Suzy Wood: Living Near London

Is it your dream to buy and renovate a home in England? Wondering if it's the same as renovating in the United States?

In Episode 8, the wrap-up to Season 2 of Creating Your Happy Place, Integrative Nutrition Health Coach Suzy Wood shares her story of buying and renovating a home with her hubby and two kids near London, England.

Professionally, Suzy Wood is an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach who works with people to get control of their health by analyzing both food and lifestyle choices. After living abroad for over 10 years, Suzy returned to the US, left her job in high tech marketing, and launched True Wellness Within where she helps people find more balance in their lives, eat better, and regain the vitality they used to have.

- - Where to find Suzy - -

Facebook: @TrueWellnessWithin
and The Divorce Detox Facebook group
Instagram: @TrueWellnessWithin

Free Quiz: Has Your Body Healed from the Stress of Divorce?
and Free Recipe Book for Living Agelessly

- - About the host - -

Rebecca West is a business coach for ambitious residential interior designers who are determined to become the only designer their clients and contractors call.

She's also obsessed with creating happy homes, so if you need some advice for your home you can check out her book Happy Starts at Home or sign up for a via-Zoom Design Helpline. 

Rebecca can't resist a costume party or a cat video, and has a weakness for Oreos, Taco Bell, and Scotch whiskey. 😁

🙏 If you like this podcast, make sure to review, subscribe, or share! 

Transcript

Rebecca: 0:00

Welcome to Creating Your Happy Place, a podcast that explores what it takes to create your happy place and then empowers you to do whatever it takes to make sure that your home makes you seriously happy. I'm Rebecca West host of Creating Your Happy Place and author of the book, Happy Starts At Home, and I'm so glad you're here. Now this season we're having fun exploring the idea of becoming an expat and setting up a home outside of the United States. It might sound like a great adventure to leave the United States and set up home in another country, but it comes with its own set of unique challenges. Here in the United States, we have not just a remarkable amount of choice when it comes to shopping and finding things that suit our personal style, but we're also kind of used to being able to get pretty much whatever we want, whenever we want it, and it's not necessarily the same everywhere around the world. Today we're chatting with Suzy Wood about her 11 years living in England where she bought, lightly renovated, and fully furnished a home she says really was her happy place. I'll be asking her what it was like to buy a home abroad and what challenges she faced while renovating and decorating a home in another country. Professionally, Suzy is an integrative nutrition health coach and the owner of True Wellness Within where she works with women who want to get control of their lives and their health. I was excited to learn that the home environment of her clients does come up when they're looking for ways to lower stress and anxiety and find more balance. Like me, Suzy believes that our homes are central to our health and need to be a place of refuge, safety, comfort, and joy. She joins us today from her townhouse in Chappaqua, New York, where she lives with her 16 year old son, their King Charles Cavalier, named Rocky, named for Rocky Road Ice Cream and his furry sister, a cat named Banoffee. I am so excited to welcome her to the show today. Hello Suzy.

Suzy: 1:56

Hi, Rebecca. It's so nice to meet you.

Rebecca: 1:58

I am so excited to have this conversation. It covers so much territory. So let's dive right in. You spent 11 years living in England, and unlike most of my guests this season, you actually bought and renovated a home abroad. So I'd like to start by giving folks a sense of your home. Like, first of all, where in England were you and what was the home like when you first found it? Was it, it love at first sight?

