2/18/2010

Bringing Peace to Your Home

I'm sure I'm not the only person who finds that a cluttered home creates stress. There is no peace for me or the Mister if our house is trashed. Even the kids get stressed. It's not easy to keep a house spotless all the time, but the less you have, the less there is to be left out, on the floor, to be stepped on.


It's not easy to keep from adding to your home in our culture. We are taught from a young age to be consumers. Stopping this behavior can be hard. Here are some helpful tips to help you keep stuff from coming into your house to begin with.

  • Set your priority's with your budget and stick to the budget. If you don't budget for clothes you don't need, then you don't have the funds to buy the unnecessary impulse clothes.

  • Ask yourself three questions before bringing home an item. Do I need this item? Does it add true beauty and inspiration to my home? Do I have a place to store, hang, or otherwise keep this item?

  • If an item makes it into your home find an item that can be purged right away, added to the garage sale pile or send to a charity.

  • Politely let your family and friends know that you don't need stuff.

  • Just say "No". If someone offers you something for free you don't need, just say no thanks.


Here are some inspirational quotes to motivate one to live a simply life.


"Live simply so that overs might simply live." -Ghandi


"Less is More" - (lots of people take credit for this one, not sure who was the first one)


"...everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions can not be my disciple." -Luke 14:33


"...excessive availability of every kind of material goods for the benefit of certain social groups, easily makes people slaves of "possessions" and of immediate gratification with no other horizon than the multiplication of continual replacement of the things already owned with others still better." -Pope John Paul II, encyclical, On Social Concern (excellent read)


"The simplest things are often times the truest." -Richard Bach


"As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness." -Henry David Thoreau


"Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." -William Morris

Pick your favorite quote and place it in a spot in your house that will help you to stay on track with creating a simple and peaceful home.

What are your strategies for keeping the "stuff" from even getting through the door at your house?




0 comments:

Blog Widget by LinkWithin