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Garage Living: How Your Garage Could Become a True Home Asset

Women's Journal Staff on December 4, 2025

As 2025 comes to a close, more homeowners are ditching the dust-covered catch-all that is the average garage and unlocking underused real estate with untapped potential. The emerging trend hits home for busy families, parents juggling schedules, and homeowners craving more organization and functionality.

Home Renovations Remain Strong, and Garages Are Part of the Surge

With kitchens and bathrooms often dominating headlines, many homeowners overlook their garages, even though they offer a relatively modest investment with high functional payoff. 

Garage Living highlights how the cluttered, overlooked area can become a functional, safe, and adaptable part of the home, making life easier for busy families in 2026 and beyond.

From Clutter Zone to “Highly Productive Room”

A 2024 survey from CRAFTSMAN offers revealing insight. Among homeowners with garages:

  • 76 % said their garage “could become the most productive room in the house.”
  • More than one in four said their garage had helped launch or grow a side hustle.
  • Many use their garage as a gym or exercise space; many cite clutter as the reason they don’t use it more often. 
  • Reflecting widespread interest, 78 % of respondents say they plan to declutter or reorganize their garage in the near future.

In other words, what was once viewed as just a storage area is being reconsidered as real, livable, or workable space.

Why Now Makes Sense for Families

  • Cost‑effective home improvement. With economic uncertainty and rising mortgage rates prompting many to stay put rather than move, upgrading existing space offers value. Homeowners are opting for functional upgrades instead of structural overhauls.
  • Maximizing under‑utilized square footage. Not every household needs, or can afford, a home addition. A garage remodel can effectively add living, storage, or hobby space without expanding a home’s footprint.
  • Flexibility for evolving needs. Families’ needs change. Kids outgrow toys, hobbies shift, and seasonal gear accumulates. A well‑organized garage can adapt over time via modular storage, cabinetry, and multi‑purpose design.
  • Practical return on investment. Even simple upgrades, like replacing a garage door, are known to offer high ROI, per home‑improvement trend reports for 2025.
  • Room for work, hobbies, and wellness. Garages are used for side projects, workouts, DIY, creative hobbies, and much more — ideal for homeowners seeking more than just storage.

Why the Garage Remodel Trend Matters 

For many, the garage holds more than just storage — it’s the backdrop for daily life. School backpacks, sports equipment, garden tools, holiday decorations, and pet gear. All of it accumulates year after year. A garage remodel, or re‑organization, is more than a home‑improvement project; it’s a way to reclaim calm, reduce clutter stress, and plan for smooth routines.

  • Better organization = less mental load. Clutter contributes to stress. An organized garage offers the kind of order that helps simplify busy mornings, school carpools, errand days, and seasonal tasks.
  • Safer, more accessible storage. A smart garage layout can mitigate hazards like tripping over tools, kids accessing dangerous materials, or seasonal gear cluttering living areas.
  • Flexible space for changing needs. Whether it’s a home gym, hobby workshop, seasonal storage, or craft zone, a renovated garage adapts as life evolves.
  • Value without over‑building. For households not ready (or willing) to expand their home footprint, a garage remodel is a lower‑commitment way to increase usable space and possibly add value to the property.

With home‑renovation activity still strong, economic factors discouraging moving, and homeowners increasingly valuing practicality, the humble garage is getting a second look. For families, busy professionals, and homeowners juggling space, safety, and storage, a garage remodel isn’t about luxury; it’s about making real life easier.

Transforming your garage isn’t a headline‑making renovation, but for daily living, especially for those balancing home, family, and real life, it could make all the difference.

The Language of Power: How Words Shape Women’s Safety, Identity, and Freedom — and Why Chase Hughes’ Tongue Is Becoming an Unexpected Ally

Women's Journal Staff on December 4, 2025

Women have always lived closer to the consequences of language than anyone wants to admit.

A man’s tone can shift a room.

A sentence can end an argument… or escalate it.

A subtle phrase can reveal contempt, conceal manipulation, or expose a truth he’s trying to hide.

For women, language is not abstract.

It’s personal.

It’s survival.

It’s often the difference between being heard… and being dismissed.

This is one of the reasons Chase Hughes—bestselling author, military behavior expert, and one of the world’s leading authorities on reading human behavior—has found such a devoted audience among women. His appearance on Lisa Bilyeu’s Women of Impact, where he broke down how to spot narcissists, identify manipulative patterns, and read men for honesty, remains one of her most-watched segments.

Women want clarity.

They want safety.

They want to see the truth early instead of rebuilding their lives later.

And that desire sits at the heart of Hughes’ new book, Tongue: A Cognitive Hazard, a #1 bestseller that is rapidly becoming a quiet favorite among women seeking stronger boundaries, sharper instincts, and a deeper understanding of how language shapes their relationships.

