7 Ways to Create a Calm Peaceful Home MINIMALISM

Creating a calm home, I feel like this is a buzzword right now. The amount of conversations I've had with women, specifically mothers, when it comes to creating a healthy, healing, peaceful environment in the home, it's non-ending. Everybody is craving this. So today I want to share with you seven tried and true practices that we use in our home to welcome peace, calm, and even the ability to heal inside our walls. Stress is part of life. Honestly, it's not all bad. When it gets too much and too much to carry, then it is harmful. But that's why I talk often about the importance of the home and making it your safe place. One where you can rejuvenate, heal, and get back up in the morning and carry what the Lord wants you to carry. Number one, add a decluttering basket, bin, trash bag. Guys, it does not need to be pretty or aesthetic. But having one place for all of your decluttering items. It's this catch-all that makes the process of decluttering and simplifying your home much more manageable. Now, I have an entire course on decluttering your home for somebody who's ready to dive in and make a huge shift. But if you're not quite ready yet, I don't recommend the course. But I do recommend getting a basket, getting a trash bag, putting it in your hall closet or your laundry room. And every time you come across an item, every single time you come across an item that is no longer serving you, it's just taking up space, or it's draining your energy just trying to keep up with it, that goes in the bucket, in the basket, in the bag right away. Decluttering can be overwhelming because of the amount of decisions you have to make. Make this easy. And every time it's full all the way up to the top, take it to your local church, a school, or a local thrift store. Number two, welcome fire into the home. I don't want to scare you by saying welcome fire into the home, but fire has such a powerful influence on the human body, on the central nervous system, on its ability to calm the human body. It's amazing. It's the color of the flame, the actual movement of the flicker of fire, crackling of wood. All of these things have been scientifically proven to calm the body down. If you don't have access to a fireplace or you can't burn candles, Netflix has an incredible birchwood fireplace that I used for years. I mean years, you guys. You can also use amber light bulbs which emit an amber hue that replicates the fire. Some of my favorites are from Cozy Red Light Therapy. Actually, my favorite amber light bulb is from Cozy Red Light Therapy. We put it in all of our lamps all over the house. And at night, lights get turned off, amber light bulbs turned on. But there's a purpose to this. It calms down your environment. When your environment is calm, the humans inside the environment calm down too. This works for my children at dinner. We light a candle every time we start homeschool. I light candles in the morning when it's just me, whether I'm cleaning, folding laundry, or doing my meditation. When it's dark, I always have a candle lit. There's a reason restaurants light candles and put them on their tables as well. It creates an experience that humans are drawn to. It's a real thing. Welcome fire, candles, fireplaces, Netflix, Birchwood Fireplace, amber light bulbs into your space, into your home as much as possible and watch what happens. 432 Hz music. This is something that not a lot of people know about, but I have a genius musician brother-in-law who taught me about 432 Hz music, which is actually music created at a certain frequency. So all music vibrates at a certain frequency. And this one is specifically designed to heal, to even calm the heart rate, to promote sleep in the human body. How stinking cool is that? You can find these for free on YouTube. There's plenty of playlists there. Spotify has a good 432 Hz playlist. Now, I don't want to claim that these things are going to fix your life and heal you right away, but they are worth trying. If you're feeling overwhelmed, overstimulated, you're in the car with all your kids, turn this music on, roll down some of the windows and watch what happens. If anything, just consider this as like tools to add to your toolkit. Number four, bring nature inside as much as you can. You can do this by simply opening up your windows, pulling back the curtains, opening the blinds every single day. Welcome nature in as much as you can. I have plants all over my home. I decorate with the colors of nature. And you guys, colors of nature aren't void of red and pinks and orange. But the most common colors are the ones that you see most often in nature. The greens, the blues, the browns, the neutrals. So I try to focus big areas with those colors. And then I add in pops of, you know, the colors of poppies and lavender and beautiful things like that here and there. But colors of nature, again, scientifically proven to calm the human body down because nature is a place where humans were designed to heal. Being outside, being in a body of water, being in the sun, it heals the human body. So bring that into your environment as much as you can. You will reap some of those benefits. Really quickly, I want to take a break to thank the sponsor of this video, Kettle and Fire. So we use Kettle and Fire, specifically their bone broth in our home. We do this to boost and increase the minerals and the nutrients that go into our food. It's one of the best mom hacks that I've got when it comes to making healthy food easy. So bone broth is a drinking or a cooking liquid that's made from slow simmering bones. So they simmer it for like 14 hours. They add organic vegetables, herbs, spices, and they package it up for you with no preservatives. And you get it in this beautiful container. I add this to soups, rice. I cook our rice in it. I add it to gravies, broths, literally everything that I'm making that involves a liquid. I'm adding some kind of bone broth to it. And Kettle and Fire is just an incredible option for high quality bone broths and extra nutrients in your home. To learn more about the benefits