Healthy Homes #162

Melissa Coleman:

Why don't I feel good? Or why am I feeling uncomfortable? Sometimes it's as simple as just looking at the space you spend the most time in. Which is your home?

Jason Peacock:

My house costs me the utilities, everything for the whole year, about $400 including heat. So I'm pretty happy with that and it's non toxic.

Brett Johnson:

As I mature and become more established and see more things, I find myself becoming more and more spare. I think it's really, really great when you can create big beauty with very little.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Savings bank this is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 162, Healthy Homes airing for the first time on Sunday, October 19, 2014. What makes a home healthy? Everything from clean air and environmentally friendly products to the appropriate use of space. Today we discuss the physical aspects of healthy homes with Maine Home Design's bright minded home columnist Melissa Coleman and Jason Peacock of Maine Green Building Supply. We address the creation of happy feeling homes with Brett Johnson of Maine Street Design Company in Portland. Join us and learn how to influence your own healthy home. Thank you for being with us today.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As a family physician with a background in public health and professional preventive medicine, I've really had an interest in the environment and in living healthier lives for, well since the beginning of my career, maybe from before that time. Part of living the healthiest lives possible is to create around us an environment that enables us to be healthy, including the environment that we live in daily, which means our homes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Today we have two individuals who can

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

talk to us about the idea of healthy homes and how we make our homes healthy. We have Jason from the Main Green Building Supply after a life threatening illness changed his life.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

He researched what makes humans healthy and found that our immediate environment is one of the largest contributing factors.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Jason has been passionate about health and building for nearly 20 years.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

He has a health educator certificate and is also certified as a building scientist.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Thanks so much for coming in.

Jason Peacock:

Thank you for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

We also have Melissa Coleman. Melissa has facilitated the Maine Home and Design's Bright Minded Home column since 2011 and also writes for a local and national publication. She gained her experience with healthy homes living in one of the first LEED Platinum homes in New England.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Thanks so much for coming in. Thank you, Melissa. This for you is like literally coming home because you work with the Maine Media Collective, you've been working with Maine Home Design, but this came from a very personal place. Tell me about your house in Freeport. Yes.

Melissa Coleman:

Well, when I first moved into this house, it's the first LEED Platinum home in New England. And that was in 2008. And at that time it was sort of a big deal. This was something new. Wright Ryan Construction and Rick Renner and a bunch of others, Revision Energy had all combined together to try to make a house that was LEED Platinum. They just wanted to see if they could do it. And I was lucky to be able to live in that house. And the first thing I felt moving in there was, what do I do? I don't know anything about this. I need to learn. This column that I did with Maine Home Design came out of that effort to learn more about this house that I was living in. And the way that I figured out to do that was to interview people who also lived in houses and who were also trying to figure out this sort of brave new world of energy efficient homes in Maine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So, Jason, can you tell us what a LEED Platinum home means?

Jason Peacock:

So LEED has criteria that they've set. It's through the United States Green Building Council. And I believe they change it every couple years. But I believe there's about 130 points. And if you get above, I think it's 89 or 90 or something like that, then you're LEED Platinum and it's really a challenging thing to achieve. So I think at that time there were only probably less than 10 LEED Platinum houses in the country. So it was a pretty big deal at the time. I read about it in the paper and I was building my own house at the time, which was designed to LEED Platinum standards.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What does LEED stand for?

Jason Peacock:

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. It's based on the United States Green Building Council. So but I think a lot of people look at it as more of energy and not as much about the health of the house. And the way I got into building was Because I was. I was extremely ill when I was 18, and I had to learn about our immediate environment and where we sleep at night, our, you know, furniture, our finishes in our houses. I kind of learned over about a period of 10 years, which brought me to wanting to be a builder and try and build healthier houses. But I think LEED does a good job of looking at the toxicity. But a lot of people, you can get a certified house, like a silver or gold or certified, and not pay attention to the health of the house at all. With Leeds. So it's, you know, some people might focus on the energy but not focus on the health of the house and still get LEED certified.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, that's a really interesting point that we have this whole idea of green building. It might be green for the greater world, but it may not be so green for us. It may not be so healthy for our own bodies and our own children sort of walking around inside these LEED buildings. Melissa, the people that you have interviewed in Maine, when you started this process, I'm assuming it was much harder to find people who are working on these projects. It seems like it's kind of caught on in popularity.

