the recipe of my space? How can I make this more flavorful?
For me, my apartment is looking pretty enough at this point, but what it’s missing is an edge.
I personally feel more of a sense of belonging in a place that has a little bit of a darkness and drama to it. So going forward as I'm decorating this apartment, I want to make styling decisions that satisfy this need for more dark drama vibes.
Something you can do to help you figure out what's missing in a room is to simply make a wishlist of things that you would like to shop for. In my case, I would like to get a new area rug. I love the current one, but I want something that leans more towards the black side rather than the gray side. I want something really dark. I clearly just want darkness to descend upon this place. 🙃
I also want to get a new console table that better fits the big wall behind my couch. I think I need something longer or I need multiple pieces. Not totally sure yet. But basically the current console table is dwarfed by the wall, so I eventually want to get something better for that area.
So I highly recommend you make a little wishlist of things you’d like to add to your apartment. What is currently missing?
4. Getting my head straight before I get my home straight
Another thing I'm doing to reconnect with my personal interior style is to go to therapy.
Like I said earlier, I have completely lost my sense of self and therefore I have lost my sense of style. Or at least I've lost touch with it. It's still there. It's just hiding under a thick layer of trauma.
So I need to rebuild my self-esteem, my confidence, and my identity. So I got my ass into therapy.
I've said it before and I will say it again: you have to get your head straight before you get your home straight. I mean, we have all just recently been through a global trauma. We were all affected by COVID in various ways.
I didn't even realize how much the aftermath of the pandemic was destroying in my life until this year. It was like this slow motion car crash, and I am just now pulling myself out of the wreckage.
I mean, because of COVID, I was laid off from a great job. My social life, like everyone else's, crumbled. COVID sent my then boyfriend into a spiral that ultimately destroyed us. And I have spent the last couple years just losing myself. So I need to get my head straight before I can get my home straight.
Someone commented on one of my videos where I said, “you have to get your head straight before you get your home straight”, saying that they actually think it's the opposite; that you need to get your home straight so that your head can be straight, meaning your home will help your mindset. And that's a good point. It's sort of a chicken or the egg situation. Yes, getting your home together will help your mindset and your sense of wellbeing.
But I would still argue that the first step is to get your head straight because your styling choices take place in your brain. It's your mind that creates a beautiful space. And if your mind, your self-esteem, your creativity, and your confidence aren’t in a good space, then you're less likely to create the space that will ultimately help your mindset. It's a dance between the two for sure.
All this is to say that in order to get my head straight, I have started therapy. I've done therapy several times before, but I don't think I've ever needed it more than I do now. So whether or not you get therapy, I think that you should find a way to build yourself up before you begin your styling process and start making purchasing decisions.
You don't have to be in the perfect headspace. I sure as hell am not. But put as much effort - if not more - into your beautiful brain as you do in your space.
So these are the things I'm going through to reconnect with my personal interior style. Let me know in the comments below, how do you connect with your personal style? What kinds of things do you think about? What kinds of things inspire you?
