Beating Burnout: How to Find Inspiration When You’re Totally Over Everything
Find yourself rolling your eyes at your local design store’s window display? Not in the mood to go thrift store shopping…again? Did you find yourself — gasp — bored with the latest IKEA catalog? You might be suffering from design burn out, and your home’s decor might be showing it, too. How do you get back to loving everything design? Finding your zest for DIY projects? To that special energetic space where you live and breathe paint colors? We’ve got the tips to finding your creative inspiration again.
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Change the scenery
Get out of the house! Take a small trip, go for a drive, go for an exploratory walk. Get into nature. Go to an art museum. Go to that museum in your city where you’re not even sure what they have in it. Go anywhere but home or work — the places you spend most of your time. Even if you don’t have the budget to take costly trips, you may still be able to sneak into that new restaurant. You can pay attention to textures of an outdoor area. But, and this is important, don’t try to find inspiration for design. Don’t go out looking for a paint color for your living room. Don’t try to figure out what kind of art to put over the bed. Just go out there and absorb the world for a bit.
Forget about it for awhile
Take a break. Take a day off of Pinterest and Instagram. Even if you can’t spare the time to get out to absorb things in the world, at least stop delving into the design world for a bit. Put those design dilemmas or choices that need to be made in a drawer for a bit. Give your brain some space to get creative. As above, don’t go looking for inspiration for awhile.
Get creative in a totally different way
Chances are there is a way in which you excel creatively, or at the very least feel comfortable doing. Go in the complete opposite direction. There are tons of ways to be creative — pick something that feels scary or different than anything you’ve ever done before. Take that sculpting class if you’re a weaver. Take a painting class if you’re a photographer. Flex and stretch your creative muscles in ways they’ve never been stretched before — you’ll make them stronger and even more in the mood to tackle problems when you’re done.
Look to the past
No, not your past — look to history. Go to the library and flip through old books and magazines that feature homes of decades past. Don’t look for ideas — just marvel at how they used to do things. Dig into the details of what it was like to live in the past, laugh at the things that used to consider cool, and get lost in history so you can find yourself back to dreaming about your design future.
Go back to your map
If you feel out of inspiration, you might be getting off-track from your home’s priorities and your dream home goals. So revisit the bigger picture and the end game. Go over again what’s important to you; you might be getting bogged down by unimportant stuff and losing your inspiration due to frustration.
How do you find your way back to hope and inspiration when you’re so totally over everything? Share in the comments below!