The Design Plan

Deciding on what to design first when you’re conscious of the size of your purse.

Even the most organized of us, the ones living lives ordered beyond even the imaginations of mere mortals, only have so much money and so many hours a day or week to make their home or office into a space where they glow in the light of a life well planned.

How can you decide where to allocate the resources (time, money, amount of time friends are willing to spend helping, etc.) you have available to revamp your home or office?

Waiting to win the lottery so you can do everything you want to do to your current or a new home/office is not the most efficient way to move design-related projects forward  (although if you do win, please don’t forget my name and the fact that I accept spontaneous donations from readers).

A Design Plan

You need a design plan, and the goal of the articles in this month’s feature is to help you develop one.

Taking steps to create the sort of place where you feel comfortable, where you can pursue life objectives that are meaningful to you, is more than just a nice idea.  It will save you money.

Once you develop the right spaces for you and the life you want to live, you won’t feel you need to make any changes (things may wear out over time and need to be replaced, but that would happen anyway).  You won’t paint and repaint your walls looking for the “right” colours for example.

You will create a space that’s psychologically sustainable—and that’s good for the planet as well as you.

The Payoff

Technically, the sort of psychological “payoff” you’ll earn on your design-related efforts depends on what your home or office is like before you begin.

For example, if lots of natural light flows into the rooms of your home now, and you tweak your curtains and blinds, so a little more glare-free sunlight enters your home every day, there won’t be as big an impact on your quality-of-life as if you’ve swapped out tiny windows for full sized ones by revamping the façade of your home.

Also, payoffs depend on the scope of action you take – if a room has 5 windows and you “fix” the curtains on one, the return on your design efforts won’t be as great as if you worked on the other 4 window treatments also.  So, interpret the material in the paragraphs that follow as general guidelines about relative priorities and implications.

See the other articles which show you FREE design changes, some REALLY LOW COST, others needing a BIT OF ELBOW GREASE, and those that will cost but are probably WORTH IT.

(p.s. don’t forget you can write in to us with your design questions).