Melissa Coleman:

Absolutely. I mean, I remember the very first column I had heard about this Kaplan Thompson project called the Bright Built Barn, which. Do you remember that? And it was like the next step up from the house I was living in. It was net zero, which all of a sudden it opened up this whole new possibility that the home could actually net zero means it could actually produce as much energy as it used. So I heard about that and I thought, oh, you know, this is growing. This is still, you know, it's just every minute things are changing and growing. And so I talked to him and then that led to the next thing and the next thing. And I never seem to run out of people doing new things, whether it's water treatment, which is a big, you know, we're talking about healthy homes here. So I would say, you know, just to kind of outline some of the things that make a home healthy are the air quality. So that's a big thing with energy efficient homes. The water treatment, the materials used in the house, you know, I was thinking of it sort of like a person in a way. And you want to have healthy air, you want to drink good water, good quality water, and you want to wear things or have things around you that are made with good quality ingredients. And houses don't really eat. But all those things go into feeding the house just in the same way that we try to Feed ourselves healthily. And so I just started asking people about the ways that they were healthy in their homes. And it just kept going from there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

There are people that can be pretty healthy to start with and be pretty environmentally conscious to start with, and then they make the choice to, I guess, keep honing that. And then there are people like you, Jason, who don't really have a choice that you get very, very ill. And you're kind of starting from a very basic level. You need to get rebirth. Rebirth. You need to get healthy again. So you said this happened when you were 18. So talk me through how this all transpired, because I think there are more patients that I see that are being impacted by their immediate environment than really realize it.

Jason Peacock:

Yeah. So this was back in 1989. I was the captain of the crew team. I was a star athlete. I had straight As. I think I put myself under so much pressure. I ate really well, but I lived in a brand new house. And the house had wall to wall carpet. We lived in Florida, so it was closed up for air conditioning nine months of the year. And all the furniture, even though it was from scan design, it looked nice, but it was all particle board. And back then, 25 years ago, they didn't really have conclusive information on formaldehyde and VOCs and airborne toxins. And so even though I went to eight doctors to try and find out what was wrong with me, I couldn't speak, I couldn't walk, I was in bed. I felt like I was going to die. And my immune system basically had failed. And so I went down to Hippocrates Health Institute in West Palm Beach, Florida. And they got me on wheat grass and raw vegetable juices and yoga and massage and things like that. That really helped me get past that very challenging place in my life. And then I went out to San Francisco after that and I got a degree in holistic health. It was the only college at the time that offered a bachelor's degree in holistic health. And in one of my classes, the teacher was talking about the seven principles of longevity. And I think they were in order of importance, which I thought was fascinating. And I think the first one was having a purpose in life. And, you know, I think, well, that makes sense. I was thinking it was going to be, you know, nutrition and vegetable juice, and you have to have a healthy diet, right? But that was number five. So number one was having a purpose in life, number two was having a sense of community. And number three was your immediate environment. So that just hit me like A ton of bricks. Like, wow. My immediate environment could have had more of effect on me than the stress and the diet and everything else because I was trying to have a good diet, but the stress and my toxins in my house when I slept at night, they compromised my immune system eventually. And so I started to think about the construction industry. My dad was an architect and I had always been around projects that he had designed over the years, from custom designed houses to condos to office buildings. And I kind of noticed that I always had this lymphatic system swelling in my, in my neck when I was around this new construction kind of thing. So it took me about six or seven years to actually put it all together because we never really knew why I got sick. We couldn't figure it out. And then so it kind of started to make sense. Well, my desk, my, my dresser, my headboard, my shelves were all particle board, wall to wall carpet. I had vinyl blinds for the windows, paint. At the time, they had no idea about toxic paint. So it's just the whole house was painted with toxic paint. And I lived near a transformer. It was right near my bedroom, like literally within 30 or 40ft from my bedroom, from my bed was a big transformer. So all those things, I don't know which one was probably the worst to affect me, but they kind of all accumulated in, in suppressing my immune system. So I couldn't even fight. Like I had, I think basically I had strep throat and that turned into mono and that turned into Epstein Barr. And I've researched it since then and basically what that turns into is like potentially cancer of the blood. So I was on my way to really not having a good chance to come back, but thank God I found vegetable juicing and wheat grass and, you know, things that most doctors are not going to prescribe to you, but saved my life, really.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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[Unidentified voice]:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