Suzy: 2:22

Actually it was not. We were living in London. There was an area called Hamstead, which is absolutely gorgeous if anybody has a chance to go there. Cobblestone streets, really, really charming. And we were renting an apartment there. We had one child at the time, and then we ended up with a second child and we were running outta space. So like most people all around the world, we decided to look in the suburbs. And so we moved to an area the county is called Surry, it's south of London. And the area we were in was called Walton on Thames, um, on the Thames River that most people probably have heard of. It's a beautiful area. Typical suburban area. It's not unlike a lot of kind of suburban areas in the United States. There was an international school that my children were gonna be attending, so that's why we chose that area. And we were looking for a very long time, maybe seven, eight months it took us to find the home and we had all the sales sheets and we just kept going through them and that just a lot of the homes there are very, very old. They're just very drafty. I mean, it's England, right? It's damp, it's chilly, um, and, and I found the windows to be absolutely terrible in most of the homes. Lighting is a huge factor as well because you're so far north. It's the same as um, Oslo, Norway, which a lot of people don't realize, so lighting plays a very big role in how you pick your house, which way it's facing. And also gardening is huge in England, everybody has beautiful gardens, so the position of the house is very, very important. So we have to put all of that stuff together. And I had actually seen the house. I didn't particularly care for it, but we had been looking for so long that my husband was like, you know, what about that one house again? And so we went back and looked and it actually had sort of a very American feel to it. There was a, a covered porch area, which is really unusual in England. So that was kind of nice cuz you come in, you know, from the rain, you're protected. Having a dog was really nice, you know, to have that covered area just to kind of clean off his paws before we came inside. It was a four bedroom house sitting on, I'd say probably like a third of an acre. Maybe a little bit more, maybe a, maybe a half of an acre. We walked into the entranceway and just to the left was a very long, rectangular living room. There was french glass stores, and then there was a dining room that faced out onto the garden. As you turned around the, the corner there was a little conservatory, which is very British, so, you know, glass ceiling. It had a lot of light coming in even though that whole side of the house actually faced north. That continued onto the kitchen which had been renovated by the previous owners. I think the house was built in around 1955. But the kitchen had been renovated just maybe seven or eight years before we bought the house. So that was fine. There was a small playroom that was off the side of the kitchen... a little laundry room... this is all sort of curving around, and then basically we were back at the front of the house. And then upstairs were all the bedrooms. I have two boys and they each had a bedroom, and then we had a separate bedroom upstairs that we called the music room because they were taking music lessons at the time, and that's just where all the instruments were. It sounds very grand. But no, it was just an empty bedroom that also became a guest room when we had some guests. And the kids shared one bathroom, a full bath. And then my husband and I had a, a nice size master bedroom with an en suite bathroom.

Rebecca: 5:54

What was the buying process like? Was it just like you had experienced in the states, or was it particularly different?

Suzy: 6:01

It was different. First of all, there's no MLS system there. So we had we had a realtor who took us around. You had to contact every single real estate agent that had the listing. So it was just such a pain to go and see houses because so many people had to be involved. Our agent couldn't just take us and, you know, they didn't have a lock on the door. We had to wait for the other agent. So that was kind of a little bit of a annoying process. And there's something that's called gazumping which is basically you can get outbid. Doesn't matter really how far you are along in the process, so it's incredibly stressful. We were luckily coming from a rental property, so we didn't have what's called a chain, like we didn't have to sell our place in order to buy. But I had a friend, she said there were 14 people in her chain. And you can imagine, I mean, something's gonna go wrong with one of those 14 families buying and selling their homes. These chains just break apart and then you're stuck. But luckily we were able to purchase the house and yeah. Took out a mortgage. You know, all that stuff was sort of all standard.

Rebecca: 7:05

One of the things that I keep noticing is that the United States is built on convenience. How can we make everything go faster, faster, faster? That simply isn't a priority in a lot of other countries, but that feels like a real drag to Americans, we're like, this could be faster! But faster also has its trade offs.

Suzy: 7:24

Yeah. I mean I think in the US you know, you just want the money to exchange hands very quickly. So there are systems in place to allow you to do that. Usually the buying process is about a nine month process in England. At least that's what it was where we were. We've been back in the States about six years. Maybe some things have changed. I'm not sure. I doubt it.

Rebecca: 7:42

You said nine months?

Suzy: 7:44

About nine months. Yeah.

Rebecca: 7:46

And any time during that nine months, somebody could come in and outbid you.

Suzy: 7:50

Gazump you. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Rebecca: 7:52

And it sounds like somebody's hitting you over the head. And is there any judgment around that or any, like, I don't know, like do people feel bad if they take month eight, a higher bid, or is it just how life works?

Suzy: 8:06

I think that's just how it happens and yeah, so you don't really know until you, you have those keys in your hand basically.

Rebecca: 8:13

Are you given the opportunity to outbid your out bidder?

Suzy: 8:16

Um, You know, I don't know cause thankfully we didn't have to experience that, but we just were always under this fear of like, are we gonna get gazumped?

