#86 Please, no more beige

I’ve been kinda overthinking this next newsletter because it comes just after I’d taken a week off to basically do nothing, and I thought I’ll come back with some profound ideas or reflections, and yet I got none of those.

I suppose some of it comes down to me not actually planning anything during that time besides:

• a coffee with a friend and a good catch-up session

• a day to go find spring shoes (I didn’t; I got two bags instead and they are cute)

• haircut (luckily it’s only 15min walk away because as I was coming back from the coffee chat with a friend, I popped the tire 1min away from home and we were car-less for most of the week)

• gym (big push week) — ended up moving it to this week instead so I just went for walks and did stretches, some skip rope, and that’s about it

That’s literally it. The rest was having super slow mornings, playing games, doing some photo editing, making food.

But, even if I didn’t get anything super profound out of this brief break, I did come back with a few things:

• Hit a big squat PB on my first session back, so pretty happy about that

• Finally found a lamp for our living room and went to pick it up

• Bought a couple of bedside tables (also something I’ve been umming and arring about for ages)

• Researched a few plants (I want some for very specific locations in our house) that are pet-friendly and hopefully easy to look after. I always end up picking some out in shops only for Google Lens to tell me they’re toxic to pets, so I thought no more blind shopping, I need to have a prepared list of what to look for

And I also realised, I’ve been going down the modern mid-century style rabbithole a little. I think it was the lamp and bedside table combo that did it, and since then I’ve been trying to pinpoint what exactly attracts me to it so much, and why now.

I know us, millennials, went through a really futuristic, minimalist phase, stripping colour and anything unnecessary away—maybe dealing with the aftermath of growing up in houses that were filled to the brim with things, heck in Eastern Europe some of us even had carpets on walls, okay—ending up with blank beige walls and blank beige furniture, until eventually you feel there’s no soul in it (or colour). Maybe lucky with some pastels thrown in there somewhere.

Not quite as far as Kim K’s ghost house, though.

So it seems like transitioning to modern mid-century makes total sense.

Here’s a quick description I pulled out:

Clean, warm, and quietly confident. Furniture and objects have purposeful shapes — tapered legs, gentle curves, honest materials — sitting in open, light-filled spaces with room to breathe. A neutral base of creams and natural wood gets punctuated by rich, earthy colour pops. Nothing is decorative for decoration’s sake, but nothing is cold or stark either. It’s the sweet spot between beauty and function, with an underlying belief that well-designed everyday things make life better.

I don’t want anything that feels remotely cold and futuristic, I want warmth, textures, earthy colours. But I don’t want clutter and feeling overwhelmed either. So the bit about utility and good design make total sense for me.

Like these nice, solid containers I got for our kitchen. The glass is actually really thick, and I just love the ribbed effect and the sealed wooden top—though maybe less traditional that we keep dark chocolate in one of them (for breakfast yogurt & snack) and creatine powder with a small spoon in the other.

I was looking through my photos of the Make with Notion event in London that I took part in as an Ambassador, and I realised I’m seeing the same thing there, which is why I’m lowkey obsessed with the brand and the product, and have been for a while now.

When we had a meetup at the Notion Dublin HQ, you can see all these mid-century references there, too. I shared a few photos in this newsletter issue if you want to have a peek, so unsurprisingly that the brand carries those references into its yearly event, too.

Here’s a few things and corners I collected at the event.

I’m kinda excited for this because for me, personally, I always felt really stripped back minimalism was too cold for me, but now seeing that there is a way to bring back life and texture, and a touch of colour, AND have actual purpose and some utility (yes, even art and collectibles) for anything you add to your place, it just feels like things are making so much more sense to me.

I’d love to tackle our bedroom one day but honestly I don’t have enough energy for big projects, they really overwhelm me because I get so indecisive, but I think we’ll start with the bedside tables and go slowly from there.

The best part is, it doesn’t need to be super expensive or a huge makeover, I think that’s what really draws me to it. I can build it like a lego, piece by piece.

Kudos to you if you’re one of those talented DIY people who can just make cool things happen but I think I’ll keep watching you from the sidelines, cheering you on, while slowly, slowly adding and swapping pieces in our home.

That’s all from me this week—if you enjoyed this newsletter issue and haven’t subscribed yet, you can click the button below. I’d love to have you here! Hopefully, catch you next week.✨