Is Your Home A Place of Sanctuary?

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Or is it a place of chaos?

Do your children love to be home? Does your husband look forward to coming home? Or do they all prefer to be out as often and as long as they possibly can?

Please note that I am no Martha Stewart 🙂 And neither do you have to be her. But all of us can strive to create a peaceful and harmonious home with whatever resources we have.

As we approach the Chinese Lunar New Year in 2 weeks’ time perhaps you can use it to prod yourself to start beautifying your home so that it can be a place of sanctuary?

I know what you are thinking, “Please! I don’t even have time for myself, who cares about the house!” But you will find that as you remove the chaos from your home, you will feel less stressed.

Start small. Start simple. Don’t run out and start buying decorations and ornaments yet! The first thing you need to do is de-clutter! Yes, de-cluttering is on my mind! 🙂

Just go around the house, room-by-room with 1 box/basket and 1 trashbag and start packing. Things that are to be thrown away go straight into the trashbag. Things that don’t belong to that room go into the box/basket. Then start putting away the things to where they belong.

This is not the time for deep cleaning – unless you have the time and energy to do so. What we are aiming for is removing surface clutter so that the eye does not see piles and piles of stuff everywhere but instead it sees clean, open spaces.

Don’t know where the things belong? Ask yourself – do you need this item? Why are you keeping it? Please leave all your guilt in the trashbag, ok? 🙂 Don’t keep a gift coz it was given to you by a well-loved relative/friend but you hate it coz it is hideous/does not go with anything in your home/is totally impractical. You need to be heartless unless you have the luxury of space in your home or are willing to rent storage space.

Rule of thumb in any organisational book/website* will tell you – if you really can’t decide, put it away for 6 months. If at the end of the 6 months you have not used it at all, then it is time to throw or donate it away.

Once you have removed the clutter, you can start beautifying your home. Perhaps a vase of flowers. Matching hand towels. A new table cloth. A new bedside lamp. New bedsheets. New photo frames. New curtains. And it doesn’t have to be expensive to be beautiful.

Basically, a neat and organised home is what you are aiming for. No point having a lovely vase of flowers when surrounding it are piles of paper and toys! The vase of flowers, instead of a thing of beauty, becomes another piece of clutter.

Then if you have more time or if you are now totally motivated 🙂 you can start de-cluttering what’s inside your cupboards and drawers. You may find that you now have 2 or more extra empty drawers/shelves. So now you can remove even more surface clutter!

I would also encourage you to make your bedroom a place of peace and sanctuary. Your bedroom shouldn’t act as a de facto storeroom. It is a place where you can go to to retreat and re-charge yourself.

If the baby/children are in there and you can’t do that, then look for another nook in the house. Everyone of us needs a personal space/chair/desk that we can go to to read or to space out. Think out of the box. We have at the moment 8 bodies in a 1500 sq ft apartment (including stairs!). If we can create a (small) space for ourselves, I am sure you can too!

Remember your home should be a place of sanctuary!

* There are so many books and websites out there to help you on de-cluttering and beautifying your home. To start you off, you may want to check out Edith Schaeffer’s The Hidden Art of Homemaking. The library also has tons of homemaking books if you don’t want to add another piece of clutter in your home 🙂

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