Rebecca: 8:24

Crazy. Were you nervous about having a big asset like that in a foreign country?

Suzy: 8:30

Um, you know, I wasn't. We had an apartment in Manhattan that we sold, and then we were renting for years. So I actually felt good because I wanted to put down some roots and we really thought we were gonna be living there forever. We bought the house we were six years into living in England. So, um, it was going to be, you know, somewhat of a forever home, at least until the kids graduated from high school. It didn't turn out that way, but, um, yeah. You know, best laid plans...

Rebecca: 8:56

Yeah, life. Life doesn't always go the way we expect. So now that, you bought this house and you liked a lot about it, but it was not love at first sight, it was not perfect house. So you chose to renovate some things. What did you choose to change and why?

Suzy: 9:12

So, um, it was very dated. The living room, which was a very nice sized, probably 30 feet long, uh, I dunno, 20 feet wide or something. It was a really nice sized living room, had a fireplace, um, it was fully carpeted. And then there were these doors, these sort of fuddy-duddy doors, um, on the other side that connected into the dining room and there were also doors from the entranceway connecting into the living room. So it was really compartmentalized, it was very boxy. When you walked in there was, um there was a door straight in front of you, which was a closet area. And then you went into the what they call the cloak room, um, the powder room translating. So I was like, I feel like I'm going to the bathroom in the closet. I feel like I'm hanging my coat up in the bathroom. Like it was just this weird, like there were all these doors everywhere. And then also the colors. There were some really ugly wallpaper in the dining room, so a lot of it, again, cosmetic. So we ended up ripping up the carpet in the living room and... And then, we, we opened up the dining room area, took down those doors so it allowed so much more light into the living room area. So that was great.

Rebecca: 10:17

And when you say we, did you do that yourself or did you hire it out?

Suzy: 10:21

No hired. Yeah. I was more of the idea person than than the actual do it yourselfer. We hired, um, a floor company because we wanted to put down, floorboards. I really fell in love with walnut flooring. I wanted that warm... those red tones in the sun because the sun did actually come into that room it just glowed this beautiful brown red I absolutely loved it. So, so that was my dream to put down walnut floor and take down those annoying doors so I didn't have to hang up my coat in the bathroom and go to the bathroom in the closet. And another thing I, I did in the dining room, um, we had... picture of like these sort of very British diamond shaped, you know, leaded windows, very classic English... So there were five vertical panels of these windows. And again, this is facing north and those little leaded, um, uh, little cross hatches actually cut out a lot of the sunlight. And, the way the windows are designed there above these vertical panes, they actually have like a little vent and it's supposed to let the house breathe, which I thought was just so crazy that you're actually, I mean, you wanna keep the heat in, not, not all this cold air. I mean, it's not the tropics, right? But you're supposed to open up the vent because they're worried about mold, um, and, musty smells and stuff like that. So you're supposed to open and close these events depending on the season. And I thought, well, this is crazy. First of all, they were, they were really painted shut anyway because of the years of paint over them. So I decided to rip out that entire wall of window and I'd seen in a magazine a glass picture window. So I installed this like 12 foot long by, I don't know, six foot high piece of glass, and it was beautiful because it looked right out onto the garden and that really brought the garden inside. I love gardening. So that was really, really, um, that was great. I feel like that was probably my best thing that I had done in the house.

Rebecca: 12:19

I think in your notes, to me, you said that people thought you were crazy. Why did they think you were crazy for that?

Suzy: 12:24

I think they thought the windows were perfectly fine, but they weren't fine for me. And, and I, you know, I really cared about having the light come in because it's cold and dark a lot of the times. It gets dark at four o'clock.

Rebecca: 12:35

Yeah. definitely. So how was your experience connecting with the right contractors and installers? How was, how was communicating and hiring?

Suzy: 12:45

Yeah, that was pretty funny. Like there's molding and baseboards, right? So, um, the molding is what's at the top, I believe...? It was opposite, whatever it was, it was opposite of what we'd said in the US. And, um, like in a kitchen you have a backsplash, they call it a splash back.

Rebecca: 13:01

Oh funny. Literally backwards.