Language as the First Line of Defense

Women learn early—sometimes too early—that language is a battlefield:

  • The gaslighter: “I never said that. You’re imagining things.”
  • The narcissist: “You’re the only one who understands me.”
  • The manipulator: “You’re overreacting.”
  • The avoidant partner: “Let’s not make this a big deal.”

These aren’t just sentences.

They’re psychological maneuvers.

Hughes’ work has long centered on decoding these maneuvers with surgical precision. But Tongue goes deeper—it shows how words shape perception itself.

Women often describe the book as “like getting prescription glasses for the mind.”

Not because it teaches tricks, but because it reveals the hidden mechanisms inside language:

  • how certain words create doubt
  • how tone alters emotional memory
  • how framing influences self-worth
  • how language can mask intent
  • how subtle shifts in vocabulary reveal character

In a world where women are constantly told to “trust their intuition,” Tongue finally gives them the structure behind the intuition—the cognitive scaffolding.

Why Women Are Connecting With This Book

On the surface, Tongue is an exploration of how language shapes cognition.

Underneath, it’s a survival manual wrapped in philosophy and art.

It’s resonating with women for a few key reasons:

1. It validates the experiences women have been gaslit about for decades.

Women have always felt the impact of tone, phrasing, and subtle shifts in language.

The book shows the science behind what they’ve known intuitively.

2. It teaches women to read the truth behind a man’s words.

Not by encouraging paranoia, but by giving them cognitive clarity.

Women describe feeling “less blind” to male behavior patterns after reading it.

3. It reframes “communication” as a form of power, not politeness.

Most women were raised to use language to soothe others.

TONGUE teaches them to use language to protect themselves.

4. It helps women rebuild their internal narrative.

The quiet, subconscious sentences a woman repeats to herself—

“Don’t upset him,”

“Maybe I’m being dramatic,”

“It’s fine, I’ll handle it”—

are the real prisons.

The book gets inside those loops.

5. It gives women permission to question the language they’ve been taught to tolerate.

Many women finish the book and finally understand why certain conversations have always felt “off,” even when no rule was broken.

From Narcissist-Spotting to Relationship Clarity: Hughes’ Impact on Women

On Lisa Bilyeu’s show, Hughes didn’t sugarcoat anything.

He walked women through:

  • how narcissists engineer attachment
  • how manipulators use language to create self-doubt
  • how liars accidentally reveal themselves
  • how to spot honesty in a man, even when he wants to hide it
  • how to read micro-expressions that most people miss

The response was overwhelming—countless women saying they finally understood patterns that had haunted them for years.

TONGUE takes that same clarity and expands it:

not just how men deceive, but how language itself shapes a woman’s identity, confidence, and intuition.

The Art of Reclaiming Your Own Voice

One of the most powerful concepts in Tongue is that the language you use to describe your experiences becomes the filter through which you interpret your life.

If a woman’s internal vocabulary was shaped by:

  • a dismissive parent
  • a controlling partner
  • a culture that rewards silence
  • friendships built on competition
  • workplaces where men speak loudly and women speak carefully

…then her internal voice is not truly her own.

TONGUE helps women see the architecture of that inner voice—and begin to rewrite it.

Women often say the book helped them:

  • break old patterns
  • choose better partners
  • speak more confidently at work
  • stop apologizing for existing
  • recognize manipulation early
  • trust their perceptions
  • feel less “fogged” in relationships
  • rebuild self-respect after trauma

This is not a “self-help vibe” book.

It’s sharper.

Cleaner.

More honest.

Why This Matters for Women Today

Women are overexposed to language:

  • Text arguments
  • Social media criticism
  • Performative “therapy speak”
  • Manipulative dating scripts
  • Corporate language that hides power dynamics
  • Partners who weaponize silence or vagueness

We are living in a time where women are expected to be fluent in emotional intelligence and immune to the psychological impact of language.

That’s impossible.

TONGUE offers something rare:

an understanding of the machinery itself.

Not affirmation.

Not platitudes.

Not “just trust yourself.”

But the actual structure of how perception forms.

Knowledge that lifts shame, rather than adding it.

For Women Who Are Ready to Stop Second-Guessing Themselves

This book—and the work behind it—is for women who:

  • want to stop falling for the same patterns
  • want to recognize red flags before they turn into stories
  • want their voice back
  • want clarity, not confusion
  • want to feel safe in their own perception
  • want to understand the men in their lives with clear eyes
  • want a boundary system based on truth, not fear
  • want to see themselves without the old language they inherited

TONGUE isn’t gentle.

But it’s liberating.

