I absolutely loved coming up with my home goals last year, and I'm excited to think about it again this year. (Inspired by the Nester!) If I sat down and wrote a list of things that I want to get done in our home, then it would be really overwhelming. I can't do everything at once. The homes goals take the to-do list out of the living. Instead, I'm thinking about the general direction I hope to go. What makes us happy? How does our home best represent us? What do we want with this space?
Before I list these years goals, I'm going to recap last year's goals. Here they and currently how I'm doing with each one:
1. Streamlining...I've purged a great deal of things, but I still have more that I would like to see go. The Minimalists are changing how I think about this. Organizing and purging aren't the keys to living minimally. There's something else, something deeper, and I want to find it. Progress is happening!
2. Repainting...check.
3. Different, bigger pictures. Yes and yes! This has been the change that has made me the happiest around here! We've made some great memories, and I love having large pictures in my home! My favorite example is the cheap and easy collage!
4. Clean from a list...Not going to happen. I can see how this helped me last year, but I'm so over to-clean lists. Those 15 minutes every day to a perfectly clean house? What if I don't want to do a day? What if I want to go on adventures?
5. Finding balance between life and keeping home...man have I made strides on this one!!!
As I was packing the 1 1/2 tubs of Christmas decorations, I was thinking about all the stuff in my house. I want freedom. I want freedom from knick-knacks and dustables (Nester's word) and things that I have to manage. The Minimalist said that organizing is well-planned hoarding. I spend too much time keeping everything organized and purged and it's wearing on me. I want to be free of my stuff, but not in an live-in-an-empty-house way.
As I packed up the Christmas stuff, I decided to go minimalist with just my mantel. A mirror and my favorite hurricane that my aunt gave me when I was in college. I threw in some magnolia leaves that were dried and curly and all cool looking. This spoke to me. No, it really did. I just love the simplicity of it. I keep walking by it, making eyes at it, noticing things I like about it. All that white. They way the lights look on the wall. How much green there is in the glass of the hurricane. How I love curly leaves on top of pebbles. For now, it's perfect. This is what I need.
Packing away the signs of Christmas and clearing off the mantel help me realize that there are just a few themes that I'm constantly drawn to. When I'm making my decorating choices, I want to stick with those themes. Instead of a list, I'm going with a summary of my feelings right now. Here are my thoughts:
I want less stuff without things feeling bare. There are just a few things that I'm repeatedly drawn to: pictures and plants and maybe a few other things from nature. In my opinion, these are the things that can help transform a house into a home. These are things that are missing from houses without people. Model homes, empty houses for sale, and staged homes will not have family pictures and live plants. It's impossible. When I'm doing the decorating thing, I want to stay with what I know we love and what we enjoy: the great outdoors. It's real, it's unique, & it's where we all feel peaceful. When I'm focusing on a room, when I'm choosing wall decor, when I'm thinking about curtains, I want to remember what I already know: we like being outside. We like going on adventures. We like unique things. Why would I choose to do anything else for our home?
My goal is to let those themes be the driving force behind my decorating choices. I want to bring the outside in with our stuff. I want pictures and paintings and wall decor that represent the things that we enjoy. I want photographs that serve as memories of family adventures. That's the goal for our home: to be more us and nothing else.
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