Suzy: 13:03

Yes! We found, um, the main builder, the contractor, through the real estate agent because I, you know, figured he would probably know somebody. That was actually a good call. A very nice guy. He lived locally and he had his team of people. And yeah, we did have to often translate between each other. We were changing our front door cuz we needed to put in better locking system. And he said, well, we need to change the architrave. And I was like, I'm not really sure what that is. And I had family members at home who had done a lot of renovations. So I'm explaining what we were doing, you know, over the course of the time. And I remember telling my mother this, that the builder wants to change the architrave. And she was like, what is that? I never heard of that. And I'm like, it's basically the doorframe. That's what they called it. But again, I never did renovations in the US so when I heard the word architrave, I assume that's what it's called! So they were, there were little things like that you know, but we did have some funny, um, uh, you know, encounters I guess. And or not so funny even cuz one time when we were changing the fireplace we had this very old, uh, I dunno, it was like wrought iron and, and kind of wooden fireplace mantle and we were putting in, um, I don't think it was marble, it might have been a faux marble, um, front for the fireplace and changing it to gas. With all of this stuff that we were taking out, a lot of the things were perfectly good, they just weren't my taste. So I went online and looked at like Craigslist and um, there were like some collection websites basically, that you could put stuff out... oh! Free cycle. That was, that was the one. So I posted, took some pictures and I said, here's a fireplace. And the builder got really annoyed with me. He was like, don't do that because the gypsies will come around. And I'm like, what? So basically it was like immigrant communities. They pick up stuff and then they sell it, you know, for scrap metal and whatever. I mean, I thought, I was like, well, that's kind of good because they're recycling. And he was like, no, it's not good, because they come by and he actually told me he had tools stolen because somebody had to climb up on a ladder, the tools were down on the ground, and somebody came by and stole his... Not at my house, thank God. But yeah, so things happened. But anyway, I sold the fireplace mantle, and then the mahogany floor I actually sold all of those pieces. Somebody was renovating their garden room and he loved the idea of having the old mahogany flooring. I was really happy that it found a happy home. It had all this, um, it's called bitumen, I think on the, on the back, which is basically a sticky tar that you have to use to put down mean is at least what they did in the fifties. So he had to single, like by himself, he was scraping off all of this bitumen, um, so that he could then re-lay the boards.

Rebecca: 15:35

People don't realize the work that goes into reclaiming materials and then reusing them. It is very rarely a money or time saver. What you're saving is the environment and then you are creating something that you cannot recreate with new materials. So it's worth it, but don't do it to save money or energy.

Suzy: 15:53

Right. It wasn't easy but he was gonna have a beautiful mahogany floor when he was done.

Rebecca: 15:57

Did you find that the contractors, did they have a contract? Did they do fixed fee? Was it all hourly? What was the business of it like?

Suzy: 16:06

We signed a contract and it was yeah, it was a fixed fee. They gave us an estimate, um, I don't remember if anything particular came up, basically we just, you know, had to give a deposit. We paid for, you know, for the materials. They got everything. It was pretty straightforward. We redid two bathrooms and we used the company Porcelanosa, which is in the US, and they were great. They had a free design service and so we went through a few designs. We picked out what we liked, and that was actually very easy. That was, that was, a nice, easy process.

Rebecca: 16:34

So you renovated it. Now all the bones are working and the light's flooding in as much as it can in England. Now you have to furnish it. Where did you shop? How did you find your stores? How did you find what you needed and what was that like?

Suzy: 16:46

Yeah. Yeah. So it, it was a little tricky, although I was already living in England for about six years when we were doing this, so I was pretty familiar with the towns, the areas. I, you know, I hadn't been furniture shopping really, but it wasn't so daunting like I just landed in the country and then had to figure it out. So that helped a bit. So I liked sort of the, um, mid-century look, so I went to Bo Concept. I liked the clean look of Calligaris, so I got a dining table from them. And then I, there were a few pieces I just picked up along the way. There was a little tiny store in my area that had a teak root table. So literally the root was dug up and it's just raw teak wood, and it is my favorite piece. It wasn't expensive. And it's just that natural, organic, grainy, beautiful teak. It's all lumpy and bumpy on the sides, but it's just sort of shaved off on the top and, um, it does stain. Yeah,

Rebecca: 17:43

Yeah.