It helps women reclaim the one power nobody can take unless they hand it over:

their voice.

The Call That Wouldn’t Go Away: Inside Melody Lubin’s Journey Into The Feminine Arts

Women's Journal Staff on December 4, 2025

When the Quiet Voice Becomes Impossible to Ignore

For most of her life, Melody Lubin carried a feeling she couldn’t name. It wasn’t loud or dramatic, but it was steady. A tug in her chest that whispered there was something more she was meant to live, something fuller and more honest than the path she was on. She tried to silence it many times, telling herself to be practical, to stay in familiar rooms, to follow the expectations around her. But the calling waited, patient and persistent, until she was ready to listen.

When she finally said yes to that deeper voice, everything changed.

Today, Melody is known as a global facilitator and mentor in the feminine arts, guiding women toward fuller expression, deeper truth, and lives that feel aligned rather than performed. Her work reaches women across continents through retreats, community containers, and the digital spaces on her website, melodylubin.com. But the outward success is only a reflection of an inner journey that began long before her brand existed.

The Moment She Chose Truth Over Convenience

Melody often says her work chose her, not the other way around. The turning point wasn’t a glamorous breakthrough. It was a quiet recognition that she could no longer live in ways that felt small or dishonest. She realized that many of the women around her were feeling the same thing. They were tired of numbing, tired of suppressing their intuition, tired of settling for lives that looked good but felt hollow.

The feminine arts entered her life as a lifeline, a doorway into a way of being that was unapologetically honest. Instead of pushing herself harder or compromising her emotions, she began studying the deeper layers of expression, embodiment, and relational growth. The more she grew, the clearer it became that her path was not only for her. She was meant to guide others through the same terrain.

Why Women Come to Her

If there is one thing that defines Melody’s work, it’s this: she does not do fluff.

In a space where spirituality and self-development can often feel abstract or ungrounded, Melody brings a penetrating clarity. She sees the truth behind people’s stories, the unspoken patterns, the deeper blocks, and the places where women hide from their power. Clients describe her presence as both graceful and powerful, a combination that helps them feel held while also being challenged in the ways they need most.

Her retreats often sell out within days, drawing women from around the world who want the chance to work with her in person. They come because they trust her. They come because her work is not a performance. It is the real thing.

The Call That Wouldn’t Go Away: Inside Melody Lubin’s Journey Into The Feminine Arts

Photo Courtesy: Melody Lubin

The Difference Between Wanting More and Choosing More

Many of Melody’s clients arrive carrying an inner ache they don’t know how to articulate. They want more freedom, more honesty, more depth in their relationships, and more space to breathe as their true selves. But wanting more is very different from choosing more.

Melody knows the difference intimately. She has lived through the discomfort of letting go of identities that no longer fit. She has faced the consequences of choosing the unknown over the familiar. And because of that lived experience, she encourages women to trust the pull inside them, even when it feels risky.

Her message is simple but powerful:

The call inside you is not random. It is direction, it holds it’s own intelligence.

A Facilitator Shaped By Life, Not Theory

Melody’s approach is shaped by real experience, not clinical models. She understands how conditioning shapes the feminine. She understands the exhaustion that comes from holding everything together while quietly losing yourself. She understands the longing for more aliveness, more expression, and more truth.

Her teachings are not based on perfection, but presence. She guides women to feel again, breathe again, and reconnect with the parts of themselves they abandoned to survive. The spaces she creates are as much about remembering as they are about learning.

The Growing Movement Behind Her Work

What began as 1 to 1 mentorship eventually expanded into global retreats, immersive workshops, and a rapidly growing community of women who feel transformed by her presence and her guidance. Her work is gaining recognition for its ability to create permanent shifts rather than temporary inspiration.

Melody sees this moment in history as a turning point. She believes women are being called into deeper alignment, not for personal fulfillment alone, but because the world needs their leadership, intuition, and truth.

Her future vision includes bringing men into the work as well, not as separate participants, but as part of a larger growth ecosystem between masculine and feminine dynamics. She dreams of creating spaces where couples and communities can rewrite old patterns and restore harmony in how they relate to one another.

An Invitation To The Woman Who Feels The Pull

Melody’s work is, at its core, an invitation.

Not to be perfect.

Not to be fearless.

But to be honest.

She speaks directly to the woman who feels restless in her life, who knows she is meant for something larger than the version she has been performing. She reminds her that the yearning she feels is not a mistake, and that following it may be the most important decision she ever makes.

To learn more about her programs, retreats, and community spaces, visit melodylubin.com or connect with her on Instagram at @melodylubin.

Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for general informational purposes only. The views expressed by Melody Lubin are personal and do not constitute professional advice. Any actions taken based on this article are at the reader’s discretion.