Now that you've used all your senses in order to see what doesn't resonate with your core feeling(s) in your home, let's work on how to fill our homes with what does:

• The entry way to your home: Treat your entry way like gates to a shrine: remind yourself of why you want to be there the moment you walk through the door. 
• Your yard is your home's face: what you do you want to feel when you drive by your home and look at it?  Are you proud of it? (hostas are a great way to improve the look of your yard with virtually no work...I should know, I don't have a green thumb, yet the outside of my house looks spectacular because of what I plant).  If not, how can you change it for cheap?  Get some Home and Garden magazines to get some ideas.  Drive past your neighbor's houses: who has yards you love?  Can you replicate that feeling in your own yard?  Rent some library books on this subject. 
• What kinds of knick knacks make you happy?  Flowers?  Candles?  Figurines?  (just make sure anything you use doesn't become overwhelming)
• What colors make you feel comfortable?  Run out to the Home Depot and gather ALL the color cards you can get and tape them up on your walls.  What color schemes do you like?  I LOVE LOVE LOVE this website for color combination ideas: "Design Seeds"
• Use magazines as a way to find decorating ideas you like.  Find pictures of what you like and either make a vision board, or get 3x5 notecards, punch a hole in them, and place on a binder ring and glue the pictures to the cards.  Choose either entire rooms or pieces to put together to make your own rooms.  Make sure you plan every room and closet and floor of your house.
• Decluttering your house is a guaranteed way to find peace, and should always be the first step in any home transformation.  Check out the book "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing" by Marie Kondo (The KonMari way of decluttering).  I rented this book from my library and cannot WAIT to get started on it!  She guarantees you'll never go back to your old ways of cluttering again.  Also check out www.flylady.com for some wonderful ideas.
• If you haven't got on Pinterest yet for design ideas, then get there right now!  Make some boards for organization, small spaces, home decoration, home design, yard ideas, etc. or whatever suits your needs.  NOTHING beats this FREE website for amazing ideas on how to turn your home into an oasis!  I am not sure if you still need an invite, but if so, hit me up and I'll send you one.

 If your home looks like you just moved in and yet you've lived there for years, ask yourself: what next?  Now is the time to make changes, even if they are just on the surface, in order to for where you live to feel like yours, even if you rent.

 If you need some ideas for home decor, I will post my board here for you to check out and see what may suit you.  If there is no link, then I am still building it, so just be patient and I'll get it done soon!

What your home feels like is all based upon how it speaks to your senses.  Which is exactly what spirituality feels like <3 

So when your home is in tune with you and your family (make sure each family member has a space that speaks to them, as well), you will soon feel in harmony with everyone around you.  Peace will reign in your heart and travel with you wherever you go.  

Everyday will start feel lighter and happier and soon, you will never want to leave home!  Just kidding haha!  But honestly, home is where the heart is: so let's make your heart happy!



If have pictures to share of your beautiful homes, please send them and I'll share them on the site! 


UPDATE: Since implementing the ideas I wrote in this blog, I started another blog that chronicles my mission to get organized (and my art, as well).  You can find that blog here: Creative Chaos.

So now that you've figured out how you want your home to feel, (if not, click here and answer the questions I provided), we're going to see what items and places in our homes nurture that feeling.  Some of the things you may want to feel inside of your home could be:

The point of this exercise is to identify what serves us and what doesn't, and if it doesn't how to fix it.  The trick is to pick a theme feeling for your home (let's say, calm), and eventually get everything in our homes to resonate that feeling.

Now we're going to take our word(s) and see what the parts of our homes generate those same feelings when we encounter them, and which don't.  The items we'll look at will include:

• Music
• Books
• Clothes
• Floor coverings
• Window coverings
• Wall & trim color
• Wall coverings (pictures, signs, wallpaper, etc.)
• Knick knacks
• Furniture
•  Individual rooms and areas
• Closets
• Everything else

What you'll find is that it's important to remember that every single thing that enters your home must resonate with your "theme" feeling.  If not, it will begin to not only get physically cluttered, but also spiritually.

Most of us who don't feel centered and relaxed at home are suffering from spiritual clutter.  Spiritual clutter is when nothing (except maybe a few things) match the feeling we wish to have when at home or work or in our cars.

I want you to take a few moments and imagine the ideal place where you'd feel most relaxed. 

What colors do you see?  Blues?  Whites?  Greens?  Warm colors?

What style is it?  Beachy?  Cottagey?  Leathery?  (hey, leather calms some people!) Victorian?  Shabby chic?  Country?  Masculine?

What surrounds you, in this fantasy home?  Bookshelves full of books?  Wispy curtains and seashells?  Rustic furniture?  Leather couches?  Western wear?  Flowers?

Now, what kind of music are you hearing?  Classical?  New age? Metal?  Rock?  Country?  Oldies?

What's on your walls?  Art?  Family photos?  Funny signs?

What does it smell like?  Citrus?  Beach smells?  Flowers?  Fresh, clean smells?  Cinnamon or other food smells?

What textures are available to interact with?  Plush carpets or rugs? Satins?  Velvets?  Soft, fuzzy, warm things?  Smooth, cool leather?

Write down everything you see, hear, smell, and feel.  Don't leave any of your senses out.  Spiritual comfortableness requires all of your senses to be used.  Tell me, if you had burlap couches, how much would you like sitting on them?  Exactly.  You need to be able to interact with everything in your home, whether visually, auditorily (not a word I don't think, but oh well LOL), touchy-feely, and olfactorily.

So build your perfect home with all of these in mind.  Take the list from the first post and then use this post to modify those things in your home.