Suzy: 17:43

know what? I love it.

Rebecca: 17:46

I'm glad you mentioned that because one of the things that I have found in traveling in Europe is they aren't as afraid of a patina and staining as we are in the United States. Here we expect things to look perfect forever. What was your experience with that?

Suzy: 18:00

Yeah, that's such a good point. I remember when I was looking for a dining table and I was like, well, should I get glass? Should I get wood? Should I get marble? And I remember one of the salesmen, he was like, well, pick your poison. What do you want? He said, glass chips. Wood stains, marble stains or cracks. So which one do you feel like you could handle the most? What's not going to bother you? Because if you're gonna see, you know, cup rings on your wood table and that's gonna irritate you, don't go for wood. I ended up going for a glass, it has a smoky glass on the bottom and then the top is clear. Uh, Calligaris table. I love it and extends out. Um, and yeah, it scratches...

Rebecca: 18:38

Speaking of perfectionism, when the contractors would do their work, did you find that it was very perfect, very precise? Was it more casual, rustic? What did you find?

Suzy: 18:47

Oh, that's so funny. So when we got to the end stages and we were painting. We hired a paint company and they sent one guy to paint the interior of an entire house. It was almost 3000 square foot house. One guy to spackle, and they don't call it spackle cause I kept saying, are you gonna spackle? And he'd look at me like I was crazy. And I don't remember what they call it, but it's not spackle. I think it's just called plastering maybe. But that, to me, that's very different process. Anyway, the one guy came and it took him forever. He showed up at like 9:30. He would leave by four. He smoked, so we'd have smoking breaks. And in England they drink a lot of tea. So between the smoking breaks and the tea breaks, I was like, I can't take this. One day I counted because we compost, um, fruits, vegetables, and tea bags. You compost them. And so he would always put them in my compost. One day I took them out. He had 11 cups of tea.

Rebecca: 19:45

In one day.

Suzy: 19:46

11 cups of tea in one day. So that's 11 breaks, plus smoking breaks. So I think we were on like week 10. I remember talking to my mom and she was like, the guy is still there? And I'm like, he's still going. So, I finally called up the company, I said, listen, you've gotta get this guy out of here. You know, it's been months. And then they sent another guy who was older and basically showed the guy how to do it. And then eventually they did finally finish.

Rebecca: 20:14

And was that part of the flat fee bid?

Suzy: 20:16

Yeah, yeah.

Rebecca: 20:17

So, it wasn't costing you more money, but you'd kind of gained a new family member.

Suzy: 20:21

Exactly. And I lost a lot of tea in the process.

Rebecca: 20:24

So the lesson is: if you're gonna hire British contractors, factor in a tea budget.

Suzy: 20:30

Yes, exactly. The furniture, I didn't have a problem picking out, the wood floors, the bathroom tile.... But the colors just really got me. I had trouble figuring out how to make it all flow nicely. I called up the equivalent of like a Benjamin Moore, it's called Dulux. They're a very large paint manufacturer. And I called up the company and they said, well, we have a free color specialist. I'm like, great, free, sounds good. So she came over and I told her what I wanted. She was wonderful, she got it really right. Um, and, uh, oh, so she picked out a wallpaper for the master bedroom and it had a little bit of a shimmer to it, like, um, I don't wanna say glitter, cuz that sounds awful, but it had a little bit of a sheen to it. And it had to be laid very, very specially on the wall. She said, we need somebody who really knows what they're doing and I don't know how to hang wallpaper. Apparently that first painter who was really slow, apparently he did not either. And we ended up having to buy extra and it was really expensive. So that was the only kind of bad quality work that that happened. Yeah. So

Rebecca: 21:33

And that can happen anywhere. That's certainly not a British thing. That's just a, some contractors take on more than they can actually do.

Suzy: 21:40

Exactly, yeah.

Rebecca: 21:42

So what about the daily activity side of it all, the electricity and the garbage, recycling? Was that all like you experienced here in the United States? Was it surprisingly different?

