Trust Your Gut

I am a big follower of my gut feelings.  I have learned, over the years, to trust my gut.  I would tell my students that, after a semester of my class and law school, they develop a gut feeling about whether an argument works and they should listen to that feeling.  I tell my kids to follow their instincts about whether something is right or wrong.

One’s gut is an important guide.

What I’ve learned lately is that I have developed (or, optimistically, maybe I always had) gut feelings about design and organization, too.  This revelation was surprising to me, mainly because I just never thought about it before.  I mean, I think about gut feelings with respect to choices in my job or in my personal life, but I never noticed whether I have one when it comes to design choices.  But I do.  Strong ones, apparently.

Why am I thinking about this now?  Two words: curtains and Ikea.

I was drooling over paging through the new Ikea catalog (did anyone else reserve time in their schedule to read this?  Am I the only one who’ll admit to it?  Ok, fine…), and I saw these curtains.  If you follow that link, you’ll see that they have a white background with a brick-red graphic pattern.

Instantly, I thought, “I love them.  They will go in my breakfast room.”  And I waltzed myself over to Ikea and bought them.

When I bought them, I did think – for just a second – that maybe I was insane.  After all, my new kitchen and breakfast room are light greenish-yellow (Benjamin Moore’s “Sesame,” to be exact).  The tile is greenish and grayish-blue and stone.  The countertops will be gray (“Crystal Ash,” to be exact).  Yet, I bought them anyway and was sure they would be great in the breakfast room.

I hung them up.  Instant love.  It was the right decision.

The art is from my son when he was in kindergarten – how plants grow. I like them there because they are next to the door out to our garden.

This color combo works for two reasons: (1) green and red are opposites on the color wheel, so they play off each other well; and (2) we have a rug in our breakfast room that has some brick red in it, so it coordinates well.

My contractor said, in a surprised tone, that he really liked the curtains here, too.

It was just a gut decision.  I saw the picture and I knew… and I was right.  I love them here.

Have you ever had a gut feeling about something and knew you were right?