Ever since I became a mother 5 years ago, I have felt like there aren’t enough hours in the day. Fast forward a few years, now owning my own interior design studio, now with two young girls, being a wife and a creative. I honestly look at myself at the end of the day sometimes and wonder how I fit it all in and still found inspiration to keep creating.

I get asked a lot where my inspiration comes from. How I keep creating after 16+ years as a working creative. I wish I had a clear answer. Sometimes the ideas just don’t come. Other days I can’t keep them from exploding out of me. What I do have is a handful of things I have learned over the last few years that have been transformative for me. Not rules. Just what keeps me going and inspired.

My sweet baby (my best accessory!) on the way to a client meeting

Letting it all overlap

I used to try to keep everything separate. As if I lived three lives. And I was completely exhausted. I would keep my personal life private, and then it felt like I was living a double life. Until I realized the power of being a mom, a creative, and a business owner, and that it’s ok for them to overlap.

I have been told (and I think it’s true) that I have a very analytic brain for a designer. Running my business isn’t unlike running my home. I have never ending to-do lists that I need to physically cross off in order to feel it’s done. I have had to add very structured time blocks in my week: for designing, business admin, marketing, and for being a mom. I don’t know if I’ll ever find a balance of feeling like one is getting less attention than the other, but planning it all out and seeing it on my calendar allows me to have a plan and stick to it.

I know what time of the day I am fresh. When I need to do analytical work, and when I can design daydream and get into the creative zone. When there is a dance recital for my daughter that I can’t miss. Then there is the creative zone. I put everything on Do Not Disturb. I have found that this is the only way I can get in the zone without seeing a message pop up and getting totally sidetracked.

Because after all these years I’ve come to the realization that my clients hire me to design homes for real life. And I live that life. The school mornings, the lists, the dinner chaos, the studio deadlines. When I stopped hiding one life from the other, the work got more real. So did the designs.

The overlap isn’t the problem. It’s the whole point.

Shooting my girls room last week, a full circle moment.

In Progress…

Structure is the guardrail

Given how structured I am with my own life, it only makes sense that I run my business like that as well. So many of my clients are busy professionals with families, with even less free time. I’ve worked hard to create a buttoned up process with key dates for presentations that are set at the beginning of every project. My team has deadlines in place, and my clients know exactly what to expect and when.

This also creates the guardrails for me. As a designer, those boundaries are crucial in the never ending inspiration and pulling ideas phase. Gantt charts are an incredible tool I use to plan the year, to make sure we are on track and can execute on what we promise.

Our Grand Army Residence presentation, will share more soon!

Consuming beauty on purpose

Protecting my time is only half of it. The other half is filling it back up.

I have learned that inspiration doesn’t just come to me. I have to go looking for it, and I have to make it a ritual. For me that looks like a slow morning with design books, and always, always a flea market. My older daughter has become my favorite shopping companion. She has a really good eye, and watching her pull the one interesting thing out of a crowded stall reminds me why I fell in love with the hunt in the first place.

On a recent personal trip to Paris, one market morning led me to an incredible vintage art piece that is now going into a current client project. Those are the types of moments that are impossible to plan. You can’t schedule the find. You can only keep showing up to the places where finds happen.

Another constant source of inspiration in my archive of vintage Architectural Digests and House and Gardens, and I return to them constantly. Decades-old rooms to inspire room designs that will last.