Khoollect tips: Louisa Thomsen Brits on how to hygge for urban dwellers

***Rachel Khoo would like to thank all the inspiring people who helped make the Khoollect studio a hive of creativity. Although the Khoollect studio’s doors have now closed, you can keep up with Rachel’s newest adventures on RachelKhoo.com and on Rachel’s Instagram and Facebook pages – and, continue to enjoy the Khoollect website’s stories and recipes, which will remain available.***

Hygge has been buzzing around the internet for a good while now with people from far and wide discovering the Danish artform. Around all the hype has been images of wood-burning fires, big warm blankets and cosy cabins, something likely unattainable for many space-limited city folk. So, following our interview with Louisa Thomsen Brits, we asked her to share her tips on how to hygge for urban dwellers. As Luisa says, “I think that our urban living environment extends beyond our homes into our local community.”

Discover Luisa’s tips for finding the hygge wherever you reside:

  • Pay attention to the concrete particulars of how you live – your routines and regular activities, the things that you keep, the people you love to be with.
  • Ask yourself, where do you go for comfort? What are the small daily rituals and customs that most anchor you? What do you do to unwind and to reconnect? Hygge happens wherever we gather in a wholehearted and inclusive way. To hygge, at home or in public, we create pockets of ease.
  • Begin by delineating a moment – set aside time to be luxuriously alone or together.
  • Adjust your surroundings to guide your energy and desires.
  • Create a circle of warmth. Pull chairs closer together at home or in a café.
  • Consider atmospheric rather than overhead lighting.
  • Create a point of focus: use ‘living light.’ Light fire in your hearth or a candle at the centre of your table, start a conversation, open a bottle of wine, share a meal, find a pack of cards, make a pot of tea, watch a film, play a board game, take a good book or a lover to bed. Hygge is about facilitating connection, intimacy and warmth.
  • Consider your creaturely needs for comfort, shelter and familiarity.
  • Appeal to your senses, nourish yourselves and each other, and articulate your desire for togetherness.
  • Prepare food at home to share with friends and neighbours.
  • Take a rug and a flask to the park.
  • Take pleasure in the rituals and routines that connect us – in the public as well as private sphere – like standing in line for our cup of morning coffee.
  • Light a candle on waking, to ease into the day. At the end of the day, put one on a windowsill to share its glow with people passing on a darkening street outside.
  • Consider what you might do to feel rooted in your local community.
  • Think about how to elevate and nurture our common life. Cultivate empathy and abandon judgment.
  • Relax. Let go. Be aware that the moment is passing. Celebrate it.

How do you hygge? Let us know in the comments section below…

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WRITTEN BY:
Sami Sharaf

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Read our interview with Louisa Thomsen Brits