Three top tips on how to make your home happy and welcoming
It’s great to have a home you love to come back to. After a long day filled with work and more than a little stress for most, having a sanctuary where you can decompress and ready yourself for the next challenge is more than a nice-to-have.
So, how can we make our homes even better for us? Today we look at a few Citrus tips on how you can increase your mental health and wellbeing through your home. This can have a real, tangible impact on your life, so keep scrolling!
Step one: Cut that clutter
Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? We all know on a basic level that a messy home isn’t ideal, but the psychology actually goes much deeper than that.
A clean home or bedroom is a sign to our brains that work is done. If we come back to a messy room, it subconsciously signals to our brain that there is more on the to-do list that we aren’t engaging with right now.
While we consciously can say ‘I’ll do that later after I’ve eaten dinner’, for instance, our brains aren’t quite as sharp. The mental burden of unfinished tasks stacks up around us, limiting our ability to enjoy our home as the sanctuary it is.
To combat this, simply be mindful of the mental toll that mess leaves on you. This can be a motivating factor in getting you stuck in with the cleaning up!
Step two: Spread love
It’s tempting for us to fill our homes with lovely objects, and we should. They play a major role in our enjoyment of our homes. What they aren’t however, is the whole answer to the question of happiness about the house.
Our sharing of love and affection is a major player in our enjoyment of our homes. We’ve all had times where we’ve argued with our partners and left a tidy, pleasant home in disgust or in anger. This tarnishes our enjoyment of the place and can build negative connotations in our heads.
Instead, consider focusing on small acts of charity and affection. Flatmates, pets and loved ones all could benefit from the gift of your sharing positivity, and it feeds directly back to you. By prioritising ‘good vibes’ around the home, you’ll come to associate it with positive times and good feelings – improving your life as a result.
Step three: Think about colours
Your choice of colour for your bedroom and home can be significant where mental health is concerned. While philosophies on interior decoration vary, there is sound psychological research behind the effects of different colours and colour palettes and how it impacts our minds.
At a basic level, think about the moods you wish to evoke in a certain room and consider matching schemes accordingly.
Communal areas can benefit, for instance, from warm and vibrant colour palettes which can encourage good moods and energy. Bedrooms, by comparison, benefit from relaxing and neutral tones that are conducive to sleep and intimacy.
This can be a small or large project depending on your available budget. Instead of looking to the walls for new coats of paint, think about how different types of art and display can match your desired colour.
Getting inventive, especially with visits to local charity shops, can lead to the result you want, without breaking the bank.
Handy tips for a happy home
What an interesting subject from the Citrus team! By being conscious about our homes and how we can improve them, we can directly increase the well being of those around us – and ourselves as a result.