How to Embrace the Home You Have
Comparing our homes to the pretty Pinterest and Instagram pics can make it more difficult to embrace the home we’re in. But what if there was a way to love your home even more?
Does this ever happen to you?
It’s been a long day of running and making all the things happen and you are craving just a little bit of quiet, alone time.
You plop down on the sofa, phone in hand as you put your feet up on the coffee table and nestle in to catch up on what’s pinging in your email inbox. You hop to the weather app, then over to your calendar to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything major or minor on the to-do list for today.
And then?
Once you confirm that you have in fact crossed the finish line of tasks and to-do’s of today…then you make your carefree way over to tap on the custom curated carousel of perfection that is Instagram or Pinterest.
What we want to be a high-speed, harmless scroll of pretty pictures and spaces to accompany and hum us into a lullaby of luxury and leisure as we wind down our day…leads us down a dark road of suddenly feeling…
Less than.
You scroll and zoom.
Scroll and tap.
Scroll and pause.
Scroll and zoom in again.
Your thumb and pointer finger work together to magnify the perfection pointing back at you.
Revealing that the zoomed-in feature focus confirms that the desire to peer closer – was worthy.
Worthy why?
Because every detail of the capture captivating you – is in fact…just right.
At least that’s how it feels.
And then you look up.
With that feeling.
The feeling that while every detail cast out from the carefully curated castle of Insta is just right…everything around you in your own home…is just wrong.
Maybe it’s just me.
But sometimes, sometimes when I think social scrolling is a way to whisper me into winding down? Scrolling everyone else’s pictures sends me screeching into feeling down.
What if there was a way to love the home we have in this right now moment?
Friend, while I decorate other people’s homes for a living…I am not immune to feeling down or falling into a funk after what I hoped to be a harmless hop on the Instagram or Pinterest apps.
In fact?
Sometimes it can be even harder to hold on to the hope of personal satisfaction when helping others decorate beautiful homes.
And yet?
I have found that in practicing 3 small things, I have more peace and comfortable contentment with the home our family is blessed to have and come home to every day. And today, I am going to share them with you.
How to embrace the home you have.
1. Audit your inputs
First things first friend.
If you are coming face to face with feelings of less than, or not good enough…(whether we are talking about our homes or ourselves) it’s time to take back control of the feed.
If what your eyes are feasting on, day in and day out is causing your heart to feel sick and your stomach to tangle in knots of stress – it’s time to audit the inputs that are informing your brain and training your thoughts.
I get it, friend. I enjoy the quick scroll too.
But, if we are finding that in the simple seconds of time it takes for our eyes to go from looking down, to looking up and around our homes, we are batting with unexpected spazzes of discontentment, unreasonableness, frustration, and aggravation, because the spaces around us do not feel insta-worthy?
It’s time to audit and ask.
The audit is the examination of what we are looking at and listening to. (The inputs.)
The ask is the question we need to ask ourselves.
“Am I navigating towards healthy leisure or numbing myself towards subconscious, negative not enoughness?” Not a word – I know. :).
Another way to ask ourselves the hard question?
Are the input tools I am reaching for leading me towards feelings of inspiration or feelings of inferiority?
When we audit our inputs, we inevitably make new space for our minds to marinate afresh on the goodness of all that we already have and the many ways our homes hold us and comfort us.
Gratitude greets us at the door and welcomes us into a new perspective.
Being more selective and sensitive to what we allow our eyes to soak in and our ears to absorb gives freedom to sparked nerves living in the captivity of perfection. It washes in calmness of mind, and sets us in motion of growing in gratitude for all that we have.
Oh, friend, (preachin’ to myself here) may we audit our inputs in a way, that brings forth freshness of mind, that enables us to interface with other’s beautiful spaces with appreciation, without robbing ourselves of our own treasures.
2. Make the most of what you already have
AKA “The Room Re-Think”
As an interior decorator, this is my jam.
Making the most out of what you already have is my area of expertise, my love language…it is my happy place.
The truth is we can all do this if we are willing to “play” with our homes and treat them like a big puzzle that can be put together in a bunch of different ways.
