The never ending quest for balance

Laura, an Interior Designer based in The Cotswolds, UK and mum of one very fiery and stubborn five-year-old girl, also the wife of one forty-year-old that she occasionally wants to give back to his mum.

Working in showrooms is not designed for motherhood, but that wasn’t the plan, we were enjoying life, flying around the world for work (the glamour of deserted airports and security lines), but the perks were good, and life was uncomplicated and carefree, almost, except for the fertility issue looming over our heads. After wrapping up my most stressful project (try telling a customer they have no foundations under their beautiful Jacobean Grade II listed manor’s 1980’s botch extension), we packed up and went away for a few days, planned to travel for a few years in our down time and start the adoption process in a couple of years. BOOM, I fell pregnant that holiday, personally I blame the gin and sunshine.

So, after falling pregnant, I decided to put my background in design, retail, and business, into practice and start a Children’s interiors e-commerce store. Naively thinking I would get to spend so much more time with my daughter, how wrong (delusional) was I? I thought it would be less demanding than the clients who called at all hours expecting you to be at their beck and call no matter what was going on. You see when you’re working on someone’s home, their safe place, it can bring out the worst in people. Skip a few years, add a pandemic into the mix and all the joy from my business was gone, I wasn’t getting time to design, my daughter was sounding more and more like the harassed and stressed-out version of me I had become “yeah, hang I’m just doing an email, let me talk to this customer, let me just…”, you get the idea. Customers can be amazing, but they can also email you on Christmas day to say that you’ve ruined their Christmas because they have just checked the order from three months ago and something is the wrong colour, or not what they expected.

The guilt was overwhelming, the love was gone from work and balance, ha what balance? I wouldn’t sleep because I felt I wasn’t spending enough time with little bean, I couldn’t focus on her during the day because I couldn’t stop thinking about the never ending to do list for work, was dealing with imports, customers, warehouses, the list goes on, it was time for a change. A few months ago, I decided to pivot the business and close the retail arm of it, just offering Interior Design services, a big change but it was the right one.

Somehow, it’s a sunny Saturday evening, I’m sipping a lovely Rosé my neighbour dropped off (thanks Nat), trying to awkwardly write about myself, about how that pivot led to some amazing clients already this year, but also led to an incredible job opportunity. I want to be excited about Monday, and my first day, but does the mum guilt ever stop? Now I’m worried I’ll not see little bean enough; not be able to give enough of me to the job and still have some balance, that this still may not satisfy my creativity. I could go on, but I know you get it, we all get it in a way that only another mum can, the endless mental load and the seemingly ineludible mum guilt.

I’m off to do bedtime, all the while I’ll be thinking about the blog I need to write on which white is the best white (yes, not all whites are equal when it comes to paint), then I’ll feel bad I wasn’t present enough for all the cuddles, and let’s face it, screams of “I’m not tired yet”.

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Look out for future tips & tricks for designing beautiful interiors from Laura