3 Tips for Making Your House Feel More like a Home
“Home sweet home,” is how the saying goes, but it’s not exactly uncommon for people to live in a place for an extended period of time without ever exactly feeling “at home” there.
Many houses, far from feeling like the personal castles and paradises of their inhabitants, end up becoming little more than slightly uncomfortable settings for surfing the web, watching TV, and sleeping.
If you want to make your house feel more like a place that’s filled with warmth and character, and less like a generic living pod, here are a few tips that might help.
Give it the major “spring clean” you’ve been putting off for too long
If your home is a complete mess, it can be virtually impossible to actually feel truly comfortable and “at home” there.
There’s something about being in a really cluttered and messy environment that just invokes feelings of stress and uncertainty. It’s almost as if you were in unknown territory, without any control of your surroundings.
If your home is long overdue a major “spring clean,” give it that major spring clean right now regardless of the actual season.
Start by going through your belongings and getting rid of things that you don’t have a strong emotional attachment to, and that also aren’t particularly useful to you. Then, tackle dust, mould, and other irritants with zeal, and maybe hire a carpet cleaning service to ensure the job really gets done well.
Opt to fill your home with arts and crafts and “furniture with character,” instead of flatpack stuff
Furniture and home ornaments are more readily available than ever been before, but the downside of this is that so much of what is now available is prefabricated, flatpack, and mass-produced.
Instead of cluttering your home with all sorts of knickknacks that come from a production line somewhere, opt to fill it with real arts and crafts – especially if you’ve had a hand in making those arts and crafts yourself.
When it comes to larger items of furniture such as beds and bookcases, it’s better to save up for hardwood furniture that boasts real craftsmanship and that is designed to endure for centuries, not just a couple of years.
Fill your home with stuff that has “character,” instead of just stuff that’s convenient and easily available.
Decorate the place in a way that makes it feel more warm, bright, and lively
Light is one of the major signals that we all used to calibrate our moods.
If your home is poorly illuminated, with dim light bulbs, and dark furniture and wallpaper, it’s all but inevitable that you’re going to feel gloomy there. It’s just the way these things work.
On the other hand, if your home is bright and filled with light, it will come across as a more upbeat, uplifting, and lively environment to be in.
Decorate your home in a way that makes it feel warm, bright, and lively. That might involve getting new light fittings installed, or at least buying a series of new lamps. It could well mean repainting the walls and swapping out your furniture. Depending on the lengths you are willing to go to, it might even mean making big structural changes like having new windows installed.