of bone broth or to get your hands on this liquid gold, you can click the link down below in the description. Thank you again Kettle and Fire. This is such an honor to be working with you. I've had you in my home for over two years and this is just kind of a pinch me moment. So thank you so much. My next point I feel like is the most underrated point when it comes to creating a calm home and a calm environment. Check in with yourself. The mother is the rock of the home. She is the energy force of the home. However the mom is doing, that's how everybody else is going to do. That's how the environment is going to feel. I don't say this to scare you at all. And in fact, I share this point with humility because it's something that I am learning. Something that through trying, through experimenting with this, through properly taking care of myself, I'm noticing massive differences and changes in my family and in my home. I'm going to link the podcast down below that is teaching me so much about this, so much about self-responsibility as the mother. But our children are parts of us. They are within our energy field. And if those terms are new to you, this podcast will really explain it. And I understand self-care. I understand decluttering. I understand de-stressing. But putting that into action in these years with littles, homeschooling, working from home, little kids running around, cooking, cleaning, all the things that I've been called to carry, it hasn't been easy for me. I have wonderful days. I also have really, really difficult days where I am wriggled with guilt at the end of it. And I just, I want to start over. I have bad days. Okay, I have hard days. I don't really like saying bad days. I have days that are harder. But learning about how important I am when it comes to the well-being of my family, the peace within my home, it's been really empowering. And it's kind of nudging me to get to the next stage of who Margaret is and what she's capable of holding and doing for her family. So there's a lot to unpack here. But if you're irritable and angry and stressed all the time and rushing around, you always have to be doing something, first of all, you're not wrong. But when your children are reflecting the same things to you, see it as a message. See it as a method of communication. That's all I'll say there. Again, I highly encourage you to listen to this podcast if this is piquing interest. If it's not, it's not the time for you to meditate, reflect on this. No big deal. I am not the expert, but this has drastically been changing the way I view everything. Next point, number six, engage the senses as much as possible. So there's a reason we love vacation. They create these vacation places, whether it's a vacation home, whether it's restaurants on vacation or resorts, they are experts at creating experiences. Why don't we do that in our home more often? Creating an experience is what calms you down. It makes the mood romantic and enjoyable. And the easiest way to do this is by thinking about every single sense when you're trying to create an experience. Dinner time, for example. Calm music. Delicious food on the stove top. Candles. You're tasting good food. You're holding hands before a meal. There are so many teeny tiny little things that you can add to a moment in your home, to a mundane moment that you do over and over and over again that make it more intentional, more peaceful, more enjoyable. And when you get up from the table, are you going to feel rushed and chaotic and stressed out? Or will you feel a little bit more calm and a little bit more at peace? I would like to argue that it would be the latter when you put in a little bit more effort to create an experience that binds the human and the environment all together. That's what an experience is. I love creating experiences. I don't know why, but I've always been that way. I've always been the one to light the candles. Even when I was, you know, a middle child of six kids, I would light the candles. I would turn on Romanza or Enya. I just craved a romantic, peaceful dinner experience every single night with my family. I love it. And I'm still doing it today as a 31 year old. Last point for a calm home is established rhythms because you can't really have a peaceful and a calm home. You can't do it easily without having established rhythms where everyone in the family is taking part in caring for the home. I'm not super on board with like, I don't know. I can't, I don't want to say it that way because there are people where it's just how they function and it's not a bad thing. But I'm more, let's create habits and rhythms instead of trying to control my children. I would like to give them freedom in these habits and in the rhythms that we set. So I think it's just the way I go about it is more team forward instead of you do this, I do that. You know, I don't know. I'm just a gentle human. I'm a peacemaker. So this seems right for me. Example of a rhythm is before breakfast, all of us have to make our bed, brush our hair, me included, and get dressed. Our rooms need to be tidied and picked up and then we sit down for breakfast together. Easy little rhythm. Bedtime. Yeah, brushing our teeth, getting our PJs on. But the rhythm is to snuggle on the couch every single night and read a book together with the fireplace on. There's intentionality in all of these rhythms but creating some kind of structure where you know what to expect. Your children know what to expect. Your family knows what to expect. Dare I say your home even knows what to expect. It makes it a little bit more manageable, a little bit more calm and peaceful and less likely to get like chaotic and blown out of proportion because that happens. Like that happens almost every day for us which is why we come back to these rhythms. I hope this list gives you something tangible to try and to start. You don't have to do them all at once. Take your time. Enjoy the process. Enjoy getting to know what fits with your family and your environment. And thank you so much for watching. I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye!