Moving from a big city to a tiny range of hills that are lesser known, little did I know it would change my perspective about life and home. I learnt the concept of living with less and with the basics. That doesn’t mean living without things that truly make you happy or bigger adjustments, it means prioritizing your space with what you need and leaving the room clear.
A few things that I learnt:
- Write down maybe 3 to 5 points on the kind of home that truly makes you happy. That is where the journey of having your home begins. Points may include things like more space, light, color scheme, whether or not it is more environmentally friendly, etc. Post this, you’ll look in every room for the things or linens that don’t fall into the fit. Basically, declutter everything that doesn’t seem to fit and make sure you dispose correctly.
- Learned to be okay with lending things. You can’t hoard. For instance, if we organize a party at our place, instead of buying too many dinner sets or glasses, we borrow from our neighbors. We don’t have to shop for everything that we need.
- Buy locally but buy what wouldn’t add to clutter and is still durable. Because everything has a cost to the environment. Adding more and more will also add up to more time spent in cleaning and managing. Remember that.
- Moving to a more plastic free living. We aren’t purchasing any more plastic, whatever we get, we prefer reusing it. From storage spaces to laundry bags, we have tried to move to bamboo and cane as alternatives.
- Reusing from our parents. Before we buy something, we always call up our parents if they have something similar. To my surprise, under most situations they do, and it’s simply lying in the store. We replace the parts in a machine or wash the linen and modify it a bit and reuse it. It means that the product has a long lifespan and doesn’t end up in landfill.
- Having a neutral color palette. We have set up our home to be more color neutral, we have pastels and light colors in our home. It not only brings in a lot of positivity but also looks amazing for many years. The simpler and neutral, the less you’ll be bored of it. Not just the home, in our regular dressing as well, my husband and I prefer wearing neutral shades so that we don’t end up getting too confused with too many options or wasting our time in mixing and matching. The good thing about neutral colors is that everything will go with everything. Of course, while reusing everything old and colorful that was previously bought.
- Not succumbing to peer pressure. Where your neighbors or friends may have a preference to decorate their homes and spaces, a home should always be a reflection of the person living in it. We learnt to not make our home look flamboyant only because our friends and family have something amazing, or we don’t end up buying things because of what a guest or visitor would think, or just because it's a social media trend.