In the next post, we will talk about each room and I will give some examples of some amazing rooms and ideas on how to redecorate for cheap!

Till then! 

Part One Here
Part Three Here

 

What do religious people do when they want to feel close to their creator?  Pray, yes.  But where do they go?

To church, of course.

So where do non-religious people go?  

Well, uh, nowhere.  Why do we have to go places in order to feel spiritual?  Does spirituality only exist in places?

As a child, my family went to church only a handful of times.  I loved my church.  Although I could have cared less what the pastor was saying in front of us.  I just loved the church itself.  

The feeling of that magnificent place, with its color-stained windows and statues on crosses....the silence, the kneeling, the singing, the bowed heads (it's the prime body posture for God to hear your prayers, right?).  I had always cheated and looked around me....to see the masses of people everywhere, silently praying.  It was quite humbling.

Then came summer bible camps, that I loved more than anything on Earth.  To this day I have no idea why I loved it so much (perhaps it was the cute high school boy who helped run the camp?).  I know partly it was because of the floppy records with bible songs we'd get every year that I'd take home and play until they wouldn't play anymore (I worked hard constantly to memorize all the songs).  I loved those friggin' records.

I was all about that Jesus, no devil!

Though I actually never really believed in either one.........

The truth was: I used church to fuel my own spiritual beliefs. 

I honestly don't remember one thing they ever taught me (besides the Apostle's Creed during confirmation), but I sure remember how it made me feel.  It felt like home.  

Eventually I realized that I got the same exact feeling (although a tad different, yet perhaps more) when I was in nature.  Growing up with a golf course as my front yard helped develop my taste for all things natural.  When I wanted to get away from my turbulent home life, I'd hide in the trees and gorgeous areas of the golf course's natural beauty.  It was safe to say, I fell in love with nature.

I used nature anywhere I could get it: on top of my clubhouse to just stare at the stars; hiding in the fallen trees after a storm had ripped them out; on my front porch as it stormed (the lightening and rain were electric!); just looking out my own window into the blue skies.  These were the places I found my connection.  Those were the places that felt like home.

I felt like I was a part of something larger than myself, even if it was just the clouds, the sky, the universe and Earth and all of the galaxy, rather than some sort of being out there making decisions for me.  I mean, I did talk to "god", but not then.  Then I was communing with nature.

And I always felt there was a difference between the two.  "God" (not normally capitalized) was someone I talked to when I didn't want to feel alone anymore.  He was who I talked to when I needed someone to tell me everything was going to be okay.  We were buddies.  He didn't rule me.  We walked together hand in hand and kept each other company.  I had my own spiritual leanings, not bound by any dogmatic religion (although some harmful parts of it did plague me for part of my childhood).

The point is, my spiritual domain, while strong in certain places I'd visit, were always just really inside of me.

And still is.  But yet, as a child, I never felt spiritual inside of my own home.  There was too much chaos, to much yelling, too much insanity.  Feeling spiritual was when I felt calm, connected, and happy.  And those were not things my house conveyed to me.  I had to find an "escape" in order to feel those things.  So as a child, I spent a majority of my life outdoors, in all forms of weather (as each season brought a new thing for me to commune with and be grateful for), just so I could feel that feeling of beauty, wonder, and enlightenment.

But now as an adult, I can choose to make anywhere I am at just as spiritual as I felt back then.  I am not at the whim of crazy people who were called "my parents" anymore.  I can make my home what I want and feel how I want.  And while I still will never feel more connected to life than out in nature, I have the opportunity to make my home feel safe, calm, and spiritual if I want to.  

We can use our homes to feel centered, rather than chaotic.  We can make our homes feel like a place to revere, rather than something to avoid.  Or even something as menial as "a chore" (like repairs and cleaning and pets and kids and chaos, etc.).  We can choose to value our homes as we do those sacred places we flee to when we need them.  Our homes can be our shrines.  Our havens.

Ask yourself these questions when thinking about how to make your home your spiritual domain:

• What are your requirements for feeling "spiritual"?  I don't mean where you'd pray or honor deities (unless you want to), I mean where you feel connected to life.  Where you feel calm, serene, & free.
• What are you carrying from your past as a child that is making your home not carry the feelings you wish you could have it embody?
• How does the outside of your home look?  What about the inside?  Does it nurture you?  Or annoy you?
• How does your home make you feel?  Inspired?  Frustrated?  Happy?  Sad?  Calm?  Angry?  
• When you pull up into your driveway, do you dread going inside?  Or are you happy to be home because you know you can destress and feel calm?
• What's stopping you from having the feeling you want in your home?  Clutter?  Broken furniture? Annoying paint color?  Dirt? 
• List the ways you'd like your home to make you feel.  

Some people have a room they dedicate to spiritual doings.  I am asking you to turn your entire home into a spiritual doing.  To stop placing the emphasis on "where" you feel connected, and start feeling connected everywhere.  I don't mean to "god" or anything in particular.  I mean just....connected.  Serene.  Calm.  Happy.

Like, the real you.

You want to walk into your home and feel.....like home.  Like I did when I went to church or sat under a tree.  

Spirituality: what does that word mean to you? Even if you're an athiest with spiritual leanings, you can get my gist.  You can smell what I am cooking here.  You can tune into my vibe.  You get it.  Spirituality is just as much about how you feel during this life as it can be what kinds of ideas you entertain.

What do you want to feel?  Figure this out, and come back to me tomorrow for the second installment of this blog:     Seeing Your Home As Your Spiritual Domain Pt. 2.We'll talk about what actions you can take to turn your home into your spiritual domain.

So make your lists, answer the questions above, and we can figure what to do next, tomorrow.

See you then :::wink:::

Part Two
Part Three