Does your home environment get you down? It is true that the space that you dwell in can seriously affect how you feel, whether that is for better or for worse. Of course, you want your home to be a place of relaxation and a respite from the outside world – and making a few tweaks here are there can seriously help you to disassociate stress from the home.
Here are a few things you can do to improve your home in order to improve your overall mood, from little to larger changes.
House Plants
Having other living things in the home other than your family can create a refreshing environment. In fact, several scientific studies which have been conducted recently have found that having plants present indoors can actually lower blood pressure, reduce levels of stress and have an overall positive impact on a person’s health.
Plants can act as an air cleanser and can visually bring people peace of mind. It can provide people with a routine, with people finding pleasure in watering them and keeping them alive.
Most plants tend to release oxygen throughout the day and cease to do so at night time. Therefore, it is important to mention the type of plants which are best for bedrooms, which do release oxygen during the night time. These are:
- Gerbera
- Aloe vera
- Peace lily
- Moth orchid
- Mother-in-law’s tongue
- Dendrobium orchids
Declutter your home
Where you can, take this opportunity to cut down on your possessions, clothes and whatever else is cluttering up your house. As the saying goes, a cluttered home is a cluttered mind!
Take a look through your wardrobe and make a ‘keep’, ‘discard and ‘charity’ pile. A commonly spoken about trick if you are reluctant to get rid of clothing is to turn the hanger around in your wardrobe. When you wear an item and put it back, put it the hanger in the wardrobe the right way round. By the end of a set period, say 6 months, all the hangers which are unturned indicate which clothing items you do not wear and therefore you should get rid of.
You can also take the time to go through all paperwork which is piling up. Work to the guide of keeping one year’s worth of bills and seven years’ worth of tax record, in case you need them for any reason. You can shred the rest.
Include scent into your home
Scents can trigger memories and certain emotions. It is certainly the case that some scents are better suited to particular rooms and to envoke certain moods.
Things like amber wood and vanilla are best suited to living spaces where you are wanting to create a cosy atmosphere. Smells which are rich in spices are great for the kitchen to keep it smelling delicious. Citrus or beachy scents are best for the bathroom to keep the environment feeling clean and fresh.
Brighten the house
The amount of light present in your home can have serious effects on your mood. You are far more likely to feel down if you are sitting in a dark and gloomy room. To boost your mood, you should aim to let as much natural light in as you can.
To brighten up rooms, opt to repaint them a lighter colour – this will reflect any natural light which is let into the room. For more information on how to make smaller rooms look larger through the use of colour, read our guide here.
Consider adding mirrors into a room which you would like to brighten up. Like with the lighter colour on the wall, the mirrors will reflect the light. This means that the room will be lighter, brighter and even appear to be larger than it actually is.
