introduction
Fed up with lock down and having to spend a lot more time at home?Is this stopping you from enjoying your life? In this post I want to help you realise that we are all being offered an opportunity to create an environment we love living in. I believe that now it’s probably more important than ever to take the time and make the effort to turn your home into a place where you enjoy spending time and that meets the needs of you and your family.
In life we often use the excuse that we don’t have time. Now that excuse is removed and you may realise that it’s not the time that you lack, but the motivation. Here are some ideas on how to change that.
need to do some decorating?
Mr Simple and I are in the process of renovating our home and have been for the past few years. Since we moved here five years ago we have spent many weekends just doing chores in the house. Mr Simple is usually doing DIY and I am cleaning or cooking. Over the summer we will both do work in the garden. Pre-coronavirus we did take time away to have a few holidays, as well as having days out, enjoying the countryside. During the lock down periods we have taken the opportunity to make even greater progress with the renovations than we would otherwise have done.
Now whilst I can understand that you don’t want to spend all of your life within your four walls – there’s a big and interesting world out there to discover (once we’ve all been vaccinated of course) – why wouldn’t you want to make your home somewhere nice to live? I’m sure if you took a notepad and had a walk around your home you could make a list of lots of jobs that you’ve been meaning to do, but just never go around to. Now you have the time to finally get them done.
Even if you live in a house that doesn’t require any decorating or renovation are you completely happy with how it is? Try looking at your home through the eyes of a guest in a luxury holiday home. What would you love and what would you be complaining about? Then think about how you could change it into somewhere you’d pay to stay.
decluttering
It’s not always about making major changes. One of the topics that I’ve taken an interest in recently is decluttering. I’m sure that’s something all our homes could benefit from.
If decluttering is something that you need to work on then I would suggest checking out ‘The Minimal Mom’ on YouTube. I have recently discovered her and she has some great ideas. She really challenges my thinking about how much stuff I need.
She’s also taught me that little and often is best. Just select a few items each day or each week, that you no longer use and get rid of them. Decluttering is a process that can take months and years, rather than something to be done just one time.
You don’t need to take out all your clothes, Marie Kondo-style and ask if each one brings you joy. Instead, she created a capsule wardrobe by selecting the items that she wears on a regular basis. Then she put the rest in a bag for the charity shop or into ‘quarantine’ i.e. a box in the loft which you can review in a few months to see if you have missed them.
Since discovering ‘The Minimal Mom’ I have cleaned out some of the kitchen cupboards. This is one room in our home which is yet to be renovated, but as I said to Mr Simple, there’s no point paying for extra cupboard space when we do have it renovated just to house items that we never use. All this decluttering has certainly made cleaning a lot easier as many of my surfaces are clear of clutter.
My favourite life coach, Natalie Bacon, tells you the benefits of decluttering your life and home in this blog post.
So, what are you doing this weekend? Stuck at home on a wet Sunday with nowhere to go? Why not use that time well, so that once you can invite your friends round, it will be to a well-maintained and decluttered home that you’ll be proud to show off to them?
more ideas on personal development
Want to learn more about life coaching and how to design your life? Why not check out ‘Grow You’, Natalie Bacon’s life coaching programme (affiliate link).