Do you ever wish that your home space, your living space could enhance your life more? Could match your values and just be a wonderful sanctuary for you? Well if you do this is for you my friend!
Now, your living space where you cook, sleep, have downtime, and where you share time with your friends – it would be nice to have a nurturing home environment wouldn’t it? A sanctuary where you can feel safe. Feel peaceful. Feel calm. Where you can feel invigorated. Feel peaceful. And sometimes, the importance of the living space can be overlooked. So I’d love for us to shine a light on that here.
If you’re living with a hidden disability like me, your lived experience can be impacted so strongly be the spaces that you inhabit and how you feel in them. So yes, another level of importance here.
I’ve got 4 areas that you can start with so that you feel like you have some sort of a plan with which to move forward.
Let’s dive in!
1. Declutter and Simplify
Love love love this topic! There are so many benefits to your health, your mental health, your emotional health, to your PEACE, from having an organised space. The stuff of our lives can accumulate without us realising it. Piling up on surfaces and multiplying and taking over. Be it your clothes in your wardrobe, the cupboards in your kitchen, the areas where you watch television or read, all this stuff everywhere…! It’s the first thing that can get in the way of you fully enjoying and breathing into your space. I encourage you to tackle the area that is bothering you the most. It might be one particular room, or part of a room – start with that. Think of letting go of the stuff you don’t need, or the stuff that no longer gives you value or those things that you haven’t used in a long time.
2. Optimise your Comfort and Accessibility
You want to customise your spaces for living to suit you and to suit your needs. Even more so if you’re living with a hidden disability. Give yourself permission to feel bold enough to customise space for your own comfort. You don’t have to stick with convention to have a big large double bed for instance, when you would secretly like to make better use of your sleeping space to be flexible to do other things like roll out your yoga mat of unfold your lounger to sit right in the middle of the room to enjoy the beautiful sunlight captured in that nook between 8 am and 1pm. What do you need? How do you want things laid out? Don’t feel you have to stick with a space just because ‘it came like that’.
3. Incorporate Nature/Natural Elements
How might you be able to bring in some touches of nature or natural elements into your living space? What elements might make you feel more grounded? It could be in terms of plants. Or things that you like to touch like stones or pebbles. Perhaps like me you like landscapes – and the right painting with the right colours that you connect with could help you breathe more deeply and really exhale. Some people with a garden like to have a water fountain, or flowing water because they love how the sound of water makes them feel. Maybe you don’t have a garden and you live in a flat or apartment, but you could incorporate listening to the sounds of nature into your living space.
Something from the outside, something from nature. Have a think about it, but it can be really rejuvenating to have these elements in your space. Also natural light! Having more natural light. How can you bring more light into your living space? What can you take away that might be blocking the stream of natural light? Perhaps the colour of the paint on your walls is a little dark and changing it to a lighter colour or white could make your living spaces so much brighter. Or a strategically placed mirror at a right angle to your window, to pivot more natural light into a tucked away corner of the room? You want to be able to enjoy that serene feeling, but also an invigorating feeling from your space.
4. Create Zones For Different Activities
I like this one. It really can invigorate and helps you move through a great flow of your day. Having designated areas for all of your activities. A place where you sleep. A place where you can work or have your creativity time. A designated area maybe for reading. An area for meditation? You don’t necessarily need lots and lots of space. Just think about what is important to you and give space for that activity. So for me, I like meditation. So I would roll out my yoga mat and sit on a yoga block. Or sit on the tatami mat. Or if it is a day when I’m less agile, I have a dedicated chair, a comfortable gravity ‘lounger’ type chair, that I can fold away when I’m done. That also doubles up as my reading chair. I love that chair! So just little things like that.
Have a think about it. Maybe you might want to journal about it. Put your personal mark on your living space to make you feel lighter, make you smile, and lift you.
I hope that some of this resonates with you and helps you curate a living space that makes you feel uplifted and happy.
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Many people ask me to share what health, wellness and beauty products I use. Instead of listing out each item individually here on the blog, I made a list of my Top 20 favourites, the ones I personally love and use here linktr.ee/tessafyffe