Away from the big city, Astri and her husband Ajar managed to build a comfy home for their two children, providing them their needs even with a very minimum use of gadgets for entertainment. Instead, they highly encourage the kids on reading books and doing art-related activities on a daily basis (which we adore so much). Astri and Ajar’s ten years of hard work since the beginning of their marriage has paid off and the results are very much enjoyed by the whole family member.

Our team first fell in love with the decorations of this house which seems to be very close to nature, and as expected, many areas are showered with indoor plants which freshen up the air around it. With a vision of improving a sustainable living, Astri kept her commitment on not only reducing the number of gadgets used in the house, but also by growing hydroponic vegetables and passing on the knowledge to her two children.

Many other decor inspirations caught our eye, one of it to be the color-coordinated bookshelves on the second floor. Her attention to details are clearly shown and our team admires her storing system because everything in this 285 m² house seems to be neatly placed. Their love of travelling could be easily seen from the many framed pictures hung on the living room wall and also walls around the stairs. What keeps it interesting for friends and family who comes to visit is that they might not see the same decor settings as shown in her social media, because she has the tendency to revitalize the looks every once in a while.

What do you and your husband do for a living?
My husband and I are both employees who works in Jakarta but lives in Bogor because it is nearer to both of our parents. Besides that, we would like our kids to grow up in a good environment which has a good air quality as well. Even though we tend to come home late at night and leave early in the morning, every weekend we still get to enjoy Bogor’s cool weather with its fresh windy air.

Tell us 3 words that describes yourself.
A mother, a thinker, a curious soul.

Tell us about the design concept of your home and why you chose this particular concept.
At first, we only planned to have a house with a wide backyard for the kids to freely play around in and an open-feel house to have maximum air circulation. As it develops, the architect of this house decided to design the house with lots of windows, minimum partition and a high ceiling. For its interior, we chose a mixture of Scandinavian and tropical style. We really adore the concept of Scandinavian style for its geometric patterns and pastel colors.

Who is the architect of this house?
A friend of mine named Riri.

Where do you get your inspiration in designing the house?
A lot of it comes from Pinterest and design blogs such as Design Sponge and Apartment Therapy.

How did you consider child safety in the design?
Since my kids are not toddlers anymore, what’s most important is to keep communicating with them to always take care of their own safety. For example, to remind them on holding the hand rails while going up and down the stairs. Besides that, we are not a big fan of small displays that are wall hung so it minimizes the chances of our kids to get hit by fallen items, especially those made of glass or wood.

How often do you redecorate or change the settings of the interior?
It really depends on the mood and needs of the family. For example, at first, we located the kids’ room and all their school equipment upstairs but as time passes, they enjoyed spending time downstairs more so we decided to change the use of the guest room into their room, and vice versa. Meanwhile, the living room is redecorated almost every week because I enjoy adding plants or a small coffee table as an accent.

Which is your favourite part of the house and why.
The living room, because of its location which allows cross ventilation throughout the room, coming from both front and back of the house. With a reclining armchair provided, my kid enjoys reading books here and it is quite often that I fall asleep in this chair as well.

Can you share us some tips on decorating and creating a space that is comfortable for the whole family?
To decorate slowly and fitted to its needs. I believe that a house should be able to facilitate its occupants’ activities as comfortable as possible without forgetting its functionality. Sometimes there are decorations that are aesthetically great but don’t match with the family’s dynamics. In our home, there are very limited amount of glassware because my kid moves very actively. I wouldn’t want to make my kid less comfortable in playing around the house just because she is afraid she might break something. We like to decorate with plants more because even though it is simple, it could give a totally different feel throughout the room.

Can you share us some tips on the storage solutions throughout the house?
Put everything visible and reachable. I try to store clothes, toys and cooking utensils where I can see them easily so it would always be a reminder that I have those items already because many times we forget we ever owned them. Another tip would to be discipline with the storage space that we have, to own clothes as much as the wardrobe could fit. We would rather lessen the amount of clothing instead of adding a new wardrobe. Even though the house is spacious, every rooms’ measurement is considered small, intentionally to not pile up unnecessary belongings.

Where do you get most of the furniture and decorations in this house?
IKEA, Informa and home decoration shops online through Instagram. Nowadays, there are a lot of local shops with good quality products.

What are the best features in this house?
I think the unique parts of this house would be the mezzanine floor in the main bedroom, exposed brick walls in the prayer room and the laser-cut fence at the front of the house.

How do you usually spend your time at home?
I love to read, spend time with my kids and sometimes we like to bake cakes together.

What are your future plans for the house?
I would like to make this house a sustainable place. My ambition is to minimize the amount of waste thrown to the landfills, grow hydroponic vegetables and teach the kids to be accustomed to sustainable living. I believe that home is where good habits are nurtured.

Do you have any collection at home? Why do you collect those things?
We used to have a collection of fridge magnets, collected from every country we visited during our travels, but mostly fell and broke. We are still figuring out ways to display our magnet collection beautifully.

How do you maintain all the plants in and outside the house?
Learning by doing because every plant has its own treatment, depending on its type. It needs to be taken outdoors once in a while and get watered every day. When it starts to wither, I usually leave it outside to have it showered with rain and get much sun until it freshens back.

How do you imagine an ideal home to be like? What is important to you in a living space?
A home with many window openings, simple with minimum waste and a place where my family and I feel comfortable staying at for long hours.

Let’s take a glimpse of their neatly-organized haven.

This short trip definitely got us to wanting to come home and clean up our mess. Thank you Astri + Ajar, it was such a pleasure!