well, this brings up so many thoughts from me. You know, I've actually, as a doctor, I've actually tried to tell people, you know, what, you're having your symptoms at night. Tell me about the environment of your house. I've had patients say, well, I just switched my floors and I just did this. And I just did this with construction. And they actually have a hard time believing it. They have a hard time believing that it could be something going on that they've done new. And I think it's because when we put new things into, when something is new, it's freshly painted. You know, it's like getting a new car.

Jason Peacock:

It feels like you're excited about it.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Yeah. It's exciting and it seems like it's the right thing and it's like fresh. But what we're not realizing is that new doesn't necessarily mean better from a health standpoint. Well, so when you are interviewing people, do you have conversations about things that aren't being done that's new? I mean, do people specifically stay away from getting new particle board dressers and maybe stay with older woodwork that's, you know, that's just been gently refinished or things like that?

Melissa Coleman:

Absolutely. And I just want to tell a little story. When I was a kid, I remember we moved into this place temporarily that had this new carpeting in it. And we ever since then we refer to it as the smelly rug apartment. But we had to leave. We could not sleep. My dad said, I cannot sleep. The night in this apartment, it was so evident, having just moved in to him, that it was not agreeing with him.

Jason Peacock:

What year was that?

Melissa Coleman:

And this was in like the 80s.

Jason Peacock:

Carpet was really toxic then.

Melissa Coleman:

Your story just made me think of that and how so many of us don't even know because we're just used to it. It's only when you have something that happens like what happened to you or you go into the place for the first time that you start to notice it. So yeah, when you build a new house you've got all these things that are off gassing. The furniture is a big one. Mattresses, beds, beds, the walls, the stuff that you put in the walls. Just any number of things.

Jason Peacock:

Everything.

Melissa Coleman:

Yeah, everything, everything. And so that's where this movement came from is to try to minimize that by using. So the things that LEED advises is to use local wood as much as possible. And that's not so much for health, but because it hasn't traveled as far, it doesn't take as much gas oil to travel and as well to use insulations which I'm going to have you talk about the details of the insulations that are better for you, better for the air. And then the key thing that is in most every greenhouse that I've talked to is the hrv, which is the heat regulated ventilator ventilation. And these come in any number of models and types. But it takes all the air, it sucks it through a filter and then it pushes it back out without making it cold again. So it keeps it warm so you don't have like a noticeably discomfort where the air is coming back into the house and it just takes out anything that maybe wasn't pure to start with. Can you give a little bit about that?

Jason Peacock:

Yeah, yeah. That's what I was thinking about for today is that a healthy home is kind of an oxymoron because homes inherently have so many toxins in them. Even if you pay attention to all the details in construction and try and put non toxic things in there and then you bring your furniture and your beds and your clothes in and everything is just has toxic particles, residue in it from pesticides, manufacturing and all kinds of things. So. So the way that we can kind of plan ahead in building a new house and to try and make it healthy is to put in a ventilation system. Like Melissa was saying, HRV or an erv. There's a couple different options. Now we sell one from Canada, we sell one from the Czech Republic and we sell one from Germany. So what you're really looking at there is efficiency on watt usage and on heat recovery. So you don't want to use a lot of energy to move this air around and you want to recover as much heat as you can. But I think in using these ventilation systems you can really help have a healthy house without them. If you have an old house and you're renovating it Trying to insulate it, make it more airtight so you're not spending as much energy on heating it, then it's a good idea to put one in. And if you're building a new house and absolutely, you know, it's almost a number one item on the list of things to do for me because it can kind of compensate for maybe, maybe you didn't get a perfect bed, you know, or maybe you didn't get handmade furniture from organic cotton. And so this fresh air ventilation system just allows you to constantly have fresh air brought into the house so you don't have the sick building syndrome, basically.

