Today we’re talking about being content with your home. Picture-perfect houses all over the internet can make you feel like you’re the only one with an outdated kitchen and ugly carpet. It can be tempting to feel discontent in a house you haven’t had time or money to fix up. Let’s talk about some ways to stay positive and love your house in spite of its shortcomings!
If you’re feeling discontent with all the ugly or outdated things about your home, take comfort. This is real life; outdated carpet, Formica counters, & mismatched towels.
1. Be Honest, Be Kind
The first step to be content with your home is to be honest with yourself and situation.
What season of life are you in? How long have you lived in this home? How many children do you have and what ages? What are your job situations like? Schedules, finances, health issues, caring for aging parents, caring for animals or homestead responsibilities… The list goes on and on.
We first have to promise ourselves we’ll keep our eyes on our own paper, so to speak, because no one else has a life just like ours.
If you’re starting to think something like, “But other people with this many kids/similar finances/responsibilities are doing this or that….” Just. Stop.
On the off-chance that your life is perfect and you have ample free time and expendable income to update your house, then great! Maybe you just need a lil kick in the pants.
But that’s not you, is it? You wouldn’t be here if it was. So now that we’ve promised to be kind to ourselves and work within our limitations…
2. Gratitude In Your Home = Contentment With Your Home
This might seem cliché or trite, but how many people would give anything to be in a home like yours today?
Don’t forget to grateful to be in a position to even have a home.
If you’ve ever done any mission work in a Third World country, or simply seen commercials for organizations that help in those areas, you know what true poverty looks like.
It’s easy to forget how good we have it when it seems so far from our reality. But that in and of itself is a blessing! If you have a home where you’re stressing over cosmetic things, OR even if you have real concerns about repairs that need done, inefficient old windows and the like, we can still be grateful that our basic needs are met.
Trust me, I have those concerns too! We’ve dealt with mold, rotting floorboards, leaky windows, an unsealed drain, and more, as well as ugly old carpet, no storage space, poorly done additions and remodels, and hideous wallpaper EVERYWHERE.
I struggle with gratitude in the midst of it as well, but memories are being made and lives are being lived here. And God is faithful in all of it.
When I force myself to count my blessings I never come up short.
3. Wisdom From Grandma
My grandma on my mom’s side was a fascinating woman. She grew up in rural Appalachia and mostly raised her 7 younger siblings after her father passed away suddenly and her mom was forced to return to work.
She grew up very poor, but as just about anyone from rural Appalachia will relate to, they still had pride and self-respect.
One thing she shared with my mom, who shared it with me, was this little gold nugget:
“You can’t help being poor, but you can help being clean.”
She worked hard to make my mom clothes by hand, was an impeccable homemaker who knew how to use everything and waste nothing, and of course keep everything clean and tidy.
If you’re struggling to be content with your home, one thing that will immediately make a noticeable difference is getting everything squeaky clean and free of clutter.
And cleaning is free!
Push Past Excuses
Now because I know we’re humans and we love excuses, let me go ahead and refute a couple right away.
- “I don’t have closets or storage space!” I have a post all about decluttering for the holidays, but the advice is evergreen. When we have too much stuff, it can suck the joy from our homes! The solution isn’t more space- it’s less stuff. Check out my tips to deal with clutter.
- “I’m just a bad housekeeper.” Cleaning isn’t necessarily intuitive. It takes practice, and it’s a skill you can build. I also have a post about Romanticizing Your Life As A Homemaker that helps you shift your mindset from hating housework to enjoying it. I’m a far cry from a perfect housekeeper but I’ve slowly learned a few things over the years that help me keep my house manageable and feel content with my home.
- “You don’t understand- my family is walking chaos.” I *do* understand. I remember what it’s like having 2 under two. We homeschool- we’re in our house all the time. We make every meal here and get the kitchen dirty 5+ times a day. My 3-year old changes clothes 14x per day just for fun.
It’s not easy but it’s doable. And your house does not need to be perfect to feel clean and mostly clutter free.
