There are times when I think I’m finally getting it – you know, how to live a beautiful, relatively low-stress life filled with joy and love. I love these times, because it is during these moments or hours or days that the universe sends me a message along a particular theme that I definitely have not figured out. Messages about a piece of life that is negative, that brings me sadness, that dampens the joy of my beautiful life.
This week the message was about home. I read a post from SoulRootingJoyRising.com and it hit me like a thunderbolt.
We moved into our home two years ago this month. We chose our home for several reasons, but the biggest selling point to us was the creek in the back yard. Oh, how we love our little creek and it’s tiny wooded area. We don’t visit it often enough, and when we do… it’s like magic.
Other than the creek, I haven’t had a single nice thing to say about our home since we moved in. I’ve often complained about how it doesn’t get enough light. How our basement is like a freezer year round. How having three floors and no central family space makes me insane. The kitchen is too small and so is the living room. There’s too much space and it’s not laid out well. On and on my list of complaints goes.
The thought that hit me after reading Cassia’s post, is how I don’t love our home. Meaning, I don’t give love to our home, I don’t care for it, I don’t nurture it. I put more and more negativity into it and the piles of mess and chaos continued to grow and my negativity grew with them.
How terribly sad it is to me, the negative energy I have put into the space that shelters us from the heat and cold; that provides the appliances to cook our food and clean our clothes; that gives us the opportunities to shower and bathe. The space where our joy of being together is born, where it is nurtured by each of us.
How can our joy as a family be nurtured fully in a space that I hate? How can the feeling of love and peace be overflowing when all I can do is complain about how the space we are in is all wrong? What would happen if I gave our home the same tender loving care that I give to cooking our meals, to helping my daughter drift off to sleep, to making sure my husband has clean clothes? How much would our joy as a family increase if I turned this negativity I have for our home into a love and awe of its beauty?
I’m on a mission now. A mission to love our home. A mission to give love to our home. A mission to create a space of healing, love and growth for every person who walks in the door, and most importantly for the three of us who live here.
I started yesterday. My daughter and I unpacked two boxes from the garage (remember, we’ve been here two years, still have boxes in the garage to unpack), found homes for several of the items and some of them were put into a bag to be donated. I polished some of the silver (!!!!!) – namely the silver hand mirror in our middle floor bathroom and the small candelabra that lives in our dining room (I used the aluminum foil and baking soda method). I rearranged the living room so I actually like the space (and both Nick and our daughter also commented how much better the space is now). I hung up some more art and took down some pieces that were inherited, that I never really liked but felt I had to keep for some reason (those pieces are also going to donation). Today I hung up another string of twinkle lights to give the space more light and warmth.
I gave love to two rooms in our home and it has given me peace and comfort in return. I will continue to give love a space at a time, clearing away clutter, unpacking our possessions, hanging up our art, arranging the space so it feels like it’s ours. Because it is ours, and we should love it as a reflection of ourselves.
I will give love to the space that has kept us warm in winter and cool in summer. I will give love to the space that allows our joy and beautiful life to blossom. As I would give love to any other part of our life that nourishes us, I will give love to the space that is our home.
The (recently) polished hand mirror and a new candle in one of our bathrooms.
gwynn raimondi 
Love this! me too….
Thank you, Cassia! ❤ And thank you for the inspiration leading to revelation!! 🙂 ❤ ❤ ❤
Yes! It is so easy (particularly when you rent, like we do) to never feel fully “home” and to not really commit in your mind to making it feel homey – because, really, we know this is isn’t our forever home. But for us, we’ve been in our home for FOUR years! Decorating and that particular aspect of “homemaking’ has never been a strenght of mine – I’m very utilitarian – but it is amazing what just small steps will do. Clearing a surface, adding a vase of dried flowers. Just putting a little love in, and you get so much more in return. ❤
Chessa, I totally get it. We rent too and so it get’s frustrating because I can’t just paint a wall (not that I actually *would*, but you know) on a whim. And it is hard to invest knowing we’ll only be here a couple more years (hopefully) and you are so right – it’s the little things. Polishing my gram’s mirror and the candelabra was just huge. Putting out our figurines and statues. Yesterday I unpacked some photo albums of Gel age 18mo-3ish. And just moving a chair from a corner out into the “center” of the space has made a huge difference on how I view the space now – no longer small and over crowded but cozy and quaint. Little things, baby steps. ❤
A few years ago I went through this process with our city. Making a conscious effort to love it. Finding beauty in it. Your environment but more importantly how you feel about it, think about it, shapes you and boomerangs back at you, for sure.
That is really a great idea! I have meant to explore more of the parks near us, but have just not done it. Maybe it can be a goal for now to the end of the year… a park a week is doable, right? 🙂
What a nice reminder. Our doorbell malfunctioned the other day and almost caught the house on fire. Just the latest in a string of disasters that come from owning a 95 year old home. But yesterday I happened to carefully scrub down by hand all the beautiful original oak floors and tidy everything up so we could host some friends for dinner. It felt really good. The last line in your post sums up my feelings and I’m going to post it somewhere I can see it always.
I think that it’s easy to not think about how our home needs nourishment, just like the people who live in it (or the garden that grows in the back of it) – it’s not a literal living thing, yet if we love it, it can be so filled with life!! ❤
Powerful and so true for me too. We did some major building work 10 years ago and replaced some of our furniture. It has never felt completely like my home since – you are so right. I too have complained about the layout, how space doesn’t work. We’ve since made further changes to try and correct this and at the moment we are redecorating and buying old furniture that has a history and story. My home is starting to feel alive again, probably because we are showing it some love. Thank you for this post – something I can really connect with and embrace.
It feels so good to connect to our space and to truly nourish ourselves as we nurture our home. Yay for our homes being loved and coming to life! 🙂
very nice. i can relate, but with a twist. i own a business w/my boyfriend, and its been a hard 2 or 3 years, financially and emotionally (sickness & deaths of parents, etc.) and the business got ignored. it got ignored physically because were too exhausted to deal with anything we didn’t have to. but late summer, catching my breath, i began to give it some tlc, to tell it i loved it. new paint, new twinkle lights – lol!. a slow process, but i think it knows i’m trying and that i’m sincere. the week i began to repaint the walls, we found some new customers. or maybe they found us.
so yes, a bit at a time works.
again, very nice.
It is the little things. I think all we do has energy to it, and all that is part of us does too – including our homes and our businesses, all our relationships, even our cooking a meal. When we put loving energy into it WILL give it back. Firmly and completely believe this. ❤ ❤ 🙂
Oh I know this so well. When I get those thoughts about hating my home, I give love to it. I clean a room a deep cleaning and find a way to change at least just one thing to make it feel better. In fact, today I cleaned the laundry room which is my least favorite part of this house….but clearing off the lint and using a little freshener on the rug makes such a big difference. It takes time, but it will feel like home.
Alisha – Funny you mention the laundry room – I was looking at the top of our dryer today and thinking “I need to give that some love!” 🙂 I need to remember that little things can make a huge difference, and that totally redoing a room can be fun and nice, also doing the little things like taking out the trash that has been piling up in the bathrooms is a huge act of love too. 🙂
Thank you so much for reading and commenting!! 🙂 Chessa told me about you and your blog and IG feed and your search for light – I’m on the same quest in my home. Looking forward to witnessing your journey too! 🙂