Melissa Coleman:

And I'll add that because these houses are so much tighter, the walls are a lot thicker, there's just not a lot of air moving back and forth like you might have in an old drafty farmhouse. So it's important to have the air moving, whereas otherwise it might not be.

Jason Peacock:

Yeah, and the alternative is you can build a leaky house. Like I argue a lot of times with contractors and homeowners and they say, oh no, we don't want to build too tight. We don't want one of those ventilation machines because they think of it as being like this mechanical lung or something. But the alternative is you build a house really leaky and inefficient and you spend three to four thousand dollars a winter to heat it. Or you can make it really tight, spend that much money up front in making it airtight, and then spend $10 a year on running constant ventilation. So to me it's a no brainer. I don't really want to spend three to $4,000 every heating season on heat. I'd rather go to Hawaii or Florida or something, have a vacation. But these new ventilation systems, they're, they're so efficient. They're like LED bulbs compared to like an incandescent bulb. The fans are so efficient. They use 7 watts or 20 watts compared to like 100 watts or 200 watts.

Melissa Coleman:

And they also are helpful for people with allergies. You know, my stepmother is very allergic to cats and when we have that thing on, she didn't use fail to visit us. And now, you know, when that thing is running, I don't always have it on, but I turn it on when she gets there and she doesn't, isn't bothered by the cat at all. So it's sort of like a good example of the other ways it's helpful.

Jason Peacock:

I built a non toxic house and I paid attention to all the details and it's really challenging. I Think to me that was more important than the energy. Even though I wanted to be like a passive house, net zero house, I've really kind of designed and built this house, really focusing on every minutiae of detail about the health of it and it becomes really challenging. I rent my house out weekly in the summer and everybody that visits, they, they always talk about how they love being there because the house just has such a great feeling how it just feels so healthy. And then in the winter I actually rent my house out. And it's funny, the demographic has always been parents with a newborn. And it's so, it's three years now, three winners where I have these new parents with a newborn, a different family every time. And they just, it's like it creates this great energy for the house because of that. But they just say how they think it's like one of the best things they could do for their kid in their first six months of their life. You know, being in this non toxic healthy house. And then they always ask me if they can buy my house and I say it's not for sale. And then they always want me to build one. And the challenge with building a small non toxic house is that it's expensive. Unless you're the carpenter, unless you're actually putting every window in and putting the roof on and doing all the site work yourself. A small non toxic house is 200 to $250 a square foot or more to even consider building it. And so you're at $250,000 for a thousand square foot house. It's just, it's almost better buying an old house, trying to find an old house that's not moldy and you know, filled with toxins because you can get, maybe you can get more for your money but, but then you have to spend all this energy trying to get all the toxins out.

Melissa Coleman:

Yeah, I think they say it is, it is better to build new as far as economy goes if you, you know, it's less expensive.

Jason Peacock:

Yeah. You spend less money on your heating bills because it's energy efficient. My house costs me the utilities, everything for the whole year, about $400 including heat. So I'm pretty happy with that. And it's non toxic.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I feel like we could talk about this for a long time because there's so many different, really interesting aspects to what you're both doing in your own way with regard to healthy homes. Jason, how do people find out about main green building supply and the work that you've done in this field? Over time.

Jason Peacock:

Well, we have a website, we changed our name recently to Performance Building Supply. And the reason is we're selling a lot of things throughout, almost from like New York, New Jersey area up into Canada and then west to like Michigan and Colorado and things like that. So what we do is actually really unique. There aren't a lot of healthy minded building, consulting, energy efficient stores in the country. We're really rare. And so they can go to our website. It's performancebuildingsupply.com or maingreenbuildingsupply.com both of those work and they can call us or email us or come in. So info Performance Building Supply is our general email address. But I get a ton of calls all the time from people that are chemically sensitive. And I've kind of become known as the person to talk to. So I consult with people throughout mostly the east coast. I've been designing some homes for people to try and do non toxic housing. And it's really challenging because chemically sensitive people are the most challenging people to design and build for because they might not be sensitive to something, you know, one month and then the next month they develop a sensitivity to it. And as a builder it is nearly impossible then to build a non toxic house for a chemically sensitive person. So that's where that air exchange becomes so important that you just bring fresh air in constantly.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And Melissa, I know that people can read your column Bright Minded home in Maine Home Design. And where can they? You also have written for many publications and you also have a book that you've written, which I've read and loved. It was wonderful. I encourage people to read your book

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

this life is in your hands.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's not exactly about our discussion, but it's a, it's a great.

