'These are the good days' – how I'm learning to recognise this eeven if I'm living in an unfinished home
Appreciating happiness while you’re living it can actually make you happier
Screen printer Hannah Carvell is one of Ideal Home's new Open House contributors, sharing her thoughts on colourful home design for a creative family to live in. See the rest of her articles here.
There’s a phrase I’ve been trying to hold onto lately: "these are the good days". I first heard genius Hannah Fry talk about it in the context of happiness, the idea that, at some point in the future, you’ll look back on an ordinary day and realise it was actually a good one and actually by repeating this phrase to yourself it is proven to increase your happiness levels.
I loved the sentiment so much that I even turned it into a screen print last year. The theory is that recognising happiness while you’re living it can actually make you happier. And I really think she’s onto something.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot at home because, if I’m honest, I have a habit of treating our house as something that’s always on its way to becoming better. Waiting for the “after”.
For years, I’ve approached our homes like a series of before-and-afters. In fact, in our last house a huge renovation project, I spent three years living in the “before”, dreaming of the “after”.
I have endless photos on my phone documenting dusty rooms, knocked-down walls and half-finished spaces. But by the time the mint green Crittall doors I’d dreamt about for years were finally fitted, we already knew we were going to have to sell the house. The enjoyment I’d imagined just wasn’t there.
Looking back now though, I can see that those three years were the good days. The planning, the anticipation, the discovering, the everyday life unfolding amongst the mess and upheaval, we still had kids birthdays and a new puppy join the family, that was the real part. Life isn’t the finished reveal. It’s the living.
And yet, there’s often this feeling with homes that the real enjoyment comes later: once the room is finished, once the decisions are made, once everything finally feels pulled together. The problem is, there’s always another “before” another project, another thing that could be improved. Somewhere along the way, I realised I was spending a lot of time living in the not quite yet. The life happening in between is where the memories are made.
The reality of our current home is far less resolved. We haven’t touched any of the bedrooms yet. Come winter, there are damp patches, bits of peeling wallpaper and mismatched Facebook Marketplace furniture. But they’re cosy and comfortable, and for now, that’s enough.
If we save for any renovation next, it probably needs to be the old glass lean-to attached to the front of the house. Its roof is cracked in so many places that every storm makes me slightly nervous. It leaks when it rains. And yet, it’s also one of the most lived-in parts of our home.
It’s where shoes and coats get thrown at the end of the day. The dogs spend entire summer afternoons stretched out in the sun there. We’ve raised chicks and ducklings in the space during springtime, and my houseplants thrive in the light.
It’s imperfect, but deeply functional and when I think about what we’ll remember from these early years in our cottage, it won’t be the cracks in the roof or the jobs we never got round to. It’ll be fluffy yellow chicks under a heat lamp, trays of seedlings on the windowsill and the way the whole space glows in late summer.
I’ve noticed something similar in my screen printing.There’s always a temptation to rush towards the final layer the point where the print feels finished and resolved. But often, the most interesting stages happen somewhere in between.
If you follow my Instagram, you’ll know I always say the test sheets are often my favourites. When colours overlap unexpectedly, or a mark lands slightly off, the prints can end up feeling freer and more alive than the carefully planned version (these are always the ones that end up in my Sample Sales, a true one off piece of art).
You can’t skip those stages. They are the process and I’m starting to think living in a home works in much the same way. Enough, as it is.
I’ve also been really drawn lately to the idea of “enoughness”, explored by Melanie Rickey the quiet sense that what you already have, as it is, can be enough. Not perfect. Not finished. But enough to live in, enjoy and appreciate.
That shift has changed how I think about both my home and consumption generally. I still love interiors, fashion and beautiful things, but I no longer feel the same urgency to constantly upgrade or acquire. Partly because budgets are tighter these days, but also because I’ve become more conscious of the environmental cost of endlessly consuming.
Slowing down has made me appreciate what’s already here. When you stop viewing your home as a problem to solve, you start noticing it differently, the familiarity of worn furniture, the comfort of everyday rituals, the beauty in things that have evolved slowly over time.
I’m not about to stop decorating, planning or rearranging things that’s still part of what I love. But I am trying to hold that phrase in mind more often. "These are the good days”.
Not the imagined “after”, where everything finally comes together exactly as planned. But this version. The slightly undone, still-evolving, properly lived-in version.
Because one day, I’ll look back on this house the peeling wallpaper, the cluttered tables, the in-progress prints and realise it wasn’t a waiting room for something better. It was it.
