How to Make Your Home a More Positive Place

How do you feel when you enter your home? Are you immediately overcome with feelings of peace, comfort, joy, belonging? Are you immediately stressed? Do you feel like turning around and walking back out? (When my house is cluttered, that’s how I feel. I wanna just run away.)

Everyone wants their home to be a positive space, whether they intentionally set out to make it so or not. Here are a few tips on how to make your home more positive and just feel better overall:

Encourage good language

Growing up, whenever I’d start a sentence with “I hate…” my mom would quickly interrupt me with “hate is not a family values word, Danielle!” and I would have to re-start my sentence more positively. I am 38 years old and she does it to this day. Encouraging positive language is an easy way to raise the vibes in your home and keep it positive.

I now do the same thing my mom did to me to Rohan and Kaya when they use words like “stupid” or “hate.” I can tell it annoys them as much as it annoyed me back in the day, but it’s a great way to reframe, and a good reminder to speak positively.

Decide on the language you will (and won’t) allow in your home and enforce it among your family members. It’s easy to feel more positive when speaking in a positive manner.

Surround yourself with happy memories

We are slowly getting photos from various vacations up around the house. Keeping physical reminders of happy times together  is a very easy way to boost your home’s positivity. Looking around your home and seeing visual cues that bring you back to some of your favorite moments is a quick boost for your brain and body. The best photos to display are the ones that you can’t help but giggle or smile at every time you look at them.

I love playing our family photos from my phone onto the TV. Those digital photo frames are a great alternative as well. That way you can easily rotate the images you display without having to print out photos all the time.

Give and receive love

Learn your family members love languages (It’s not just for romantic partners. Everyone has a love language, kids, parents, etc.) and speak to them in their language, daily.  My son needs lots of words of affirmation and touch is secondary. For my daughter physical touch is everything and she will force herself into some snuggles to get it if need to be.

I’ve already shared about how I learned the hard way what my husband’s love language is. Share your love language with your partner and your children so that they can speak to you in the language you need to be loved in as well.

Be thankful and encourage gratitude

I’ve shared many gratitude practices here in the past such as making gratitude lists, gratitude journals, using gratitude apps, etc. But one way to make gratitude and thankfulness a part of your daily life at home is to say what you’re grateful for at each meal together.

In our house in lieu of saying grace we say what we are grateful for and children of all ages can take part in this simple gratitude activity. If you say grace you can incorporate this right in seamlessly. It’s an easy and daily way to get your gratitude on as a family!

Make it bright!

Stay with me. Now I’m not saying you need to paint your whole house bright orange, but pops of color with flowers, bright throw pillows, or even an accent wall can really brighten up your home and your mood. Color is a powerful thing and color therapy is used strategically in schools, hospitals and other public spaces so why not use it in your home to create the mood you want there as well?

Yellow is for happiness while oranges and reds are great for invigorating, and energizing. You don’t have to stick to those rules though. Light blues and greens are calming and bright blues/teals are a pop of color for happiness as well. Don’t forget that indoor plants are a double duty way to add color to a room.

Declutter your space!

There’s nothing like clean open spaces to make a home feel better. A quick way to make your home a positive space is to clear out what no longer serves you or your family. Clean up all the rooms and then go through clearing out all the junk.

I’ve shared how I throw away my children’s toys …(twice!)…. and how I pair down my clothes here. Declutter everything from papers to pots and pans to the pantry and notice how much freer, lighter and happier you feel when what’s left in your home is what you love need and use often. Try out Marie Kondo’s method if you need a strict place to start.

What do YOU do to make your home a more positive space?