Melissa Coleman:

Well, it's about growing up in a home that was the original like healthy hippie home in Maine. So it is sort of.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So there's some relevance there. How can people find out about your writing and about the work that you're doing?

Melissa Coleman:

Well, I want to sort of defer that and say that all I'm doing is sort of bringing ideas out from other people. So I want to shout out to some people that have been really influential to me and first of all, Jason is one of them because I went into Main Green Building Supply or Performance Green Building Supply and I said, could you just explain to me how a heat pump works? And it's this really complicated thing and he made it completely easy to understand. And a lot of this stuff is complicated and it takes someone who's kind of like creative as well as technical to be able to explain it to people. So I really highly recommend. Thank you, Jason, for that. And then also I just have been so impressed by the work that a lot of people in Maine are doing. And those would include, of course, Kaplan Thompson. And they have their bright built home, which is a modular green home, which makes it more affordable for people. There's also Geologic in Belfast, Matthew Amalia, who is doing the passive house and the Net Zero houses. Really great stuff there. There's Rick Renner who is the. He's the architect behind Cranberry Ridge where I lived, and he's in Portland. Chris Briley of Bryburn is doing a lot of great projects. His thing is the pretty good house, you know, trying to make it pretty good, which I love that. David Matero, Caleb Johnson Architects. And then of course, you know, Revision Energy is doing the solar. Wright Ryan was the builder of Cranberry Ridge and they're doing a lot of great building and then a lot of furniture places like Thomas Mosher, who is building just amazing furniture, but using really quality ingredients or woods, not ingredients, as well as like Angela Adams Furnituria and Green Design Furniture. So I just, I feel like that's the important message here, is to get those names out to people and have them talk to those people and ask them questions and see what they can learn.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I really appreciate your both taking the time to not only come in and educate me, educate the people who are listening, but also for taking the time to really explore all of this yourselves. And this is clearly a lifetime thus far on both of your parts of work. To understand what all this means, we've been speaking with Jason Peacock from Maine Green Building Supply and Melissa Coleman, who writes or facilitates the Bright Minded Home column for Maine Home Design. Thanks so much for coming in.

Jason Peacock:

Thank you.

Melissa Coleman:

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As a physician and small business owner,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I rely on Marcy Booth from Booth, Maine to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Here are a few thoughts from Marcy.

[Unidentified voice]:

When was the last time you took a break from what you were doing, from the work that was piled up on your desk and just looked up? I know that during the course of my days, I often forget to take a moment or two to just breathe, look up at the sky and dream. Terrible that I have to remind myself to breathe. But when I do, I feel energized because in those moments I'm able to let go of the daily grind and think more about what I want to accomplish, how I want my business to grow. Sometimes those are the aha moments. If we all took a few moments out each day to stop what we were doing and dream a little about our business futures, not only would we feel a great sense of calm, but we may come to realize that these dreams can, in fact, come true. I'm Marcie Booth. Let's talk about the changes you need. Boothmaine.com

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

it is my great pleasure always to have friends in the studio with me, and I happen to have a large number of extremely talented and intelligent friends in a variety of fields. Brett Johnson is an interior designer and the owner of Maine Street Street Design Company based in Portland and a friend of mine for several years. Thanks so much for coming in and talking to us today.

Brett Johnson:

Thanks for having me, Lisa.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Brett, we're going to talk about a healthy home. And by healthy I mean healthy, aesthetically pleasing and creating an environment that we want to live in.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

But first, I want to know how

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

you decided to stay here in Maine. You grew up in Maine. You still live in Maine. Why Maine? And how does that contribute to your sense of aesthetics and style?

