5 Simple Tips for Inspiring Feelings of Peace at Home

Your home is the most important place for you and your family, especially now. The design of your home plays a huge role in your feelings of joy, peace, security, calm, and even creativity and productivity. Home is now your  work zone, play zone, and comfort zone. The interior and exterior allow for your ability to function effectively.

I have a few tips for creating spaces that feel and function exactly how you'd like them to, to help support you during this time.

1. Clear Your Space for a Clear Mind

The quickest way to create wellness and peace in your home is to declutter. Pick a room and toss any obvious trash. Expired coupons and magazines you've read are clutter that creates extra emotional stress unnecessarily. Move any non-kitchen items out of the kitchen. Open the drawers in the kitchen and bathrooms and toss anything expired, dried out, broken, or otherwise unusable. Go through your home office and re-evaluate any project you've put off whether for home or for work. Clearing your mind and schedule of unmet deadlines will open you up for opportunity to reduce stress, focus on your family, and have control over your workspace and entire home.

2. Get Organized & Create a Routine

Projects, papers, and home items pile up because you haven't made a decision regarding those items. Ease your decision making by making purpose a catalyst. Ask yourself these questions when organizing your space: 1) How; do I want to feel? 2) What;  am I trying to accomplish? 3) Why; does it need to be done at all? Keep the minimum required to reach your goals. All the other stuff in the way is what you should eliminate.

3. Design to Bolster Positive Habits

Create design in your home that will promote good health habits. Start by eliminating the easy stuff. As you take into account each item you'd like to remove, ask yourself if the item serves as a catalyst for reaching your goals right now. Quickly sort items into definite yes, definite no, and maybe piles. Get rid of the obvious “no” pile first. Keep and establish places for things in the “yes” pile to live. Maybe you move your hand weights into the living room for a make-shift workout zone. Set your walking shoes by the front door for morning and evening walks. Utilze bowls from the cupboard to display fresh fruits and vegetables for easy access, along with a favorite recipe book to make homemade healthy meals. If space is tight, and an item won't help you to create the feeling of peace in your home, remove it.

4. Add Mood-Boosting Colors

Discovering peace, and inviting focus into your home is easily done by starting with the colors you love. This will keep you away from being bound by traditional color schemes for a particular style. Use a color from a favorite art piece, area rug or other inspiring object as your base color, then you can create a color scheme around it utilizing items you already own. Colors have significant psychological effects on mood, energy, and sense of well being, so be careful choosing a gray for your walls, for example. If gray does not give you a personal sense of peace or joy, it’s not a suitable color for your space. 

5. Use Design Elements that Support You

Some design details you can incorporate into your home now to lend to positive emotional effects are lighting, for example 5000K (daylight) light in work areas, while the living room and relaxing areas may call for more mellow, warmer lighting at 2700K (warm light). Also incorporating soft textures for cozy security, clean lines for freshness, organic elements from outside for a breathable touch of nature, will all add to the sense of comfort and security in your home. I also recommend a light box for peace of mind if you don’t have very much natural daylight, either because of weather or the orientation of your home windows. There are several brands on the market you’ll need one specifically for S.A.D. for use indoors. 

Taking some small steps now toward creating a space that makes you smile, relax, feel fresh, and to de-stress will help you make the most of the emotional and uncertain times we're in right now.

If you decide you'd like a professional to help to design your most peaceful space, don't be shy... we'd be happy to help! Schedule your personal, custom, remote consultation.

Cheers,