13 Simple Ways to Love Your Home (Even If It's Smaller & Old)

641 Shares

Often we take our homes for granted, and don’t love our homes as we should. There are so many people who wish they could live in a better home, or move into a more spacious, more beautiful, and more functional home! If you have been feeling unhappy or frustrated with your current home, these 13 tips will help to reframe your mindset and how you feel about your space. It’s very much possible to love your home – with all its annoyances and quirks, even if it’s smaller, old, boring, and simple.

“A good home must be made, not bought.” ~ Joyce Maynard

This post contains affiliate links. This means that if you make a purchase through our links then we may earn a small commission (at no extra cost to you). This is one of the ways I make money as a blogger and small business owner, so thank you for your support.

1. Focus on What is Good About Your Home

Many a time when we focus on the things or characteristics we don’t like about our homes, we find it hard to love our homes and be happy there. But every home does have some good features that you might come to appreciate if you take time to focus on that.

What does work well in your home? What would you miss if you moved to your next home that didn’t have it? Is it the size of the bedrooms? The layout of your house? How spacious the kitchen feels? The cabinets in the master bathroom? The covered patio? Big windows? The trees and bushes in the yard? Maybe it’s your neighbors and the pretty neighborhood?

Pay attention to the good things and not the shortcomings. It’s all about attitude! Focusing on the positives and what you love about your home makes you feel a lot better about the home you are living in.

2. Declutter

“A home with fewer possession is more spacious, more calming, and more focused on the people who live inside it.” ~ Joshua Becker

Many of our homes have more stuff than we actually need, and these unnecessary stuff make us feel cramped in our homes. They give us a feeling that we need a better and bigger home to breathe and move easily. So, get rid of the unloved, unwanted, and unnecessary extra stuff from your home. Remove the non-essentials or duplicate items, keep only what you need, love, and value. Clutter takes up your precious living space and creates mess and chaos. It also takes more time cleaning up and tidying up which increases your stress level – both physically and emotionally.

Decluttering is liberating and rewarding. Owning fewer things lessens the ability for your home to get out of control with stuff. You will have a renewed sense of energy after discarding the items that weighed you down. You will remove a subtle but significant energy drain from your life and replace it with the feelings of relaxation that come from having your home be a haven from stress.

If you aren’t sure where to start, you can begin with these easy items to declutter without feeling guilty that will have a big impact on your home and how you feel about it.

3. Take Time to Clean

This is one of the best ways to love your home! Take time to clean your home thoroughly. Dusting, cleaning, and getting your home in order makes us feel better about our homes and our lives!

Choose a room and really clean it: sweep and mop the floors, dust the shelves, the entry-way, and everything in between. See how different you feel afterwards. I bet you will feel so much better and accomplished when you can see the progress towards a well-kept home.

4. Organize and Decorate to Create a beautiful & Peaceful Physical Atmosphere

“Some people look for a beautiful place, others make it beautiful.” ~ Hazrat Inayat Khan

Creating a peaceful home environment so you can love your home also includes keeping your home neat and orderly. Organization provides a sense of control, reduces your stress level, increases your productivity, and improves your performance. It also allows you to focus more on the things that truly matter avoiding unnecessary distractions. Find a room for everything you own.

Keeping your home organized and neat can make your home a safe, stress-free place to relax and unwind.

Also, take time to decorate your home in a way that reflects your taste, personality, values, and priorities. Decorate in a way that pleases your eyes and mind. Your home should be the reflection of you and your family. Display things that you love and cherish, and put them where you can easily see them. Don’t save your favorite items for special occasions. Use and enjoy them now. It will affect your mood, and help you love your home more.

Rearrange the living room or your bedroom. When we rearrange the furniture or decoration items in our homes, they look new and fresh.

A calm and peaceful physical space can do wonders for how you and your family feel. Many people don’t consider the impact their physical home environment has on their emotional well-being. Know that the sounds, smells, and visuals in your home contribute to the feel of your home. Putting a little extra effort into organizing and decorating your home now will help you love your home more and allow you to enjoy this place for years to come.

***“Home sweet home. This is the place to find happiness. If one doesn’t find it here, one doesn’t find it anywhere.”*** ~ M. K. Soni

5. Let the Natural Light Shine In

Natural light brings clarity and highlights the intricate design details of a room more than anything else. Natural light is a major contributor to wellness. A naturally lit room uplifts our mood, boosts our energy and productivity, and creates an overall tranquil atmosphere more than an artificially lit space. So keep the blinds, curtains, and windows open whenever possible during daytime to let some sunshine in.

For apartment dwellers with very little natural light, try incorporating reflective surfaces into the home. Place 2/3 large mirrors strategically. The amount of natural light will immediately double by allowing sunlight to reflect off those mirrors.

6. Use Soothing Colors That Make You Happy

Colors significantly affect your mood. If you want to feel peaceful in your home, having calm, soothing colors on the interior walls can greatly contribute to that feeling. When it comes to wall colors, opt for shades that create an overall sense of calm, such as cream, light blue, soft yellow, sage green, or any other colors that you love. Incorporate some of those colors into your home decoration pieces, fabrics, and furniture, too. Choose natural materials and texture to add personality and warmth.