Brett Johnson:

I was born in Maine and fortunately was blessed with being born into a family with a father who had wanderlust and really wanted to travel and see different places. So as a small kid we kept moving away from Maine and then we experience where we were and then we'd come back again and then eventually we came back home. Then as I matured and sort of started coming into my own, I also found myself wanting to go to the big city or go to Miami or the Caribbean or do some traveling. But for some reason just Maine always like called me home and for one reason or another it always seemed to always be there and was this amazing anchor. So I guess this time around it's hard to say because I actually have been home in Maine for gosh, maybe 20 years or 25 years since I last went away on a fact finding mission or a foray of living a different life. Probably had a lot to do with the fact that I found somebody to share my life with who also wanted to be here. So that was a, that was a big turning point as well. But Maine is really all about for Me, it's all about family and it's all about friends and all about a way of life that I just have never really found anywhere else. Amazing sense of community, and I find it, as a place, extremely nurturing.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it sounds like there's just a bit of gestalt to Maine that has kept you centered here.

Brett Johnson:

Yeah, you could say that. I mean, I find it fascinating. I'm from Harpswell. My grandparents are from Bailey Island. I grew up on Orr's Island. And coming back now and creating this amazing house that we have on Bailey island and talking to other folks who have kind of had the same circumstances as I have, where they've gone away and come back, there's almost energy that exists, and no one can really put their finger on what it is, whether it's a life force or a magnetic pull or something. And I'm sure a lot of that has to do with the natural beauty in our surroundings and probably a sense of knowing who your neighbors are and knowing that you'll always be taken care of. But. But it's a really amazing pull, and it's one that I personally choose not to fight.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And you are able to experience Maine. I know that you now live in, we'll call them the suburbs. I live there, too. I don't want to out your town unless you're willing to out your town. But you're developing. You have a beautiful little house with what you call the back 40, nice big backyard and gardens. And you've done a lot of work on your house. And you also get to work here in Portland. And it's a very kind of urban place that your office is right on Congress Street. I guess it's your showroom more.

Brett Johnson:

Yeah, it's a studio.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

A studio across from Local 188. Right. So you get to experience the Harpswell, go back to the family, and go back to the big house that your family actually rents out now. You get to experience the suburban back 40. You get to experience Portland. And there seems to be a bit of a flavor to each of those.

Brett Johnson:

There absolutely is. My partner, Tim, and I lived in Portland together in multiple places. We kind of experimented with different ways to live and a couple condos, some apartments. We moved way out into the country of Dayton, Maine, for a little while. We found that was a little more remote than we liked. And what we really came to was that we really wanted to find a place that we could call more or less our forever home. And we had some very clear objectives when we did that, when we were looking we sold our condo that had shared outdoor space and where your neighbors may or may not have been a little too close for comfort and kind of drew a big giant circle around Portland and said, you know, can we. Can we afford to live in Portland? Can we get what we're looking for in Portland? And it actually turned out to be kind of a resounding no. It was. We needed a little bit more land, we needed a little bit more elbow room, and we needed a little bit more of the privacy that that allowed. So we fell upon Yarmouth, and we love it. I mean, I never thought of myself as living in quote, unquote suburbia, and I imagine a lot of my friends in Yarmouth might actually hate the term suburbia, but for someone who has lived in Portland for a long time, it does feel a little bit like that. But yeah, we found this sweet little house and built in 1961 in a pretty good neighborhood and with. With a lot of a yard. A lot of yard. And. And I am an interior designer by trade, but I'm finding myself more and more being called to working in the garden. That's sort of where I find my solace. So it's been a. It's been a great fit. And then on occasion I get to go to Bailey island as well.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So it sounds like wherever you are, you work with the spaces you find, whether inside or outside or on the water, you are able to kind of take in the context and then move with it.

