A fresh new year. I have written my way though the past decade here on IHOD, which is hard to wrap my mind around! At the beginning of 2021, I wrote out some very clear guidelines I knew I needed to re-visit for the year. After hitting burnout year after year, I was coming to realize the pace of consuming, creating, and sharing on the internet was taking a toll. As social media came on the scene, we continued to adapt and change to keep up, and I slowly felt the time and energy suck take it’s toll. We no longer were creating and sharing in a way that was serving our mental health well, which affects every area of your life. I created a list of boundaries for myself, and it made room for much more peace and contentment than I had ever had. Despite the many difficulties the year brought, I felt better equipped with the tools to stay focused on our purpose and priorities.
As we head into a new year, I am able to see how I continually feel drawn to even greater change. Everyone’s definition of success is different. For me, success is finding your own unique path and confidently walking it. I am working on the confident part. It is very easy to get distracted or nudged in different directions, and the true battle is staying the course you are called to. I feel very grateful to be able to work with Gabe to make a living for our family, and to do so in a way that uses different interests we both love. Sharing what we learn with a community taps into the love of teaching and education we both have. This is what we will continue to focus on in 2022, but re-adjusting in a way that allows us to make plans for the future.
So what will change? Stepping back even more from daily sharing on instagram stories. While we love to share a lot of what we are learning in home reno and design there, it is very time consuming. We are hoping to put that time and energy into projects we know we want to be doing 5 and 10 yrs from now, and it is not full time sharing on IG;) When the kids get home from school every day, its all hands on deck for both of us, so our days are short! When I started blogging I never expected it to become a full time job, but it was exactly what we needed at that phase of our lives. Being able to co-parent and tag team renovating has been something we are very grateful for. However, as social media has grown, so did the demands for what you needed to create and share in order to keep the monetization up. We never wanted to be “influencers” simply because we identify more with the design and education genres. However, that is the pace it felt like we needed to keep up with in order to maintain what used to be blogging for income. We used the last year to really thing through what will be best for our family in the coming years. I don’t want to pour energy I don’t have into the wrong places, so we found a good shift.
I am a true INFJ/ enneagram type 9, so creating and community is where my heart lies. I love connecting with you all on the meaning of HOME, creating a space that you love, making the most of time with family, and all the humor in between. We want to continue to share these things without the pressure of keeping up with constant content. We will only be partnering with a select few brands we truly love this year, and eventually phasing out of ads altogether. We will continue to develop our print shop as well as dreams for more home and product lines in the future. We also would like to expand soon to offer design services to more of you, and not just our own home! My sister Gianna joined team IHOD this year which has allowed us to expand in these areas. She has been a Godsend.
I have always shared openly and honestly because I appreciate each of you who spend your time with us, and have supported us along the way. We hope to continue to offer a behind the scenes look at growing a side business, renovating a home in an accessible way, and the adventures of big family life.
Cheers to surviving 2021, and courage to stay the course!
