As the cooler months unfold most of us have more time to focus on making our homes cosy, personal and winter-ready. This is a great time to add some unique touches to make our homes more personal, a reflection of who we are so that it feels like a space of safety where we are free to recharge and be ourselves. Today I will share 5 ways to make your home more personal.
Find the Main Purpose of your Home
By deciding on the main purpose of your home, you can give a direction to what it should feel like and look like for you so that it serves your lifestyle well. Do you just use it to eat and sleep? Is it a space of rest and relaxation? Do you want it to be stimulating and invigorating? Is it where you recharge and get inspired? It can be all of the above and more.
The whole house can be a haven of peace, or each room can have a distinct purpose and feel. You can create specific and very different corners in every room, which is what I tend to do, so that my space can be soothing, healing and allow me to create. I have soothing corners, inspiring corners, creative corners, practical corners, and I know which ones to go to according to my needs.
Give Yourself Permission
It can take a while to give ourselves permission to fully embrace what we love. I knew I loved houseplants years before I allowed myself to have loads of them in every room. I knew I loved pure wool many years before I allowed myself to prioritise wool in my house.
It’s great to identify what we love and then just make it a priority in little or big steps. I love and need lots of blankets, so I have several in every room. Before I allowed myself to have as many blankets as I need, I had to lug them from room to room, which was not practical, could make me trip up and fall, and didn’t invite me to settle. Now I make sure each corner is cosy and ready for what I need without having to shuffle the space every time I enter a room.
Choose Your Favourites
Your home is a perfect blank canvas to play and get creative. It is absolutely yours to have fun with, and an easy way to do that is to use your favourite colours, textures and styles. If you love lime green or buttercup yellow, go for it and include it in your space in any way you like. If you love fluffy and cuddly things, it’s your call how far you go with that. If you like to collect Barbie dolls, give them pride of place in a special corner and enjoy your collection fully!
I have a few things in my house that might not be to everyone's taste, but every time I see them, I smile, and I feel right at home. Even when we rent, there is so much we can do simply by choosing objects and soft furnishings that we love and reflect who we are. Simple things like the kind of lamps and lights we have and where we put them can also make a huge difference. Lighting can be used in endless ways to make a home more personal.
If you share your space with one or several people, you could pick a room or a corner and make it completely your own. Due to lockdown people have become very creative and ingenious with repurposing spare corners in their homes. It’s lovely to see the spaces they have created just for themselves to have a bit of peace and quiet. It could be as simple as having one shelf each in a particular room, and that one shelf is yours to use as you please. This can be an interesting exercise in creativity as well as allowing others to be as they are.
Include Natural Elements
My favourite way to add natural elements is to have lots of houseplants in every room.
I also enjoy the soothing landscapes I paint and the nature-inspired blankets I make. They all connect me to nature and invite me to rest and slow down while remaining inspired and creative.
Everyone has different ways of enjoying nature and bringing it in the home. I love to have a seasonal display of food or flowers on my dining table, such as apples, pumpkins, squashes and nuts in the Autumn/Winter, and wild grasses and flowers in Spring/Summer. I also love to gather lichens and branches after a storm, as well as pretty leaves, shells and pebbles.
Discover Statement Pieces
Having statement pieces is a beautiful way to honour yourself and make your home more personal. I hear many people say they would love to have this or that, but they don’t feel they deserve it. We can gently nudge ourselves out of that belief by gifting ourselves meaningful pieces.
They don’t have to be expensive, they just have to have a meaning for us. In my soothing art, I make many statement pieces, from miniature size to really large, and I love to know that they make people feel special and connected to themselves and to nature, supporting them to create a house they love and which feels like them. So have a look around and find your perfect statement pieces to surround yourself with and show yourself you are valued and special.