Also, the more consistent your color palette is throughout your house, the better your spaces flow together, and the more calming your home can feel and appear.

7. Remove Things That Trigger Stress or Evoke Negative Emotions

You may have some great stuff that you love and use sometimes, but it requires great care, too, to maintain the item. The mere thought of caring for it causes stress and anxiety. If you feel it’s too much to maintain, and an easier option for that is available, then get rid of it.

Further, if an item evokes a negative emotion such as guilt, regret, or sadness when you see, use, or think about it, it’s probably not something that should stay in your home. If something in your home doesn’t make you happy, why would you want to keep that in your home, or life?

To love your home, keep only those things that you love and enjoy, and that make you happy. Remove everything else even if you find them useful to some extent.

8. Bring Some Nature Inside

Nature creates peace and calm, and does wonder for your spirit. Simple touches of nature that are relevant to the season can make a big difference in our feelings. Many people, when they feel stressed out, often go to a nearby park or beach, or go for a drive in the country to de-stress and relax. Why don’t you bring nature home then?

Buy some indoor plants that are easy to take care of. According to a study done by NASA, plants eliminate toxins from indoor spaces, thus re-oxygenating your home by cleaning air and water for indoor environments.

You can also display a few paintings of beautiful nature to go with your taste. That will have a calming effect on your mind.

9. Display Some Positive, Inspirational Words

Words are powerful, and when these words come with positive reminders and inspirations, they can affect your mood.

A seashell from a favorite vacation, the word ‘relax’ or ‘breathe’ in a piece of art, or using some other calming and comforting words in a wall décor are small things that can really help create a peaceful environment in your home. These small things can have some big psychological effects on how you feel about your overall home environment.

10. Add some character

Adding a little character to your space will help you love your home. The reality is, some of us have to live in functional but uninspiring homes with little to no architectural detail whatsoever. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing you can do. In fact, there is a lot you can do – even if you live in the most boring and simple home – to add a little character and charm to your place.

You can add a ceiling medallion, trim your windows, add a fireplace, replace your existing knobs and pulls with vintage hardware, and add some crown moldings. These are inexpensive, but with minimal effort you can add a lot of charm to a room that will enhance the beauty of your home and help you love it more.

11. Zone Your Space:

Now is a good time to re-evaluate how you are using your space. Do you often entertain guests or have people over to have dinner with you? Or the opposite: do you rarely have people over and you work from home and you would like to have your desk in a place where there is enough space to move around with plenty of natural light coming in? Do you have little kids or young children who would like to have a separate play room or maybe a family room to enjoy their things without feeling cramped?

Make sure your home is supporting the activities you do inside of it so you feel comfortable in it. Create a cozy, quiet corner for rest and relaxation after a long, tiring day. Turn a less or occasionally used room into a multi-purpose room, and also use multi-purpose pieces of furniture wherever you can.

If you would like to know what I did with our least used formal dining room to reclaim some precious living space for our family to use and enjoy more frequently, you may read this post here.

12. Slow Down and Enjoy

“Home is where love resides, memories are created, friends and family belong and laughter never ends.” ~ Unknown

In today’s modern and busy life, many of us hardly spend time at home, let alone enjoy it. So when we can, we need to make a point of slowing down and just being at home and relax – drinking our coffee/tea while sitting on the couch or in a quiet corner – enjoying our home instead of multitasking.

Spending time with the family and friends in your home, having dinner together, talking and listening to each other instead of just turning the TV on or browsing social-media mindlessly, can create a feeling of belongingness in your home which, in turn, will increase your love for this place.

13. Start Being Grateful for the Home You Have

“Be grateful for the home you have, knowing that at this moment, all you have is all you need.” ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

In order to love your home, you need to practice gratitude. It’s so easy to get into the trap of comparison and start hating your home or being unhappy for what you don’t like in your home. Let your mind be inspired by the beauty of other homes, and designs, and decor. But don’t let envy lead you to unhappiness about the home you live in. Choose gratitude instead. Being grateful will help you love your home more as you choose to focus on your blessing for what it is rather than what it’s not.

We need to love the fact that we have a home – whether we own it or rent it, big or small, new or old, simple or gorgeous. A home, however it is, is a wonderful thing to have! It creates a sense of belongingness. Many people in the world don’t have a place to call it home. We need to remind us of this truth and be thankful for this privilege and blessing.

Today, instead of taking your blessing for granted, intentionally choose to be grateful for the roof over your head and the safety and protection from the harshness of the outside world. Your home provides you with shelter, warmth, comfort, and safety that, sadly, many people in the world don’t have.

Gratitude makes what you have more than enough!

Final Thoughts

There are so many ways to ignite the spark and love the home you have right now! These 13 ways will be a great start. A new bedding set, inexpensive colorful window treatments, throw pillows of your favorite colors, rearrangement of furniture, some indoor nature, a calming and soothing color palette, and a little decluttering and organization with an attitude of gratitude can help you start a love affair with the home you have now – even if it’s small, used, or old!

Get started TODAY! Do what you can do today to add some beauty and charm to your home so you can enjoy your place for many more years to come.