5 Things Keeping Your House From Feeling Like YOUR Home: Part 4
Updated: Sep 16, 2022
Here we are on day 4 of my series teaching simple things you can do to start creating a home that feels unique to you and your family! If you haven't seen Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3 I highly recommend you get caught up on those posts as well. Creating this series has been such a joy for me!
So here we go into the 4th thing that might be keeping your house from feeling like YOUR home:
YOU HAVEN'T CREATED ANY TRADITIONS OR RITUALS WITHIN IT.
Rituals and traditions create unique experiences in your house that make you FEEL home. What is a total bonus is that they transcend your physical house. Often they can be done or adapted to make you feel more at home wherever you are. They can be especially helpful after a big move, or any when any substantial changes or shifts are taking place in your life. It's these times when our rituals matter more than ever.
So what does this look like? Well, they will obviously look different for every family or individual. Here is what it looks like for us!
It looks like opening the blinds every morning, either when I wake up or when the sun comes up (whichever comes first)!
It looks like turning the ceiling lights off and all the cozy lamps on as soon as the sun goes down, or we are done with dinner (whichever comes first).
It looks like lighting a candle in the evenings
It looks like Friday Family movie nights whenever we find ourselves on a Friday with no plans.
It looks like making music.
It looks like Sunday naps.
It looks like making cookies with my daughters, rotating between chocolate chip cookies and no bake cookies because those are their absolute favorites.
It looks like blowing their lamp out every night after we tuck them in to the rhythm of "Row Row Row Your Bow." We go, "Blow, blow, blow the light." followed with a "whoosh, whoosh, whoooooosh!" and the light always turns off on that last "whoooosh".
It looks like hiding away, rocking back and forth in the chair sitting in the corner of our bedroom whenever I need a quiet moment to myself.
It looks like blasting music while we clean on Saturday morning.
It looks like sitting down with a bowl of our very favorite homemade pear ice cream and watching our current show after we get the girls to bed.
It looks like the the birthday girl going to bed on the night before the big day, and her sisters staying up with me to help set up some special birthday decorations!
It looks like the countless seasonal and holiday traditions that take place under our roof every year.
Truly, thinking about each one of these things immediately gives me that ever so comforting feeling of MY HOME. I can hardly handle it, I love it so much!
Odd's are you probably already have many rituals and traditions established under your roof. But maybe life has been hectic and your feeling a bit off. Or maybe you have entered a new stage of life and things are feeling unfamiliar. Or maybe you just aren't doing them with intention. I think you might be surprised by how much returning to an abandoned ritual (or creating a new one!) will help you feel more connected to your own sense of home.
CHALLENGE:
I want you to do what I just did! I want you to grab a paper and pencil and write down as many of the rituals and traditions that create a feeling of home for you that you can think of. It might take a minute for them to come to the surface, but just start writing and they will emerge eventually.
Now imagine a home in which none of those things took place.
Ugh. It is the worst feeling, am I right?! I hope that you feel as much gratitude as I did when I wrote my list. I hope that acknowledging them in a thoughtful way will help you continue on, intentionally making them happen regardless of how big or small they are, because you know how crucial they are to your ability to feel at home in your house!
-Kams