Smith - Cozy Minimalist Home

CONTENTS

Its tempting to list everyone I know here, because truly there is a connection to how everyone you know plays a role in what you create. But in the spirit of minimalism, I want to thank:

God, the original designer, the first maker, the relentless beauty hunter.

Chad, Landis, Cademon, and Gavin, the men who put up with me at home.

Emily, baby sister, soul-stirring writer, sounding board, sanity keeper.

Mom and Dad, who are endlessly supportive.

The Cozy Minimalist community, who trusted a girl without a design degree to teach them how to design their own homes with purpose.

The 2016 Tuscan Writers Retreat-ers, listeners who shared lots of truth and wine.

Jenni, retreat leader, friend, and agent.

Caroline and Greg, the kind of friends everyone always hopes to have.

Tsh, Kendra, Megan, Lisa, Jessica, Logan, Angela, Mandi, Niki, Emily, and Anne for friendships that last and make a difference.

Carolyn: its unnatural and probably unprofessional how much I adore my editor.

Alicia, who lets me be an INTJ, Enneagram 5.

Brian and Julie, who believed in this idea when it was an ugly baby.

Caleb, who taught me how to use a camera that wasnt also a phone.

Sean and Christie, John and Marcy, Tell and Karen, Caleb and Elaine, and Kurt and Melissa.

Lindsay, whose creativity constantly leaves me speechless.

Edie, my favorite maximalist and the reason I will never be a full-on minimalist.

ALSO BY MYQUILLYN SMITH

The Nesting Place: It Doesnt Have to Be Perfect to Be Beautiful

START with super-comfy primary seating, ideally in a style that has a name.

ADD some secondary seating thats comfy enough.

SPRINKLE around surfaces and storage.

LAYER with a large rug.

COMBINE floor-to-ceiling drapes.

INCORPORATE lighting and lamps with presence.

SURROUND with just enough large wall art.

ADD a pinch of accessorized vignettes.

FILL with people; add love.

ENJOY your Cozy Minimalist space.

WE BELIEVE that home exists to serve people, not the other way around.

WE BELIEVE it is a sacred calling to be watchful about what comes into our home and purposeful about what goes out.

WE BELIEVE unique style always trumps trends, and that an uncomplicated home is a blessing to everyone who enters it.

WE BELIEVE that empty spaces are just as important, beautiful, and useful as filled spaces.

WE BELIEVE home is an ever-shifting combination of grace, coziness, abundance, simplicity, form, and function.

WE BELIEVE that it doesnt have to be perfect to be beautiful.

WE BELIEVE that it doesnt have to be cluttered to be cozy, and that it doesnt have to be modern to be minimal.

WE BELIEVE we truly can have more style with less stuff.

Here are before and after photos of my family room, contrasting when I styled it as a Stuff Manager and when I styled it like a Cozy Minimalist.

The decorative items I used in the family room before I cozy-minimalized the space. Notice the small scale, lack of presence, and lifelessness.

The decorative items I used to cozy-minimalize the space. Notice how I used fewer, but larger scale, items and lots of plants.

Psst! Want to see some behind-the-scenes photos?

Throughout the book, I mention fixing up our fixer-upper and the barn and talk about what its like to create one sane space in the midst of a chaotic mess. If youre like me, you enjoy seeing some real-life messy photos along with some before-and-after photos that make you question whether youre looking at the same space. There wasnt much room in the book for these types of photos, so we added some here.

Also, I wanted you to see what my house really looked like just outside the camera frame as I took the cover and chapter photos in our one corner with decent natural light. I spent six weeks in the summer taking all the photos for this book. We also happened to have a houseguest during most of that time. When it came time to style our family room to resemble how I decorated as a Stuff Manager, the rest of our house was a certified wreck. Looking back, Im remembering that it was so fun. But like any creative process, the during was messy, a pain, and I wondered whether it would be worth the trouble.

It was.

And creating the home youve always longed for will be worth the trouble too.

The dining room when we moved in.

What our family room really looked like the day we bought the house.

The boys bathroom when we moved in.