My husband lives at the beach.
At least, you might think he does as you walk through our home. Most mornings, he gets up, makes his tea, lights a candle and turns on one of those landscape videos on the T.V. Some days its waves rolling onto a beach. Other days it's mountains, a fall forest or somewhere else he'd rather be. His ultimate dream is to live near the beach. Our current home is nowhere near one, but that doesn't stop him from creating a small version of the life he wants inside the life he has today.
And although I have absolutely taken a few cues from him, I have no intention of admitting that to his face. What I love about his morning ritual is that he isn't waiting. He's not saying, I'll feel this way when we buy the beach house. He's asking, perhaps without even realizing it:
How can my home give me a little of what I need right now?
I think that's a question worth asking.
We spend a lot of time taking care of our homes
Think about everything we do for our homes. We pay the mortgage or rent. Utilities. Insurance. Repairs. We clean them. Maintain them. Decorate them. Organize them. Our homes require a lot from us. But I don't think we ask the opposite question often enough:
After everything you do to take care of your home, how is your home taking care of you?
Because it should.
Home, to me, is more than the physical structure we live in. It's where we begin and end most of our days. Where we rest. Where we prepare ourselves to go out into the world and where we return after the world has taken a little, or sometimes a lot, out of us. Our homes should support that. And that has very little to do with how much they cost.
Support isn't just about how a space looks
I love a beautiful room. I care about color, texture, lighting and the way things work together. I want to walk into my home and like what I see. But a beautiful home that makes your life harder isn't doing its job.
Sometimes support is incredibly practical. Take the cabinet under my bathroom sink. I organize products by category (facial care, body care, hair care) so I can immediately find what I need. I can see when I'm running low and I'm less likely to buy something I already have because I forgot it was hiding in the back. It isn't groundbreaking. It simply removes a little friction from my day. And those tiny bits of friction add up.
Your home should support your life
This is why I don't believe there is one version of a perfectly organized or beautifully designed home.
My husband and I are empty nesters. We're both naturally pretty neat, we don't like a lot of clutter, and there are only two of us living in our home. The way our pantry functions would make absolutely no sense for a family of six. A family with young children may need snacks where little hands can reach them, backpacks near the door and systems that can survive a Tuesday morning when everyone is running late. Their home should reflect that.
The same is true of design. I may love a light-colored sofa. But if you have three small children, a dog and absolutely no desire to spend your life worrying about fingerprints, paws and juice boxes, my light sofa might be your nightmare. That's okay.
We're not trying to create perfection. We're trying to create alignment.
Does your home align with who lives there? How you actually live? What you value? How you want to feel? What you want more of? Those questions interest me far more than whether your home looks like something I would choose for myself.
Your home doesn't have to perform for anyone else
We have access to more images of beautiful homes than ever before. Scroll long enough and you'll find someone else's perfect kitchen, perfectly styled bookshelf or impossibly clean living room. Inspiration can be wonderful. Until inspiration quietly becomes expectation. Then suddenly the home that once felt perfectly good starts feeling like something that needs to be fixed.
I don't think your home needs to impress your guests. Or your neighbors. Or Instagram. Or Pinterest. Or me. Your home should impress you. Not because it's flawless. Because when you walk through the door, something about it says:
This works for me.
This feels like me.
I can live well here.
That's a very different standard.
Home is a feeling before it's a look
When I think about the homes I love most, I don't remember them because everything matched.
I remember how I felt inside them. Welcomed. Comfortable. Able to exhale. And I think that feeling can be created in a studio apartment, a townhouse, a sprawling house or a place you're renting for a year.
You don't have to wait for your forever home. You don't have to renovate every room. You don't have to buy everything new. Sometimes supporting the life you're creating looks like reorganizing the cabinet that frustrates you every morning or moving a chair closer to the window because you want to read more. It could be clearing off the kitchen table because you want your family to actually sit around it or making tea, lighting a candle and putting the ocean on your television because the beach house isn't here yet.
The life you're creating doesn't have to begin someday. Parts of it can begin right where you are. And your home can help you get there.
A Small Invitation
Walk into one room in your home today and pause before thinking about what you want to change about how it looks. Instead, ask:
What is this space currently asking of me and what could it be doing for me instead?
Maybe there's nothing to change. Maybe there's one small thing. Either way, start with how you live. The beautiful part can follow.
