Encompassing positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, overcome challenges and diffuse conflict in your home.

I’ve coined it ‘emotional intelligence of the home’, and it is an all round topic that has been of great interest to me from the beginning of our home build journey. After experiencing tiny living with 4 children - all of whom have very different personalities - it became apparent to me fairly quickly that there were probably simple things that we could do with our new home with a view to making our long term living arrangement more calm, engaged, curated and spatially suitable to our family as a whole, and individually.

By nature both Beau and I are active relaxers - our 4 active little boys were certainly intended for us! And without leaving home, both of us actually find it very difficult to ‘relax’ per se.

However, we both agree that with 10 years of hustling hard to get here and now with the baby phase behind us - in this season of dirty 30’s, we are going to be making more of a conscious effort to take time to relax - and we have a couple of cosy little spots in our new home for exactly this.

Coffee-drinker’s by day, fire-hugger’s by night. The mini lounge in our main living dining kitchen area (the hub) is going to be a cosy space to be adored. It’s a TV free zone, that gets morning sun and looks out over the forever changing view of the Whangarei harbour. I can see this being the cats favourite spot in the house, but also a versatile and well loved space by both Beau and I - morning and night 

Our portico area is another space that has been designed purely for relaxation and entertainment. At the front of our home our roofline extends out to an indoor/outdoor area that will have a deck, seating and an outdoor fireplace. A space to be enjoyed all year round - day and night, whether it’s enjoying the views or toasting marshmallows in the night air, I think this will be a very well relaxed-in space by all in our home.

Creating a calm environment for our children has been a priority of ours in the design of our home. With 4 boys as I’m sure you can imagine things can get a little hustle bustle at times - and with this in mind, we have attempted to create a comfortable and calm environment that is going to serve them well. Call it a social experiment lol, but the bedrooms in the new home have been allocated based on personality. Maybe it’s a birth order thing - but we seem to have two busy fire crackers and two cruisey boys. It’s no secret, sea views have a calming effect, thus our fire-crackers have scored themselves front row harbour seats in their new bedrooms. The boys new rooms are based around their wants - including jungle, ocean and atmospheric themes, shelving for lego creations and special collections, storage for toys, built in wardrobes which means more space to play - but also we’ve tried to encompass colours of calm with a goal to create a relaxed and happy place for each boy - where they can enjoy spending time in their own space if they want (something which they’ve never known before!).

Natural light correlates to mood so we’ve tried to do as many windows as would fit the budget - In places like bathrooms and hallways we’ve popped in an extra window here and there to try and make a difference to the overall flow and natural lighting of the home.

TV free zones! Something that we’ve noticed with our boys since living in the Bach and at times not having had a TV, is that their creativity and engagement with one and other is at an all time high... when there’s no TV in the main living space. In our new home we have one allocated TV zone - a rumpus room seperate to the hub of the home. We want to try and encourage our boys to be present and engaged at meal times, homework times and general family time as much as possible and for us in the past, removing the TV from our main space has seemed to work well.

Another thing that we have done to improve engagement in our main living area, is that we don't have a sink in our island bench. This has been with a view that the island will be used more as a table / leaning / chatting space rather than a 'work' space. 

The design of our home see's the boys at one end of the house, and us at the other - whilst it might be tricky for the next couple of years while we still have 2 quite little ones, this has been a long term strategy to keep them around home haha! When they turn into stinky teenagers, we want them to feel like they still have a place at home without being invaded by adults. There's nothing like knowing where your kids are than being the 'hang' home right? I've just got to con Beau into that pool now... 

Anyway, those are just a few conscious decisions that we have made with a view to creating an emotionally intelligent space for our family of 6. 

Stay tuned over the next little while while we navigate moving in and starting the interior design process 〰️

Lauren x