Stress-free Living for a Peaceful Home

The environment of your home has a lot to do with the way you feel on a day-to-day basis. For example, if your home is cluttered, you will tend to feel lazy, tired, or frustrated. If your home’s interior paint is black, you will possibly feel slow or depressed. Much of our idea of a home is represented in who we are. The reverse is true as well. So, if you are looking to turn your life around, or simply feel more stress-free, then there are a few simple changes you can make to your home to help out.

Smells

Smells have one of the biggest influences on us. Don’t believe me? Walk into a house that smells like someone just removed chocolate chip cookies from the oven. I dare you not to feel happy. Other scents, such as, citrus (orange, lemon, and grapefruit), jasmine, lavender, vanilla, and if you need a more robust scent, fresh bread or coffee. Scent can help relieve depression, soothe our spirit, wake us up, or provide a variety of other sensations.

You can always purchase items like candles and plug-in air fresheners, but I prefer the al natural way with fresh ingredients. So, pull out that baking pan before guests arrive or fill a pot of boiling water with a sliced orange and a couple rich spices such as cinnamon and vanilla.

Feng Shui

Feng Shui is the belief that your home, or the area around you is a mirror-representation of who you are on the inside. By utilizing the energy of what you bring in (and everything has energy), you can better manage how that energy flows through your home.

For example, on furniture, your couch should be against a wall, leaving a few inches between the wall and couch to allow energy to flow. There should be open pathways through the room, and into other rooms. Round coffee tables are more inviting than rectangular ones. However, your living room should have a variety of shapes: Squares represent earth; rectangles, wood; triangles, fire; round and oval, metal.

Feng Shui also covers color, clutter, seating, and how arrangements mingle with each other, as well as represent the home.

Color

The color of your home can also influence how you feel. This doesn’t mean you need to paint your entire home, but adding a splash of color utilizing accent colors is a great way to brighten-up or soothe your home, or in some cases make your home appear larger such as with blues, greens, and purples. Whereas reds, oranges, and yellows will help your rooms feel vibrant.

Shades and tones can also liven, or tone down a room. Understanding a color-wheel and how it works is one way to balance out varying complimentary colors of your home and pick out accent wall colors. An accent wall is great because of the overall affect it has on a room, with a small amount of work to paint that wall, or section of wall.

Simplify

Simplifying a room is essentially de-cluttering a room of excess furniture, trinkets, and unnecessary items. For example, have you ever walked into a house where one or all of the tables had magazines strewn about? The home owner may have felt like they were representing who they are by what they read, but in fact they were distracting the mind to think the home was messy.

A few tricks to keep a home simple, is to use bins for items you would like in the room, and would otherwise leave them lingering about where you leave them. The idea of “everything has a place” is very effective when it comes to keeping a clean and simple home. Your remotes, car keys, and magazines should all have a location that is orderly, and near point of use.

Simplifying may also mean removing too much furniture. Do you have six chairs around a small dining table that has only ever held four people? Do you have one too many lounge chairs in your living room? Are your kitchen counter-tops filled with nifty small appliances? These are all signs that your home is too busy and distracting. The more items you have strewn about, the more cluttered, and small your home feels. 

5 Ways to De-Clutter Your Home

It is very easy for your home to quickly fill with clutter, and while it is easy to not see clutter, you can always feel it. In many ways, clutter works like drag off of boat or airplane, slowly keeping us back, providing a constant, “I’ll get it tomorrow” attitude that only enables the procrastinator within us.

When purchasing a home, and even more so after you have moved into your new home, people often find clutter to be at its worst. You have spent weeks, perhaps even months preparing for this big move. The day comes, you work hard to move all of your worldly possessions, and invariably once everything has been transplanted you are done with the whole moving thing. You might set a plan to slowly, and methodically, unpack and put all your items in their proper place. But, once you turn on the TV, or a friend asks you out for a drink you toss your list away, leaving boxes, and a mess, that never does get cleaned up.

So, this list isn’t a list of unique places to put your stuff, such as hidden drawers, special shelving, or coffee tables that second as blanket storage. I want to address the root of the problem—Your inner pack-rat. Yes, we all have this urge to keep everything. Are you still holding onto the Birthday cards from ten years ago on the off-chance Aunt Zelda comes by and asks what you did with it? Is your letterman’s jacket still in the same box it’s been in since you packed it away for college? The truth is that you don’t need these items, and if you have things packed away for years and don’t remember having them, that is a big sign to suggest eliminating them from your life.

The 15 Minute Clean-up

Let’s start easy. Clutter doesn’t just come and go when you are done moving, but rather lingers around for, well…forever. One way to work through this is set a room schedule. One room per day, to tackle a 15-minute clean-up every day of the week. If the room takes you 5 minutes, then awesome, you’re done.

You want to look for any items that can be thought of as clutter, meaning anything that doesn’t belong. Look through mail to toss out the unimportant, dishes laying around, toys that should be put away, garbage, etc.

Additionally, I suggest setting up a box or small closet where you put all those items you say, “I think I’ll need this in the future, but I just don’t know where I want it.” But, you know you likely won’t ever see it again. Storing all of these items in the same place will one keep them out of the areas they don’t belong, and two, at some point in your future make it obvious you don’t need the item. Often, a single space with a bunch of junk reminds you that the stuff you have in that closet, box, or drawer, is in fact junk you don’t need.

The 6 Month Rule

I know you’ve heard the rule. If you haven’t needed the item for six-months that is a good sign you should just throw it away. Now, of course, this won’t work for everything. So, before following the rule you should make an exception list. Items such as important paperwork: passports, home abstract, living wills, birth certificates, etc. Truly sentimental items, not a piece of paper and chewing gum you’ve had since high-school. Tools you will use in the future. The other caveat is that you need a legitimate place for all of these items. This can be a safe for valuable paperwork and items, a large tool box for your tools, or a display case for your sentimental items. If you do not have a location designated for these items then either get rid of them, or find a place.

A Place for Everything

Talking about finding a place for items. You should always have a place for everything. Another word of advice is that drawers, cabinets, and storage units do not make the best places to store your items. The reason is that it is too easy to toss your stuff in these places to simply hide them and not deal with the items you no longer need. This is how clutter gathers.

Ideally, you would arrange your home to be drawer, cabinet, and clutter free. I know this sounds a bit crazy, but many homeowners have done this. For example, mason jars to hold utensils, a knife magnet to hang your knives, pots and pans hanging above your kitchen island, open and visible baskets for your socks, and hang your clothes. It may take time, but is very doable.  

Go on a Selling Spree

Thanks to websites and Apps such as Craigslist and Nextdoor, you have full ability to sell your unwanted, or unneeded items. I suggest a monthly browse of your home to find things you don’t think you need and post them for sale on one of these sites. You may be amazed at how many people are interested in your junk. This is also a great way to make a little extra cash for the things you do need.

Throw a Clutter Party

Clutter parties are gaining in popularity as they combine several tools to de-clutter your life. They can:

• Offer staging advice
•  Bring buyers to your home
•  Get friends together

A clutter party is when you invite friends and family to your home for the sole purpose of getting rid of your stuff. You may want to entice with pizza and beer, or wine. Then set up several games around your clutter. Some suggested games:

• Junk, or silent, auction your stuff
•  Room make-over where you let your friends make over your room
•  Have friends make a list of the top five useless things in your room. Then get rid of those top five items.

·         When your guests arrive ask them to guess how many items will be tossed by the end of the party. Whoever guesses closest wins a prize.