Ah, remember the first time you laid eyes on your home? Whether it was love at first sight or a relationship you knew you could build on, you probably felt that excited spark. But as with most relationships, how we feel about our home can fizzle a bit with time. If you’re looking for some quick and easy ways to fall in love with your home all over again, give these tips a try!
1. Make it scentsational.
Use candles, wax melters or diffusors to add inviting scents to your home. Our sense of smell is vital to our feelings of well-being and quality of life. It influences our mood, how long we stay in a room, who we talk to and who we want to see again.
2. Add some shine.
Even if you only have 15 minutes at a time, choose one of the following ways to bring some sparkle and shine into your home. Polish the stainless steel. Wash the windows. Mop the floor. Clean the woodwork with Murphy’s Oil Soap. Here are some of our favorite shine-making cleaning products.
3. Rearrange the furniture.
If one room in your home isn’t working the way you like, or even if it just feels a bit stagnant, try shifting the arrangement. If it is not possible to move the larger furniture, move just the smaller pieces and accessories.
4. Liven things up.
Plants are a great way to (literally) bring more life into your home. If you don’t have a green thumb, try lovely fresh or everlasting flowers throughout your space.
5. Let go.
Declutter your home, starting with just 15 minutes in the one part of your home that is stressing you most. If you don’t need it, use it or love it, it’s clutter. Let it go!
6.Donate.
Gather the items you’ve been collecting to donate, and drop them off. Enjoy the lightness that comes from having them out of your house and off your mind!
7. Clean with intention.
Rather than seeing cleaning as something you have to do, focus on why you want a clean home. Thinking about making your home inviting, healthy and tidy for your family, your friends and yourself is much more motivating than simply checking tasks of your to-do list!
8. Bring out the beauty.
Whether you bring out a special keepsake, invest in artwork, or knit a new throw, purposely add something beautiful that you love to a frequently used part of your home.
Granted, none of these tips will add square-footage, help you stay organized, or keep your kids’ bedrooms clean. Sometimes, though, the little things are enough to remind us what attracted us to our homes to begin with, and then maybe motivate us to do even more. Before you know it, you just might be head-over-heals for your home once again.
What do you love the most about your home?
Happy Organizing!
you are so right about point number 6 . . . I have a ongoing bag collecting for the charity shop, and a few weeks ago this bag was full and sitting in my room for ages and yesterday I made the effort to actaully drop it off and the difference it made to my mood amazed me! I felt so light and glad that I made the effort, silly thing is, is the charity shop is like a 5 min car drive there! lol!
I like to declutter at the end of a season and donate the clothes that I havent worn that season or the one before it. Its the end of summer here and now Im tossing all the stuff that has just sat in the wardrobe for 2 yrs and not been touched.
Krissie, isn’t is surprising how something so simple can make such a difference? Good for you on your wardrobe decluttering!
I keep a corner in the garage and one in the basement for donations. It is so cOLD here right now I am waiting til Spring to take everything. We just moved into this new house in Oct. so everything is new right now. It is a big job trying to decorate a new space. But FUN!!! XO, pinky
Congrats on your new home, Pinky! It is a big job settling into a new space but also so much fun. Enjoy! Sending you warm thoughts. 🙂
Honestly, what I love most about my home is that it’s MINE! And that it’s a home. After several years of living with roommates (who had their own sense of style) or living in college dorms or crappy little studio apartments where I didn’t even have a decent chair for guests to sit on… I loved moving in to the house I’m in now and making it into a home. My furniture may be handed down but they are still comfortable and in decent shape. And I may still be renting, but the space is mine. Every corner of my home has my “fingerprints” on it. Every corner of my home showcases various aspects of my personality. And now that I’ve finally gotten serious about keeping it clean and tidy, I love it even more.
Shanon, I just love your comment. I think we sometimes take our homes for granted, but you have a wonderful perspective. Thanks for sharing!
We put an addition on almost four years ago for my MIL to move in with us. I got to add great colors and continue to add pieces that I love. So when we see something and we can afford it we add it. I’m done with stuff I don’t love. I love looking around and seeing these blue glassware items we have as well as some others. Our walls are pretty empty but I’d rather they be empty than filled with things we don’t love!!
SuzieQ, what a great outlook…better empty than full of things we don’t love!
I love love my house, it’s an older home maybe 45 years old or less. when I first moved in almost 15 years, it was just me and my 3 girls and of course living on limited income I did the best to make our house a home, but with time, my home became beautiful, I learned to decorated and realized I did it well. My girls are grown now, and my house of course stays a little cleaner these days, but I like seeing it now and from what it started. I get nice compliments every time someone new enters my home, and the best thing is that although I enjoy nice pretty things, most of my things are garage sale and thrift store finds and they just make my home very homey and charming. Nothing would make me want to move out of my home.
Oh, Ruby, I share your love of thrift shopping! You home sounds so very lovely.
I love point number 7. If you’re going to clean, you might as well do it right and for all the right reasons!
Thanks for your comment Rashelle!
I’d love to fall in love with my home again, but all I can see is muddles and pealing/chipped paint. Its not really as bad as I make out – just little jobs like a small chipped bit of paint on the bannister, but the bedroom needs a fresh lick of paint after decorating it nearly 5 yrs ago.
The house is a small 1 bed town house hubby and I live here but we have outgrown it massively, We had a major decluttering a few months ago and there isn’t anything else we can or want to part with, but the house has little storage space.
Its hard to know where to start to fall in love with our home again, especially when I see home makeover TV programmes where the home owners end up with beautifully decorated homes with choice accessories and everything co-ordinated – I simply don’t have that kind of flair for making decorating ideas fit and things seem a bit mis-matched or, not quite right somehow but I don’t know where to go or how to get it right.
Great tips though about de-cluttering, we de-clutter once a year and take a lot of stuff to the tip or charity shops. We both have hobbies – mine is needlework / craft hubbies is electronics and computers (not games) but building and researching computer programming and he loves re-cabling our TV/computers to “make them work better” so we both have a lot of hobby stuff in boxes and bags. With no room in the loft as the space is taken up with rafters and wood to hold the roof on we cannot extend to make an extra hobby room for us both.
Any ideas would be great as I am at the point of selling up and renting somewhere which, is totally against my principles as it really is a waste of money.
Thanks
Mary
Thanks for your comment Mary. I’m not clear about your question…could you elaborate on what you’re looking for in terms of ideas?
Would like to hear about ways in which to economize, in terms of upgrading/enhancing comfort level (e.g. conserving heat by modifying interior/exterior of home).