Any time you’re feeling discontent with your home, visualize how much nicer it would look and feel if everything had a place, and if the surfaces were clean and the corners cobweb free.
Take it from Grandma Nila and help being clean.
4. Focus On The Feeling Of Home
On a similar note, stop focusing on the things you dislike about your home (especially the way it looks) and work on setting a mood and a feeling.
What sort of vibe do you want your home to have?
Which of these words/phrases strikes a chord with you?
- Cozy
- Fun
- Peaceful
- The place where everyone hangs out
- Chill
- Inviting
- Studious
- Relaxed
- Playful
- Old World
- Collected
- Clean Girl
- Warm
- Vintage
- Comforting
Instead of fixating on a particular aesthetic or style, try focusing on the feeling you want to invoke. Then you can ‘shop your house’, rearrange furniture, have some free art printed from an office supply store, and DIY to heart’s content as time and money allows.
The important thing here is to stay positive and focus on small changes over time that lead to that vibe you want to give. And you can get there in a variety of ways.
5. The Five Senses Strategy
This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point. But here’s where we’ll flesh it out a little more.
You can further set the mood of your home not just by decorating and updating, but by stimulating all 5 of the human senses.
Keep your word or phrase in mind as you play around with this trick.
Sight
We’ve already discussed keeping clean, and we’re going to start shopping our houses and slowly collecting and crafting items for a unique feeling in our homes. We can utilize the sense of sight even more by playing with lighting!
Lighting actually makes a huge difference.
Candles are one of the easiest ways to set a mood visually. They’re inexpensive and don’t require any wiring. Thrifted candle holders and sconces will elevate this even more.
Lamps are another easy way to adjust the lighting to set the mood you’re going for. I’m always seeing lamps at thrift stores and garage sales, and I’ve even draped scarves over lamps to dim them and give a soft glow (of course be careful with this and don’t leave them on there for too long or unattended!).
A fire in the fireplace, a string of lights strategically placed, battery-operated candles and plug-in night lights can all go a long way.
Smell
This is a powerful one!
If you’re like me, you’re avoiding artificial fragrances. But there are tons of homemade scented candle tutorials on the internet that use essential oils, coffee grounds, vanilla extract and even honey to scent candles naturally.
Another natural option is to make a simmer pot. Again, so many wonderful tutorials online.
A quick and effortless option is to make a simple room spray with witch hazel, essential oils and a little distilled water. You can spray soft surfaces, or directly into the air.
Or try making a carpet powder with baking soda and an essential oil in your favorite scent. Simply sprinkle it over your carpet, leave it for 10-30 minutes, then vacuum it up. Clean and make your house smell great all at once!
Touch
Our sense of touch is so often neglected in our modern, virtually-powdered world.
Make your home more enjoyable by having blankets you love close at hand, soft pillows on couches and chairs, and rugs wherever possible.
Maybe you want to switch from that scratchy dish scrubbie to a nice sponge or dish cloths.
Hate how microfiber clings to every hang nail and dry spot on your hands? Reuse old t-shirts and scrap clothing by cutting them into rags.
I don’t know about you but I HATE getting little crumbs and things stuck to the bottom of my feet in my house. Obviously, we do our best to keep the floors swept and clean, but I also started wearing slippers even in the summer to avoid this little frustration. I like the open-toed kind to keep my feet from getting hot.
We can’t all go buy new furniture and re-carpet our whole house, but we can add little touches of softness here and there.
A throw on the piano bench, a cushion on the dining chairs, a memory foam mat in front of the kitchen sink.
Don’t neglect your physical comfort as you make your house a home.
Sound
There are lots of unexpected ways to utilize sound in your quest to be content with your home.
These might surprise you, but give some of them a try:
- Music– Don’t underestimate the difference music can make to the feel of your home. Remember that word you picked from the list earlier? Try searching for a playlist around that word on your favorite music app. If that doesn’t do the trick, create your own playlist with music that evokes that feeling. Or for whatever mood you’re in. We love to play music on our sound bar in the family room or on a small Bluetooth speaker in any other room.
