Does your home inspire you?
It’s an odd question, really. Our home is meant to signify many things, including but not limited to:
- A place to raise our children.
- A place to feel safe, protected
- Our private place where we don’t have to put on a show for the outdoor world.
- An area of our own, where we can let our style-conscious side flow free and experiment with decoration that makes us happy.
A good home will be all of the above, and more besides – but does it inspire you?
The whole concept of inspiration can sound a little New Age-y these days. We associate it with Instagram quotes on a beautiful sunlit backdrop, and trite words passed down by bosses eager to increase work production.
On a basic level, inspiration is none of those things. It’s a real concept, used to describe a true sense of wonderment. The dictionary definition makes this clear:
Inspire: fill (someone) with the urge or ability to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.
That’s far more straightforward – and far more desirable – than #fitspo or the other multitude of ways modern life has co-opted a simple emotion.
Should Our Homes Be Inspiring?
It’s a valid question, especially as it’s the central thrust of what we are discussing. Your home doesn’t have to be inspiring; you can disagree and see it as a dwelling, a place to rest your head, and nothing beyond that. That’s reasonable.
What you need to think about is how you could benefit if your home were inspiring. Say you woke up every morning and were delighted by what greeted you when you opened your eyes. You’d find little details and reasons to smile as you went through your morning routine, leaving the house with a sense of purpose. You wouldn’t need often-misattributed quotes on pictures of sunsets to make you smile – it would be instilled within you from the start of the day.
Still, it’s not for everyone. In busy modern life, it can be hard enough to make your home as comfortable as you want it – never mind esoteric, slightly hippy concepts. That’s fair enough, but it’s always worth keeping an open mind.
What’s The Dream of An Inspirational Home?
It’s a valid question, especially as it’s the central thrust of what we are discussing. Your home doesn’t have to be inspiring; you can disagree and see it as a dwelling, a place to rest your head, and nothing beyond that. That’s reasonable.
What you need to think about is how you could benefit if your home were inspiring. Say you woke up every morning and were delighted by what greeted you when you opened your eyes. You’d find little details and reasons to smile as you went through your morning routine, leaving the house with a sense of purpose. You wouldn’t need often-misattributed quotes on pictures of sunsets to make you smile – it would be instilled within you from the start of the day.
Still, it’s not for everyone. In busy modern life, it can be hard enough to make your home as comfortable as you want it – never mind esoteric, slightly hippy concepts. That’s fair enough, but it’s always worth keeping an open mind.
What’s The Dream of An Inspirational Home?
How do you break it down? Let’s say a single room can take 50 units of energy. You can choose whatever number you wish, varying it between how much space is in the room. The kitchen, for example, would need a higher quota than the bathroom.
- Domestic Appliances You Use Daily: One Unit
- Hairdryer: Two Units
- Rice Cooker You Barely Use: Three Units
You probably get the idea. The higher the usefulness of an item, the lower its point tally. The more an item is frivolous or unused, the higher its points.
By balancing the points of a room rather than seeing it as a total declutter of all mess, it should be easier to create some space to breathe.
The Second Stage: Infusion of Memories
With your house now balanced, you have a blank canvas to work off.
This stage is all about bringing your past into your present. Now we store our photos online, we don’t see them often. Photo frames used to be a staple of a home. To an extent that’s still true, though what we put in those frames might differ. Where it was once pictures of family, friends, and pets, it’s now more likely to be a beautiful landscape we captured. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it’s not personal.
So focus on the photos you have taken of the people in your life. You took those photos for a reason; it was a moment in time, a memory, that you wanted to capture. So why let your memories languish, unseen?
Print them off and create a collage to go onto a wall. Collages are wonderful in that they require very little artistic skill to do; just keep layering until it looks right. It’s something the entire family can do.
How is this inspirational? There is nothing like a reminder of good days in the past to make you feel more buoyed about the present. It’s a visual reminder that, no matter how bad today is, tomorrow has the possibility to be better. It might sound a little hippieish, but sometimes, we all need that.
The Third Stage: Creating Comfort
In some ways, comfort and inspiration seem to compete with one another. After all, if you’re all tucked up and comfortable, then it’s unlikely you’re going to want to move to do anything else.
For the majority of the time, however, the two work in concert with one another. You have to be comfortable – a pretty basic requirement for all of us – to be able to let your inspiration fly. It’s like putting on the right equipment if you’re going rock climbing. Sure, you can manage without the shoes and the gloves, but it’s going to be a lot more difficult and feel like a lot more effort. If your home is comfortable, it’s going to be a lot easier to let your mind relax.
Furniture and decor is a key part in this as well as in moving away from the practical side as mentioned above. Go for oversized bean bags in place of stiff-backed armchairs; rugs and carpet over hard floor; long curtains in a plush material over conventional blinds. It’s about creating rooms with texture; things you want to touch, feel and be wrapped in. A throw here and there never goes amiss, and cushions should be everywhere.
If you have an option to go for deep textile pile (such as with bathmats), then do it. The textures should be soft, luxurious – and that’s achievable without the price tag if you’re willing to shop around.
How It All Ties Together
So, how do they work in concert? Comfort, beauty, and memories from the past?
The three things combined lead to a blissful, personalized home. It is a home that has been thought about, and that in itself is inspirational enough. So much about finding inspiration is about learning to go with the things you like and the things that make you happy.
If you can learn to reflect that attitude, the certainty that your choices are valid, then you’ve got this down to an art. Your home should reflect that; a loud announcement to the world that you make your choices for you and your family. It doesn’t matter if throw cushions aren’t the height of style or no one uses photos outside of apps anymore – you do, because you chose to be different.
It’s a tricky subject to talk about without sounding too motivational and clichéd, but the point remains. We constantly hear the importance of having to feel comfortable in our own skin – but our house is just an outer reflection of that.
The key thing that your home should inspire you to be is yourself. If you continue that theme throughout, with only your taste and your desires as your goal, then you too can feel inspired and excited every day that you wake up.