Do You Love Your Home?

One of my favorite blogs to read posted this today and I feel it necessary to share it here because it embodies what I feel. This is what she wrote:

Do you want to love your home?

I think the secret to house love is to stop comparing your house to other's...just pay attention to your house, wherever you may be right now, whatever it might look like, and work at turning it into the coziest, cleanest home it can be.

In my book of rules I once wrote these things:

•Clean and everything will look better to you.
•Order=sanity.
•Less toys, furniture, clothing, junk is always better...keep a SIMPLE house...get rid of stuff constantly. Or better yet, don't buy it!
•Don't ask for endless opinions...you'll get too many ideas...stick with what YOU love.
•A small change, that usually costs pennies... flowers, a pretty plant, etc...makes a big difference.
•Don't copy anyone's style...yours is just as nice.
•There are tons of ideas and images out there from just about everywhere..magazines, (and I'll add now- blogs!)...it is a waste of time to constantly be on the search for the perfect idea, or to constantly want/need change. Be content! Mind your own home, with what you have on hand. Sometimes this means: STOP LOOKING!
I know it's hard! Sometimes I still fall victim, (although I do it much less than I used to), to looking at a picture and thinking, "oh why did I choose cream instead of white cabinets!?" or "I need more color in here!" or just plain "I want that!"

Once again, we have so many, TOO many, chances to want, want, want. Or to wish, wish, wish.

What if we just tried contentment? What if we accepted our homes as they are, linoleum, old cabinets, tiny closets, squeaky doors, hand-me-down sofa, and worked with and learned to love what we have right in front of us? I think our grandparents did this much better than we have ever done. Most of them lived in the same home for their lifetimes, and took such good care of what they had, whether it was the "in" thing or not.

If you can wean yourself from the barrage of magazines, from the constant ideas and images, and pitch those catalogs, I promise you, if you stop looking out there, and start looking nowhere but your own home, you will begin to love it.

I really have found if you clean, everything will look fresh and new to you. It's a little miracle, isn't it? Sometimes I think, "Oh, I need a change in here." And that change always means more money, more searching (time wasting searching), something new. BUT I find when I just give that room a good old fashioned cleaning I feel so differently...that's all that was needed. Dust those shelves, buy some tulips or pick some branches from outside to put in a vase, scrub, scrub, scrub, wash the windows, move things around, and purge all that clutter. Fill the air with the fresh scent of 'clean', whatever that is to you, and trust me, you will love your home again.

And your home will love you right back.

This was from http://memoriesoncloverlane.blogspot.com/2011/03/40-days-tips-and-tricks-house-love.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+CloverLane+%28Clover+Lane%29. Feel free to check out her blog because she is an amazing mother of five who writes about stuff that we all think about.