Brett Johnson:

Absolutely. That's always been in my nature, whether it was my childhood bedroom growing up or a temporary apartment in college, or the corner of apartment I shared in New York City or, you know, any place. It's really important for me personally, and I think my clients as well, to surround themselves with things that are meaningful to them and really. And find a way to put those things in place in a meaningful, sensible, organized way. And that's certainly what. What we endeavor to do in our own home.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The houses that I've been in that you have done design for, it seems everything is very mindfully placed and there's a spareness and yet an elegance to the way that you create. So it's almost as if you are bringing things like light into the design so that you don't have to. It doesn't have to be frou frou, it doesn't have to be ornate. You are able to work with what naturally happens over the course of a day in the house itself.

Brett Johnson:

That's right. I almost always walking into a client's house, have this sense of my immediate sense is why am I here? This is a lovely home, you are lovely people and you're doing just fine. And then upon listening to people, you realize that there are some things about how they've been able to kind of put their homes together that kind of bother them and so they kind of need to get unstuck a little bit. Once that process is or, or once that step has been taken where you realize that there is something that I can actually do for them, a way that I can help them. I actually look outward to where they are out the windows and look at the light and look at what is nature around them, whether they live in the city of Port Portland and they have a more urban landscape or if they live on the ocean and that's their light and that's their color. And then I find a way to kind of curate what they have and also bring things in in a mindful way to kind of almost create a comfortable backdrop for them to live their lives. I think it's, I think a lot of people way over indulge and that may have more to do with our, our consumer culture than anything, but they don't, they don't really know how to edit and remember the clutter. And by no stretch of the imagination am I a clutter free human being. If anyone looked at my desk at work, they would know that. But it's something that I work really hard to do. And you can't live in a place like Maine and you can't work in a place like Maine and not pay attention to what's going on around you. It would be, it would be a big, it would be a big loss of an opportunity. I think

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

what are the ways or some of the ways in which people get stuck? When do people, I mean, obviously if somebody moves into a new house or they're downsizing, these are some ways that people might need design advice. But what are some of the other ways that you've seen that people get stuck? When do people call you? Is it during other transitions in their lives?

Brett Johnson:

I don't really know if it's other transitions in their lives. I mean, certainly we have things that happen that bring about a necessity for a change of environment, whether you're staying in your current place or you're moving into, to another. I mean, there are all those sort of life changes, whether you're changing partners or you're, or you're having children or your children are leaving and going to college. And actually there is this sort of tendency with a lot of my clients now that are becoming empty nesters and the big question of whether or not they're going to maintain, maintain their family home for their kids to come home to, or as a lot of people I know are and work with are in that situation, are, they're like, heck no, we're gonna downsize and we're gonna, we're gonna live within our, our personal means. And, and the, you know, the kids can fit in wherever they want, but they've done their job. And then a lot of clients I have who are older, who are moving from big ginormous homes or nicer homes, whose kids are all very grown up, they have grandchildren, and they're actually in a place where they need to really downsize and they move into a condo. And then I find there's this kind of lovely process with folks like that that's actually a really good, nice process of kind of honoring the things that they have that belong to their family or things that have memories that they can take with them into their new space and then kind of help them lighten their load so that they can live their lives in a more gentle way as they move along in their old age. I don't actually like the term old age because most old people I know aren't really old, as we all know as we get older. It's not as difficult as all that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I'm listening to this and I'm thinking about conversations that I've had with people in the real estate field and talking about how it can become very interesting to work with kind of the psychological issues surrounding finding a new home, moving to a new place, whether it's getting a new partner, leaving an old partner, having to deal with a grief of. Of somebody dying or the child that's leaving. When you are working with people and they're going through their stuff and you're curating their things with them and you're helping them declutter, are there emotional issues that arise?

Brett Johnson:

I think there are always emotions. And oftentimes you can tell a lot about a person by how emotional they are to their things or what their ties to those things are. My partner is a psychiatrist, and he is off to say that I do more therapy than he does. And I would say that that's probably true, although I'm not necessarily qualified to admit that. I do find myself in a position where I have to gently counsel people and help them work their way through that process. And it's actually kind of lovely and super nice. It seems a lot of people aren't so gentle. And for me, it's more about the process in making sure that no matter where they are today, they know that they want to get through this process and that there's this real nice way of handling that where you can kind of gently move them through the process, manage their expectations, and within reason, help them kind of navigate the. The tricky stuff. And sometimes it's a little trickier when there's a couple or their partners that don't necessarily see eye to eye on every single issue, but in. In general, when you listen and you pay attention, then you realize that there is a. There is light at the end of the tunnel. And a lot of people feel really good about that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

In the end, it seems as though, and I don't know if this is true of all interior designers, but in your case, it seems as though you have built long lasting relationships with the people that you have worked with. I know that there was a family recently that lost a father, husband, son, very tragically, very suddenly and very early. And because you were already part of this group, you were able to also be part of that process with them.

