It isn’t your house, or your office, or even the space in between – the entire world can be messy.
Wouldn’t it be nice coming home to a place that was not only orderly, but also calmed you?
While an entire house in a consistently lovely state does sound appealing, this isn’t always easy. So, let’s start small, as one needs to undergo a few steps to get there. Let’s start with the goal: what are we trying to achieve?
A Thinking Space: How many times have you come from one space that’s busy, driven on a road that’s busy, and ended up at a ‘busy’ home? Clutter around us can clutter our minds; having an area where you can collect yourself and be with your thoughts is a staple for personal well-being.
Stress Reduction: Just as you are what you eat, you are equally a product of where you are kept. When you’re kept cooped (like, say, by this weather), having a home that doesn’t overstimulate the mind can let the mind breathe a little easier, if only for a time. Tranquility is the key with turning your home into a personal oasis.
Isolation + Familiarity = Relaxation: While this can be treated as a practice for meditation if one so desires, the other angle to approach is that of consistency. If you go to a place in your home that you keep relatively unchanged and maintain the goal of relaxing in, that place will become a personal construct for you; personal constructs allow us to accept and identify areas where we achieve a consistent result. For me, it’s my office, facing away from the computer, on a bench I keep in there.
Now that we have our goal set, let’s discuss how we’re going to meet it:
1) Define a specific space to use as your personal oasis
This can be whatever you like for it to be, but primarily, you’re looking for somewhere simple. You’ll want to find a space with plenty of natural light and simplicity: the natural world helps. It activates the most primitive parts of our brain and helps calm us. This is Saskatchewan, so I’m not advocating for sitting under the bare-bones apple tree in your backyard while it’s -40° out, but having a nice window to take in that degree of scenery helps loads! Consider changing your perspective. This doesn’t mean designating a room; if you set a throw pillow on the floor and stare into a corner, but place in that corner a few decorative plants that help complete the room, nobody needs to be the wiser!
NOTE: In spite of the value of a designated zen-zone, the surrounding spaces must also be in good order – if you find a serene place to be, then turn around to a disaster of a mess, it really takes the wind out from the great deeds you’ve done! As we said earlier, the fastest way to a calmer place is by modifying the environment to emulate what you need.
2) Kill the clutter. Then expand, and kill more clutter
If your space has a few errant books, some old mail, that knick-knack from your aunt you can’t bear to be rid of… get rid of it. Recycle it. Give it away.
Cleanse. You can support the potency of your oasis by de-cluttering the area around it. You can’t hurt yourself by continuing to expand the de-cluttering around the oasis until the entire house is taken care of. If this seems daunting, make a list of every room in your home, and one by one (over the course of however long you like), clear them out of their clutter. Another aside: if you cling to objects for nostalgia’s sake, take pictures of them, instead. It will make them far easier to part with. Make it a goal to fill even one trash bag, and then let us know on Facebook how good it felt to do!
3) Practice!
Another major component of having this zen space is its maintenance. This means taking a few minutes out to clear away the clutter, and to appreciate it for what it is. Mindfulness is coming up more and more in the news these days, and having an environment that caters to that can often be more trouble than it’s worth. Which is why…
4) Asking for Help
Making your home your oasis can take a lot of work. Getting home and looking on at the same things you’ve seen for months and years can, at times, make it difficult to picture your home as anything but what it is. That’s where we come in.
Our team of stylists and designers are ready to help; transforming the space you know into a space you’ll love is what we do!
We can:
- Help turn that closet space, pantry, playroom, or garage into a stress-free zone
- Help you become clutter-free by being unbiased in the downsizing process
- Be in and out in a day
- Give advice on how to create zen on a budget in your home
Reach out today – we are not just in the business of cleaning homes; we’re in the business of making lives easier!