More often than not, there are pieces of furniture that can be re-arranged, swapped around, and put to use in a new way, often in a different room. Rearranging furniture is my favorite way to redecorate.
And?
It’s free.
The best way to begin rearranging your furniture in order to refresh your home and make it a new space to embrace…is by pinpointing your pain points.
Is there a space that is not working for your family in the current season you are in?
Have your children outgrown the “drop zone” of cubbies filled with jackets and sneakers as you walk in the door and now you need a larger cabinet to capture the chaos of the comings-and-goings?
Why not move the brown chest that has always been used as a coffee table or the tall cabinet in the guest room that is under-used and create a makeshift mudroom space in the entryway or garage?
The key to The Room Re-Think is…
You have to be willing to take a risk. The good news is the “risk” is not that risky.
The risk is – you have to be willing to move a piece (or pieces) of furniture from one room to another.
And yet?
Oftentimes, we overlook this easy way to embrace the home we have, because we are stuck and scared still by this paralyzing thought:
“But what if I move X and it doesn’t work or look right?”
Here is the answer.
If it doesn’t work or look right in the new spot? Just move it back to the original spot it was in.
The only price you have paid for the room re-think is the effort to move the furniture. I will tell you that I do this all of the time, both in our home and for my clients, and 95% of the time…we wind up loving the new furniture rearrangement and wonder why we didn’t move things around sooner.
We have even swapped entire rooms and changed the use of our traditional dining room into my home office and transformed the living room into a casual dining space. The possibilities are endless for rethinking a room, once you sign the permission slip to let go of the way things have always been, swap things around and make the most of what you already have.
So before you buy a new rug for the family room?
Why not try moving the rug from the office or dining room into the family room first, or swap that lamp on the nightstand for the lamp in the living room.
3. Prioritize Your Projects
Once we have audited our inputs and made the most out of our spaces by giving each room a rethink by way of furniture rearranging?
There are still going to be those spaces that could use that home improvement touch.
The trick is this. Prioritizing the projects that are bumping around in your brain and jotting them down on paper…in the order of importance to you. I have a feeling that if you are this far down in this post… our brains are somewhat similar.
We have these ideas, these projects and these plans and we want to do them all!
But last time I checked I do not have a money tree growing in the backyard and as I tell our three daughters all of the time, with their wide love of all things sports and wishing they could play them all. There is only so much time and money.
We can do the projects and make the plans happen. We just can’t do them all at the same time.
A key part of embracing the home we have is that we understand the season of life we are in and what our family is asking or demanding of our homes in the season.
For our family with three daughters ages 13 and younger…this means that my master bedroom refresh that I would love, is moved to the bottom of the priority list and the main level projects, where most of our life is dumped out in the kitchen and family room, those projects get moved to the top of the list.
Sometimes it is worth making two types of project lists.
Big Projects & Small Projects
There are those smaller, more budget-friendly projects that can get done in a weekend like:
Painting the front door a new color, creating a mini gallery wall by printing and framing special memories of black and white photos, updating a light fixture or door knob, or hanging peel and stick wallpaper in a closet or powder room.
And then there are the larger-scale projects that take both more time and money. For instance, our family decided to tear out our deck in the backyard and replace the space with a larger patio that allowed us to more freely flow, making the most of the yard space, without being confined to the footprint of a deck. A few years ago, we added a coffered ceiling to our family room in order to add a little charm and cozy up the space.
These small and larger projects take both planning and prioritizing.
Once you get these ideas and the projects you want to happen, written down on paper and in the order your family wants.
They are more likely to happen…and help you embrace the home you have.
Sweet friend, I hope that sharing these 3 things that have helped me to love the home we have, has inspired you today, to embrace the home you have.
May we dwell well and with gratitude.
Living on a prayer,
Heather
Heather offers virtual home decorating consultations. You can find out more and schedule a virtual consultation on her website: www.heatherkrout.com
If you enjoyed this post, you may enjoy these posts by Heather:
Wait Until You See This Guest Bedroom Makeover
Wait Until You See What This Painted Front Door Looks Like Now
The Secret Password You Want to Know & Summer Kitchen Inspiration
