Making Your Home Comfortable
You drag your tired feet up the stairs and tug your earphones out; you switch your iPod off and check your voicemail as you unlock your door. It’s the end of another day and all you want to do is to put your feet up and forget about everything else.
Whether you like to collapse into a bed with hundreds of pillows, love the scent of freshly baked cookies or need a foot rub when you finish your day, the best feeling is the world is often the feeling of just being “home”. Sometimes, creating this feeling is a little tough when you’re living in an apartment. Perhaps your apartment carries the spirit of too many others who have lived there before you, or perhaps you haven’t been there long enough to feel “homey”. Well, fear not, here’s some ideas to get on the fast track to creating a more homey feeling.
Arrangement
One of the core teachings of Feng Shui, the ancient Chinese art of placement, is de-cluttering. Don’t bring endless boxes into your new place and stack them up everywhere. Move in only what you need, unpack it, put it in its place and put the rest into storage. Feng Shui principles state that rooms should be arranged in a complete square or rectangle. This balance in a room can translate to the one living in it, creating harmony and stability. Feng Shui teaches that in order to have a positive life experience, Chi (life-force, energy) needs to be able to flow freely. To ensure this happens, don’t place furniture directly against the walls and never make a television or other electronic device the focal point of a room. Ideally, you would have three places to sit inside a room with a welcoming piece in the middle, like a coffee table, that forms a full circle. Televisions and other objects should sit outside the circle in the larger “square” of the room.
Create a sense of harmony by only including items in your apartment that have meaning to you. Flowers may symbolize your connection to nature; a set of doves may represent love. As you decide where to put each object in the room think about its meaning and why you chose to put it there. Now your apartment is not filled with “junk” but with the things that are important to you.
Touches of Comfort
Now that your rooms are in order, add colors and fabrics that will make your environment pleasing to all your senses. Don’t paint your apartment with bright colors in an effort to make it more cheery. Instead, have a neutral base on the walls and in your furniture and add rugs, cushions and wall décor in colors that you like. If you appreciate change, choose colors that are fitting to the season and change them throughout the year. Don’t worry about impressing guests or creating a certain “look” when buying décor. Follow your gut and choose what you like. To illuminate your décor, aim for indirect light sources (keep light bulbs hidden) in every room. Overhead lights can sometimes be too jarring.
|
Email this Article
Print this Article