- Turn off the TV– Sometimes what you need isn’t a sound but a lack thereof! Too much noise can definitely lead to overstimulation. Background noise can be comforting at times, but often it’s just overwhelming.
- Wind Chimes– So these are technically outside but I can hear my wind chimes in several rooms of my house and I love it. It feels nostalgic to me because my Grandma always had windchimes at her house when I was growing up.
- Fire– A crackling fire in the fireplace or woodstove, a wooden wick candle, or even just faking it with an ambience video on YouTube. Fire is a comforting sound.
- Clocks– This is one I want to implement in future. How many of us still have clocks that tick? In our house all our clocks are digital but I want to change that.
Taste
There are so many traditions that revolve around food and for good reason. Smell might be the sense most connected to memory, but taste must be a close second. Foods can be so comforting and nostalgic. A bite of a favorite childhood dish can take you right back.
As you strive to be content with your home and make it the most comforting place on earth, think through any traditions you want to resume or start that involve food.
For us, it’s making sourdough gingerbread cookies every Christmas, a special breakfast on most holidays, and Lussekater buns on St. Lucia’s Day.
Besides traditions, what about the everyday stuff? Leaning into the season and using seasonal ingredients is not only good for your health, it also saves money and allows you fully experience that season.
I’m not saying never buy a carton of strawberries in the winter, but maybe not as often, right?
And smoothies for breakfast are quick and nutritious, but a hot bowl of oatmeal or warm French Toast Casserole would hit the spot a lot better in January than a cold smoothie.
Cook and bake with warming spices and hearty ingredients in the winter months, and freshen things up with herbs and lighter fair in the spring. Implement the grill and fire pit in the summer, and use all those available fruits and veggies from the garden or market. Of course fall is perfect for cozy recipes like soup, warm bread, lattes and tea, and pumpkin everything.
6. Be Hospitable
And now, share your blessings with others.
Take a deep breath and invite them anyway.
Your home will never be “done”. It won’t be perfect.
We can make our home clean and comfortable for our guests, but don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I have a post all about this, actually! My trouble is that if I feel that something isn’t perfect or can’t be perfect, sometimes I won’t even try. It’s hard for me to find motivation in those situations. But it’s kind of like a muscle that you just have to keep using and making stronger.
What’s the use of having a home we’re content with if we can’t share it with others?
It’s just a mindset shift that needs to take place. I promise your guests will be grateful for the hospitality and won’t even notice those flaws that seem so obvious to you.
7. Comparison Is The Thief Of Joy
While we’re talking about mindset, I’ll finish with this last tip.
15 years ago, we didn’t have access to people’s lives like we do today. A lot has changed, some of it for good. But I actually don’t think the level of over-sharing and staging going on with social media is very healthy.
We have to guard our hearts and carefully curate who we allow to have influence on us.
And don’t forget, they’re called ‘influencers’ for a reason!
Now obviously I wouldn’t have a blog if I didn’t find the internet useful and even encouraging. But I’ve had to really cut back on apps like Instagram, and just check in that I’m not allowing things I see other people doing to make me feel discontent, embittered, envious or resentful.
I think it’s great that there’s a trend on the rise of showing your “normal home”. This is where people will show things around their home like old cabinets, mismatched towels, plain old electric stovetops, and even, *gasp*, electrical cords and outlets showing!
It’s not that the people on the internet have flawless homes (well, some of them do, but a very small percentage!), it’s just that they know how to stage it. They show the parts they want to show and leave out the parts they don’t.
And that’s ok, they don’t have to show us everything. BUT that means it’s up to you to let those images and videos inspire you without letting them drag you down.
I hope this advice helped you to refocus and embrace the home you’re in. At the end of the day, it’s the place where life is lived and memories are made.
What advice would you add? Let’s chat in the comments. And if you liked this post, I think you’ll like these, too:
Thanks for stopping by,
-Tara
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