Suzy: 21:54

Yeah, so where I live now, we have two garbage pickups and one recycling pickup. There it's opposite. You have two recycling pickups and one garbage, which I think is very telling. Plus you have a compost pickup like I mentioned with the tea. So I moved to England in 2010 and we were already composting in the city, in London. Every family was given a compost bin with special compost bags and all your food scraps went in there. And it was normal part of your pickup, you would just put it out with your other garbage. And I mean, that was from 2010 and they were doing it before I got there. Fast forward now, you know, it's 2023 and in my town we don't have compost pickup.

Rebecca: 22:33

Yeah, here in the States it is not regular. Mm-hmm.

Suzy: 22:36

No, no, yeah, so there's definitely regular recycling, regular garbage pickup and composting pickup there, very easy. We did have to make sure that the compost bin was sealed though, because behind our house we actually had a family of urban foxes in the suburbs. Yeah. And um, we had to make sure that they didn't get into the garbage. Like chicken bones, forget it. Like you'd end up with chicken pieces all over your driveway so I made sure to put it out just before the garbage people came. You only have, learn that lesson once, picking up chicken bones.

Rebecca: 23:04

Were they tamed? Did you have to worry about the foxes?

Suzy: 23:08

I never really saw them. Unfortunately I had a neighbor who fed them across the street and so then they come. You're not supposed to. I mean, it's like feeding a raccoon. Um, But yeah, you've never heard of anybody getting attacked. They're, they're nocturnal. They minded their own business. There were sort of a little woods area between my house and my back neighbor, and I think they just hung out there and they were happy, I was happy and we didn't see each other, which was very nice.

Rebecca: 23:33

So obviously we've just talked about a very big renovation, right. But both of us know that it doesn't take an entire renovation to get happier at home. I would love to talk a little bit about your work. You mentioned that you know how important your client's physical environments can be to health coaching and to their wellness. How did you come to understand that and what does that look like for you in your work with your clients?

Suzy: 23:59

Yeah, so I'm an integrative nutrition health coach, and by integrative nutrition it means that we're combining looking at lifestyle factors as well as food to have a healthy life. And really the lifestyle factors are what we call primary foods, because without our lifestyle factors being in balance you're not going to make proper food choices. So secondary foods are actually the foods that you eat, the foods on your plate, but your primary foods are your lifestyle factors. And there's 12 key lifestyle factors. So it's things like relationships and career and finances, joy, overall health, creativity, um, things like social life, education and physical activity. So those are the basic, like, I don't know, I'm always miss one, but that's about 12 of the lifestyle factors and home environment, home cooking, just, your home space is critical because if any of those areas are out of balance, like if you're not happy with your job, you're gonna be really stressed and then, you know, you might lead to food cravings, right? Same if your finances are out of control, if you're in a lot of debt, that's going to lead to a lot of stress, it's gonna maybe interfere with your sleep. That lack of sleep is going to affect your motivation for exercising, for doing really anything, for maybe socializing. So these things have carry on effects. So we really focus on getting our lifestyle factors in balance, making sure everything in our life is aligned. Then we incorporate the food choices that we make so that's really the essence of integrative nutrition and home environment is one of the lifestyle factors. It's absolutely critical.

Rebecca: 25:37

I feel like I could do an entire episode just talking about this. I'm totally down with what you're saying, because what we eat is a response to what is happening. I can't tell you how many times I've eaten my feelings, you know, on a plate,

Suzy: 25:53

Yeah...

Rebecca: 25:54

and, when I got myself into a good place, eating well became easy.

Suzy: 25:59

Easy. Exactly.

Rebecca: 26:01

Eating well is not hard when you're not trying to dampen feelings that you're not wanting to have or you know, whatever your own story. That's my story.

