focus on HOME
Nonprofit interior designer helps clients ...
“When we leave, everything in your home can be used like it’s supposed to be used. You can make dinner, serve dinner, sit down at the table or the living room or the bedroom.” Joli Sanders, Founder of Focus on Home
For Rashana Avant, the magic that Joli Sanders and her team performed on her new apartment was nothing short of a miracle.
What started as a barebones space with a mattress on the floor and a playpen for her daughter, Ava, 1, ended the day fully stocked and furnished right down to the plates in the kitchen cabinet.
“I loved it,” she said. “It was so pretty, and they took their time to make it just right. I was so happy — my spirit was screaming.”
Turning a house into a home is the core mission of Focus on Home, a nonprofit interior designer Joli Sanders founded in 2014. The organization works with the Oklahoma Homeless Alliance, Infant Crisis Services and other area agencies, helping clients who are having to start over from scratch.
“Sometimes they don’t even have a shower curtain. It’s a completely empty apartment,” Sanders said. “It’s a situation that doesn’t feel complete yet.”
Focus on Home relies on a mix of gently used donated items and donations of money to provide families with everything from sofas to beds to pots and pans. A local business donates brand-new mattresses.
“It’s really important to us to make sure that when we place furniture and furnishings, it’s going to help a family move forward,” Sanders said. “We seriously do everything. If you have an empty home when you walk in, we do everything.”
“When we leave, everything in your home can be used like it’s supposed to be used. You can make dinner, serve dinner, sit down at the table or the living room or the bedroom,” Sanders said.
‘A natural fit’
Sanders is driven not only by her skills as a designer, but by the memory of life as a single mother attending the University of Texas in Austin.
It was just her and the baby, Sanders said, living in a sparse apartment and pedaling around town on a bike with a baby carrier mounted on the back. So she understands what people coming to her non-profit are facing.
“It’s hard to make it,” Sanders said. “I found my furniture on curbs and made up things when I was a single mom.”
Sanders graduated from UT in 1995 with a degree in psychology. She went on to the University of Central Oklahoma, where she graduated from the master’s in fine arts interior design program in 2000. She’s worked in interior design ever since.
Now remarried, she said the idea of Focus on Home began to emerge as her blended family got older.
“I really wanted to get involved in the community somehow,” Sanders said, “and this really seemed to be a natural fit for my background and skill set I have from work.”
So she consulted officials at various agencies.
“I asked if such a program was needed here, and every single one of them was like, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s just this huge hole in services where this would fit,’ ” she said. “Nobody was doing this kind of wraparound service.”
Focus on Home helps families facing a variety of challenges such as those trying to regain custody of their children, escaping domestic abuse or overcoming addictions. They also work with grandparents suddenly find themselves as legal guardians of their grandchildren, and people transitioning out of homelessness.
Whatever the challenge, Focus on the Home’s work goes beyond creature comforts. It’s also about helping clients stay on their journey.
“Sometimes they’re coming out of an abusive relationship,” she said. “They’re having to start over again because they had to leave everything behind. Sometimes they start to think, ‘Maybe I should go back.’ It’s the same with people in recovery. You’re sleeping on the floor and maybe there’s a lawn chair in the living room. It’s hard.”
Avant, who was referred to Focus on Home by Infant Crisis Services, said her daughter made it clear right away that she approved of group’s work.
“She crawled from room to room and pulled herself up on the bed,” Avant said. “I could tell she was happy.”
Avant said she can’t wait to get home from work these days.
Her favorite thing? “My bed,” she said. “Oh my God, that bed is so comfortable.”
For more information on Focus on Home, go to focusonhome.org.