15 Ways to De-Stress your Nest for a Happy, Healthy Home

Creating a comfortable and inviting home can have a large impact in your overall health. If you do create this environment, you can encourage healthier behaviors. You may be surprised how easy it is for you to focus on matters that are important to your health and your family when your home is uncluttered and appealing.

Your home is where is all comes together!

Now ladies, don’t misinterpret what I am trying to say here. I am not saying that your home must be clean, orderly, and look like it came out of a designer magazine. The key to a healthy home environment centers on making your home a place you can relax, rejuvenate, and recharge so you can better deal with the world around you.

Take a look around your home and ask yourself how you feel when you are in that space. Does it make you feel stressed or does it help you feel comfortable and relax? Your home does not have to be perfect. It just must be a place that feels inviting and warm to you!

When your home feels warm and inviting to you, you can spend your time focusing on your health. A healthy home can help encourage and promote healthy behaviors in other areas of your life.

Here is a list of my top 15 favorite small changes you can make to your home today to make it a haven for you and your family and promote health and de-stressing for your whole family.

1. Create your relaxation zone. Make one place in your home a comfortable place you can escape to in order to relax. This can be a simple chair and lamp in the corner of your bedroom that makes you feel comfortable and stress free.
2. De-clutter your home room by room. When you have less clutter around the home, you are able to think more clearly and feel more comfortable and relaxed. Take it one room at a time and clear the extra clutter.
3. Bring fresh flowers inside to help brighten the mood and atmosphere. There is nothing more relaxing than dealing with nature and beautiful flowers.
4. Create an organization station for papers. Do you find a counter in your kitchen seems to be the catch all for papers? Create and area or a wall station where you can organize everything and take away the stress from seeing a mess of papers in the kitchen.
5. Hang a large family calendar next to the organization station so that you can easily keep track of your family’s activities. This creates less stress in home trying to remember what exactly you had going on tonight.
6. Set out big bowls of fruit and vegetables in your kitchen for décor. This creates a great smell in your home and promotes healthy eating from the whole family.
7. Make sure you have plenty of natural light coming into your home. Get rid of heavy and dark drapes. Natural light will lift your mood and promote relaxation.
8. Turn off the TV and facebook. Start working on a hobby of yours.
9. Choose natural paint colors for a more relaxing atmosphere. Bold colors can promote stress.
10. Laugh often.
11. Get social. Go out and have fun with friends. Research has shown that people who spend more time being social are happier and have less stress.
12. Create a family game night. In our world today, families are so busy they hardly even get to eat together any more. Mark off one day on your calendar and label it family game night. Spend time together as a family playing board games or whatever games are interesting to you. This will help your family be happier and closer overall.
13. In addition to game night, make sure your family sits down and eats together as a  family, old fashioned style. This will help build stronger family relationships and give the parents and kids time to
    talk about what is going on in their world and what they may be struggling with.
14. Put the computer in the office and limit time spent mindlessly on it. It is more important for your comfortable, inviting, and healthy home that you spend less time on the computer and more time as a family or working on hobbies you enjoy.
15. Last but not least, make your bathroom into an oasis. There is not better place to relax than in the bathroom. Make it inviting and a great place for you to de-stress.

By focusing on creating a home that is comfortable and inviting, you are setting it up to promote healthy behaviors and create a happy and healthy family.

Do you have some healthy home tips you would like to add? Leave me a comment below and let me know: what is your favorite way to create a comfortable home?