Brett Johnson:

Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Is this as important to you as the design itself?

Brett Johnson:

That was an extreme situation. In reflecting on it after the fact, I was extremely honored and continue to be honored to be part of, part of an ongoing part of this family's life. And those are relationships that are extremely important to me. I don't think there is. I don't think there has ever been a client who I've, even at the very beginning of the relationship, have ever not said. This is less about this job and this task. It's more about how we have a relationship with each other and how I can help you get going forward. And that may be a six month process. It might be an afternoon at my studio, it might be lifelong, but traditionally they last a long time. And that's a really, that's a really good thing. And some of them are extremely good friends. Some of them were already good friends before, before I had a business relationship with them. But I think that's every bit as important as the, as the end product and the actual design process. I think it's, I think it's a big.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As we're talking, it really strikes me that, that when you are doing design, it's less about the things and it's more about the energy and it's more about. I mean, obviously you need to have colors and shapes and all of the things that make up a space or to accent a space or. I know I'm saying this inelegantly because I'm a doctor and I don't have that much background in your field, but it really is about trying to get the energies of all the things that you put into or take out of to work together in the same way that you're trying to get the energies to match up with the people that live in that space and the outside of that space. So it's really, it's sort of trying to have things settle in the right way.

Brett Johnson:

I'm not a big practitioner of Feng shui because I think that Feng shui probably happens and probably evolved through mindful exploration by a particular culture of exactly what I strive to do as a designer. But it's kind of a natural place for people to go to search for kind of an outline of how to make that happen. I personally like to think that somehow I have a gift. I don't know how I got the gift, whether I obtained it or it was given to me or whatever that is. And as I get older, I get less afraid of losing it. Although early on in my career when I was less sure of myself, I was very petrified that I would lose, lose it because then I would have to find something else to do. And that would be kind of scary. But to get really back to the question, I think, I think it, I think it really is ultimately most important you go to kind of the shaker mentality of, of a way of life, and you say form follows function, and I think beauty follows function as well. And, and as I, as I mature and become become more established and see more things. I find myself becoming more and more spare. I think it's really, really great when you can create big beauty with very little and it's probably not the best sales and marketing plan, but if I can keep it going and it keeps working, then they'll always be a reward in the end.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Brett, after listening to our conversation, I'm sure people will want to learn more about your business, Main Street Design company based here in Portland. How can people do that?

Brett Johnson:

They can visit our website@www.mainstreetdesign.com and that's Main with an E street and design all spelled out. And our studio is open by appointment at 688 Congress street in Portland. As I like to say, at the edge of the arts district and surrounded by great restaurants. So you can come visit us and go have some yummy food somewhere.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And people can also see your work in Maine Home Design because I know that they are the editorial staff with Maine Home Design. Big fans of yours and the work that you do. So you've been featured multiple times over the course of the years.

Brett Johnson:

I have. I'm very, very blessed that the magazines continue to like my work and like to feature that. And at this point I feel like a nice part of the family.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I appreciate your coming in and talking to me about the work that you do and I'm sure that the people whose lives you have touched on multiple different levels are also appreciative. So thank you, Brett for coming in today.

Brett Johnson:

You're welcome. And thank you for having me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You've been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour on podcast show number 162, Healthy Homes. Our guests have included Melissa Coleman, Jason Peacock and Brett Johnson. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit drlisabelisle.com the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on itunes. For a preview of each week's show, sign up for our e. Newsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter and see my daily running photos as bountiful1 on Instagram. We'd love to hear from you. So please let us know what you think of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our Healthy Home Show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life the