I can say the nesting instinct has well and truly set in now. It’s strange I don’t remember experiencing it in any significant way previously; in fact, I never really thought of it as an actual thing.
In a general sense, the nesting instinct can refer to the urge to prepare your home (aka your nest) for your newborn baby. It can involve the mad midnight urge to reorganize (tick!), the unexplainable obsession with cleaning (tick!), obsessive stockpiling of newborn stuff (*looks at the latest huge shop of newborn clothes sitting on the couch)… however, one thing that has really changed for me recently seems to be a sudden preoccupation with anything along the lines of monochrome, minimalism, simplicity… you get the drift.
I suspect it has something to do with decluttering, the disdain for mess of any sort and even a sudden distaste for lots of colours and patterns because I just have a need for everything to look neat, organised and you’d be surprised how much something as simple as a color palette or theme can make such a difference. No, I do not blame my husband for raising his eyebrows at my sudden peculiar behavior.
Some of my sudden obsessions or urges include:
// Clean, crisp white sheets. I could accept some geometric designs or anything in the neutral palette but my current deep purple sheets are actually bothering me. Talk about peculiar, I know. Crisp white sheets just look so inviting to me at the moment; they’re my happy place.
// Crazy midnight cleaning and organizing when I can’t sleep. I have decided to get a better storage system for all my make up so the room looks a lot neater. If only we had some time before the baby’s arrival to make it down to Sydney for a shop – yes, I’m talking about the Ikea Alex drawers!
// Organising my wardrobe. I have been decluttering and donating a whole lot of clothes. I whittled my clothes down to half which my husband said he was very impressed with. Clothes that I have not worn in a year or more – gone. Now, to build a capsule wardrobe (that’s the next obsession)…
Luckily, we are almost done with our home renovations and are now at the part where we slowly furnish and add accent pieces as we go. Husband has stuck with the modern, neutral palette with greys, marbles, whites which I love and will happily continue with as we go about changing up our old furniture and decor.
I’m not sure if this is just a short, passing phase but I’m comfortable moving along with it. I’ve always had a thing for monochrome when it came to my clothes (hello to my pile of probably 25 almost indistinguishable black dresses and other bunch of white/grey outfits) and extending this love for minimalism and simplicity to other areas of my life such as home decor just feels extremely right and comfortable at the moment. Of course my husband isn’t sure if this has anything to do with nesting but for some reason, it all makes sense to me.
Have you experienced any peculiar changes in your behavior when you were pregnant? I never thought I could blabber on about this!
Photos via Vogue Premiere / Hypnotic Memories