Suzy: 26:09

Yeah. Well, it's true. And also on a practical level too, like let's say your kitchen, if it's just not set up so that it's conducive for cooking properly or storing your food in an organized way, it's just, it's harder to cook. You're not gonna be enjoying it. Home cooking is another lifestyle factor because that's how we feed ourselves. If we're always relying on takeout that's not a healthy way to live. And if your kitchen isn't set up for you to cook your own food, well now you're, you're making, you know, not the best food choices. Here's a perfect example of how your home environment can really hinder your health goals. I have a client, um, She wanted to get healthier. She had a lot of food issues. She had a lot of digestive problems, and she said, I'm addicted to Coke Zero. She wanted to get off of that. And I said, okay, let's work on this. We looked at all of her lifestyle factors and we realized what was going on. She said, you know, I'm just so tired of the way things are in my home. My closets are busting out with clothes. My girls have outgrown all of their clothes and they're sitting in boxes. My dining room table is full of art projects, we can't even eat there. I don't have a place to recycle all of my stuff, the mail coming in, the boxes, the packages, her home environment was not great. She also worked at home and her home office, which was a guest room... basically, when she was using the bed as a file cabinet. So we looked at all of the stuff and I said, you know, I think we need to get your home environment in order, and then we can work on the other things. We put a six week program together so that she could install shelving in her home office. She cleared off her dining room table. She went trip after trip to the donation center to get rid of all the clothes that her kids had outgrown. She put in a recycling system so stuff didn't even come in the house. She reorganized, you know, her kitchen cabinets. And once she did that, she was like, okay, now I'm ready to focus on my food issues. Let's deal with the Coke Zero.

Rebecca: 27:57

I'm curious if after she did the work of changing her home, did you see a change in her ability to take charge of her own life from the action that she took?

Suzy: 28:09

Yes, absolutely, absolutely. She definitely had much more confidence and then she also was not somebody who really cooked a lot. And then after that she was like, okay, I just, I feel happier in my home. I wanna cook for myself more because she just felt like she could do something. I mean, that's a major task to do all that cleanup, nobody wants to clean up, you know, their home and do all of those, not such great projects. And she did it. And then she also got off of Coke Zero, which is amazing. She said she was completely addicted to it.

Rebecca: 28:37

I just love this because I can 100% say that I never would've thought of looking up somebody with nutrition in their title. As somebody who would be helping people with their physical spaces, and I'm so heartened to hear it. Is this a common thing within integrative nutrition or is this something that you are doing with integrative nutrition?

Suzy: 28:57

I mean, it's definitely something that I'm doing with my clients. I have several clients who, their biggest goal is organization within their home. They have, you know, files that they need to get, they've lived in their homes for, you know, the, I'm thinking of two particular people. They're in their seventies. They lived in their homes for many, many years. They've collected a lot of stuff, and again, they wanna reorganize their closets. They just feel this burden. Because they're holding onto all this stuff, and also they're thinking about wills and what are they leaving to their children? They don't wanna leave a whole bunch of junk that their kids are gonna have to deal with. It's a stressor for them. And so when they can alleviate that, they can live their life in a better, more helpful way. And there's just less stress and less pressure and less angst. So it comes up all the time.

Rebecca: 29:44

What I heard you describing there is you're helping come up with a plan of attack. You're helping break something huge into actionable steps so they can achieve it. And it sounded like in that particular case, at least the client was doing a lot of it on their own. Do you ever find that it's important to bring in, you know, in quotes, a professional, like an organizer or somebody like that? I'm thinking it can be really helpful to get somebody unstuck, but there's also a lot of power in doing it yourself. And also you just know where everything is because you're the one who put it there.

Suzy: 30:13

Right. Yeah. Um, it hasn't come up yet with anybody that they said they wanted to hire somebody else. I think the projects... they're annoying from the, you know, for the client. But, um, but once we break it down into small pieces, then they feel like it's manageable. Like this six week project, it was like, okay, this week you're going to clean out the hall closet. You're gonna do one or two trips to the recycling center. Next week you're gonna do your dining table. You know, so it was an easy thing and it was like, okay, I can spend 15 minutes a day for a week or do it all in one chunk and you know, get it all done in an hour and a half or something like that. And it was because I was checking in with them, cause part of my program is we meet on Zoom calls, um, we meet for about an hour and then in between we meet every other week. So in those two weeks, I'm sending them texts or reminders or how's it going with that project? Where are you feeling stuck? You know? And it's that accountability that I offer as their coach that keeps them going. And uh, very often they say, you know, we didn't talk, over the last few days, but you were in my mind and I knew I had to answer to you. So they did whatever the thing was. So it hasn't come up as far as hiring an outside organizer, but I imagine if the project is big enough, or, or maybe the person just wasn't physically able to, you know, like if you have to get California closets to come in, that's not something most people can do on their own, you know, rebuild a closet. Hanging up a few shelves is one thing.

