How a shed can be good for your head!
Forget the man cave – sheds aren’t just for blokes anymore! We take a look at the growing trend of women reclaiming sheds as their own and explore how a shed could be good for your head
Whenever life gets a bit much for Anne Hindle, there’s a special place she loves to retreat to. Just a couple of steps away from her house, her garden shed is a sanctuary from the hustle and bustle of everyday life where she can enjoy a cup of tea, admire the garden birds and just enjoy her own company. Decked out like a mini vintage tea shop, decorated with hand-crafted trinkets and objects bought from charity shops, it’s a place where she can totally be herself. Anne is one of a rapidly growing number of women who have claimed the garden shed as a space of their own. Long considered the traditional place of the man, where they
could tinker with tools or get out from under our feet, now it’s time for us ladies to have a share in the joy of a great shed. There’s even a name for this growing phenomenon – the she shed – and there have been books written and thousands of social media posts shared on the subject. What’s more, it’s a trend that’s expected to boom this year as the coronavirus lockdown has forced us to see our homes and gardens in a different light. As once unused spaces have become makeshift exercise studios, school rooms and offices during
‘Women really create their own little worlds in their sheds’
the pandemic, it’s expected more and more women could turn to the shed to carve out a little extra space for themselves.
While sheds are typically just a place to keep the mower and gardening tools, what’s most interesting about the blossoming number of women’s sheds is the novel and creative ways in which they are used. From reading rooms to sewing dens, yoga studios to meditation zones, crafting grottoes to a place to write or paint, the shed has become a blank canvas women can turn into whatever they need.
Gill Heriz is a shed lover who has interviewed many women for her book, A Woman’s Shed.
“I noticed women really create their own little worlds in their sheds, a bit like when as children we made dens,” she says. “The shed is a place to make things, to dream or just be. Unlike perhaps in the rest of the house, here you have the brain space to be creative and as you’re kind of outdoors but indoors, at home but not at home, you don’t have the same rules to follow.” After all, it’s not often we get a place we can totally call our own as adults. Childhood bedrooms were perhaps the last place we could stamp with our identity, putting up posters on the wall and sticking ‘do not enter’ signs on the door. But as grown-ups, our rooms are often shared with partners, children or grandchildren. No wonder then, that having a space of our own could do us some good. “Sheds provide a repose from everyday living, the good and the bad,”
says Erika Kotite and
Sabrina Contreras, who give advice and inspiration to women setting up sheds on sheshedliving.com Erika and Sabrina say: “They rejuvenate and recharge you to get back to daily life and give you a happy place that is completely about you.”
The science backs up the benefits, too. Research shows having a place where we can spend time on our own, such as a shed, can vastly improve our relationships as it gives us space to get perspective on how other people feel. And the silence we can find has long been shown to reduce stress, focus our minds and even encourage the growth of new brain cells to help with learning and memory.
For Anne, back in her vintage tea shed, she certainly feels all those benefits. Her shed story started when she was watching Shed of the Year on TV and mentioned to her husband that she’d love one of her own. Handily, her husband found a shed gathering dust in the rafters of the DIY store he worked for and after a quick power wash, it was erected in the garden. Anne then got to work transforming it, indulging her love for all things vintage by making an Aladdin’s cave of retro treasures from the bedding box she covered in vinyls to the hundreds of vintage teacups hung around the walls.
Inside, Anne often finds herself doing craft projects such as making bird feeders from teacups, or scrapbooking. Sometimes, though, she just likes to sit in there and be quiet. “As I care for my elderly parents and my son who has additional needs, life can be pretty busy. I also suffer from anxiety so to be able to go into my shed full of pretty things, I immediately feel uplifted and can forget about my problems for a while.”
Anne says she has found her shed to be a bit of a lifeline during the current coronavirus lockdown. “It certainly has helped my mental health,” she says.
An escape from the world, a boost to our mood and a chance to be creative. Sounds lovely. Perhaps then it truly is time to shake off the stereotype of sheds for men and look at the ways we could all transform our existing spaces, or build our own and help the phenomenon of the She Shed flourish and grow.