Cultivating A Home You Love
[Video below]
3 Ways to Cultivate A Home You Love
Home is so much more than a place where you live. It is a sanctuary, a temple, a place where you can be yourself. A home should be everything you need to support the different aspects of your soul.
Too often, we see our homes as places we eat, sleep, watch tv, and have a little down time before heading off to work or vacation. But our homes should, instead, be mini retreats from the world; places of refuge we look forward to living in.
How would you currently rate your home?
Is it a sanctuary or just a place you survive from day to day?
What would you need to change in order to make your home a place you look forward to being?
Today, I’d like to share three simple ways you can cultivate a home you love to live in.
Watch the video here, or on YouTube.
1 | Know your needs
Too often we overlook the needs of our soul and personality to satisfy what we think are more practical needs, like having a garage, or more space, or better furniture. But there is a reason you may feel dissatisfied with your current home, and although the practical aspects are certainly a part of that dissatisfaction, more often than not, it is the needs of our soul that are not being met that cause us to feel irritated or annoyed with our current home situation.
For example, one of the desires I have is to welcome our growing family into our home, but our current home is quite small. As our children have grown, left, and gotten married, what once suited a few now is barely large enough for us all to eat dinner together. Having my family around is part of a deeper need I have to support and love my family. I often feel dissatisfied, not because our home is small, but because it doesn’t accommodate the lifestyle I would like to have.
What do you need your home to be? How can it support you, your personality, your lifestyle, and your desires?
Take a moment to jot down a few ideas.
2 | Make necessary changes
Being perpetually dissatisfied is not a healthy way to live. If you want to love your home, you first need to understand its purpose in your life so that you can make any necessary changes to accommodate the lifestyle you would like to cultivate.
At the moment, my husband and I are not able to purchase a larger home. But we’re working on it. In the meantime, we have made some changes that have allowed us to entertain more of our family at a time.
For instance, we purchased enough furniture that most of the adults can sit around and talk. We are currently looking for outdoor furniture to increase our seating room. We got a table that folds out when company is around and can be folded down when they aren’t.
We continue to make small changes, but our ultimate goal is a larger home that will accommodate more people and more time entertaining those we love.
What changes can you make right now that will support you in living more in your home?
How can you accommodate the needs and desires you have either temporarily or long term until you can have everything you desire?
What goals can you set that will allow you to enrich your life with more of what you want in the future?
3 | How to make the most of what you currently have
I know this sounds like pretty generic advice, however, it is so difficult to even see how to cultivate a home that suits your lifestyle and personality if you are wrapped up in bitter resentment over what you do not have yet. Use what you have, be grateful for it, and improve upon it. As you do, your needs will expand and you will become better able to receive and care for more and more.
The things we want have a way of coming to us as we become capable of handling them. If you care for your current home, what you desire in the future is more likely to manifest. If you’re waiting to care for your lawn, clear out the clutter, or hang up those pictures because you are living in a perpetual state of someday, you will, most likely, never learn to create in the present and those future desires will always go unrealized.
Live now. Make your home the best it can be now. Enjoy what you have now, and you’ll find as you make space for your desires the things you want will more easily manifest in your life.
There have definitely been times when I have felt dissatisfied to the point of being bitter over what I didn’t have. Even now, we are facing some challenges due to the current gas price increase. It is negatively affecting my husband’s business in a massive way, and that is postponing some of the plans we had to purchase a new home this year.
However, no amount of fretting or being angry is going to solve our current dilemma. We may have to make some major career changes shortly, but I’m grateful for the home we have and the things that are working for us so that we can be supported as we make these changes and pass through the difficult times.
Look around, what are you grateful for right now?
How can you utilize the home you currently have to its upmost?
How can you make room in your life for the things you want most? Do you need to clear out the clutter, clean up your yard, or hang up those pictures you’ve been waiting to enjoy?
If we spend all of our time waiting for the perfect this or that to happen, life will pass us by.
Your home doesn’t have to be grand or perfect for it to become a sanctuary where you find peace and refuge from the world. Make the most of what you have right now. Become a good steward over it and that will begin to invite more into your life.