Rebecca: 31:35

Yeah. It's all about the balance of the time, the energy, you know, what are your resources? And then how do we use those resources? And everybody's resources are different. So, your beautiful home in England that you loved and you no longer have it, I know that's something you miss... when you set up a home that you'd love, when you do all that work, and then you have to say goodbye to it because that happens in our lives, even if we didn't expect to. What is advice you have around letting go and moving on to the next thing?

Suzy: 32:04

Oh yeah, I definitely did feel sad. Um, I mean, when we sold, well, we, we moved out of the home and then we ended up renting it out for a few years before we sold it. So I guess it felt like it wasn't totally gone because I could go back to it for a few years. And in the course of those years, we ended up coming back to New York and we ended up buying a home here. So I immediately got caught up in that project and setting that up as my new new home. Um, so I guess I just distracted myself and maybe that's the advice I could give to people that, you know, um, finding another project to work on. It may, obviously, it doesn't have to be a new home, but maybe, maybe there's just some other project that you wanna do. And, you know, I also took a lot of pictures in that home and once in a while I do go back and look at that and I go back to like the website where we had to list, you know, the, the home and, and those were like professionally done by the real estate agents so they looked really good. I just remember, you know, I felt really accomplished I had never done any kind of home renovation. And again, it was all cosmetic, so it's not like we were, you know, building new walls and structures and stuff. But it was, it was a lot.

Rebecca: 33:11

Give yourself some credit. You replaced windows and you replaced flooring, and those are not small projects. Just because you're not building house from scratch, you get an A.

Suzy: 33:21

Yeah. Oh, thank you.

Rebecca: 33:24

So if somebody were wanting to move to England, whether they buy a house or rent a house, what would be your best advice for them as they're getting settled and really making their their happy home there?

Suzy: 33:34

I think it's a lot about, you know, not just the actual property, but knowing the neighborhood, um, where you're gonna be living and making sure you're comfortable because you're going to a brand new place. And getting recommendations from people to get a good realtor to help you. Because they knew we were foreign, they were very kind in saying, yeah, you don't, you don't wanna be on that street. I found it helpful because I didn't know. I didn't know those areas. I didn't know the streets. It looked perfectly fine. But I remember being guided like, this would be a better place for you and your family.

Rebecca: 34:06

Like if you see a street at night, you might not know that it is the world's busiest street during the day. So, you know, you are relying on your agents to give you local information.

Suzy: 34:15

Yes, exactly. Or if you're near a park and then there's like a lot of partying in the park, three o'clock in the morning.

Rebecca: 34:21

I would not wanna be next to the local teenage hangout. Thank you very much.

Suzy: 34:25

Exactly. Yep.

Rebecca: 34:27

More broadly, what would you like our guests to take away today?

Suzy: 34:31

Um, making your home a happy place is just so important in your overall health and people don't really think of it as something that is connected to health. I would just encourage them to really look around their home and see what small changes can they make to make their home really a happy place. If it's something that they need to clean up or reorganize, then do it. If it's going to make you happier, that is actually going to make you healthier.

Rebecca: 34:55

If people have been listening to you and they're like, oh my gosh, you are the integrated health coach for me. Where can folks find you?

Suzy: 35:02

Well, my company is called True Wellness Within, and that's my website, truewellnesswithin.com. Um, anybody can shoot me an email. It's Suzy, s u z y,(at) truewellnesswithin.com, and I'd love to hear from them and help them make their home happy and their health great. That would be wonderful.

Rebecca: 35:23

Absolutely, and of course I will have all those links in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for your time, Suzy, and I love the work that you're doing in the world.

Suzy: 35:31

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. It's been great!

Rebecca: 35:33

To our listeners, I hope that you enjoyed this episode of creating your Happy Place and that you do feel a little bit more encouraged and hopefully excited to make your home your happy place no matter where in the world you're located. If you're feeling less than happy in your home, remember that my book, Happy Starts At Home, is here as a resource for you. It's full of exercises that are meant to help you figure out how your home could work better for you and what changes might support the values you hold and the lifestyle that you want to live. That's it for this episode of Creating Your Happy Place. Until next time.