We have lived in our house for almost 16 years. My relationship with the house has gone from love, Love, LOVE to annoyance, to sometimes hate, landing mostly on indifference.
Annoyance, indifference and hate are not emotions you want to associate with your house.
I love the heck out of the people and animals that live in the house. But there are so many things about the house that I don't like, things that are wrong, things I want to change but don't have the time to do, things I want to fix but can't. So I ignore or grumble and grouse when I walk into certain rooms.
I would read design blogs and see the beautiful rooms and I would get sad. Pinterest could make me depressed or angry. I wanted my house to look like that and it didn't. It could but it didn't.
But I didn't do anything and nothing changed.
Then I read the book The Nesting Place It Doesn't Have to be Perfect to be Beautiful and my perspective started to change. My home was far from perfect but it was filled with love and joy, maybe it could be beautiful too.
As I sat on my sofa one day, I started looking, really looking at my house. I found that there were things that I really and truly enjoyed about my home. The giant red sofa that can fit our whole family plus two cats on movie nights. The table in the entry hall that perfectly describes our family - the vase from China, the candle holder from Ethiopia, the globe, the pictures of our early days with our children. Seeing these things fills me with joy
I realized that maybe I was the thing that needed to change for me to love my house again. If I look at it through a lens of hope and possibility, I can see love. The things I can't fix will still be there but so will the good things. And maybe this stupid old house will feel more like home.
Annoyance, indifference and hate are not emotions you want to associate with your house.
I love the heck out of the people and animals that live in the house. But there are so many things about the house that I don't like, things that are wrong, things I want to change but don't have the time to do, things I want to fix but can't. So I ignore or grumble and grouse when I walk into certain rooms.
I would read design blogs and see the beautiful rooms and I would get sad. Pinterest could make me depressed or angry. I wanted my house to look like that and it didn't. It could but it didn't.
But I didn't do anything and nothing changed.
Then I read the book The Nesting Place It Doesn't Have to be Perfect to be Beautiful and my perspective started to change. My home was far from perfect but it was filled with love and joy, maybe it could be beautiful too.
As I sat on my sofa one day, I started looking, really looking at my house. I found that there were things that I really and truly enjoyed about my home. The giant red sofa that can fit our whole family plus two cats on movie nights. The table in the entry hall that perfectly describes our family - the vase from China, the candle holder from Ethiopia, the globe, the pictures of our early days with our children. Seeing these things fills me with joy
I realized that maybe I was the thing that needed to change for me to love my house again. If I look at it through a lens of hope and possibility, I can see love. The things I can't fix will still be there but so will the good things. And maybe this stupid old house will feel more like home.
