One Word 2020: HOME

What do you want your life to look like?

I think we all have pictures of this in our head, but have you ever sat down and actually taken the time to think about your life and what you want it to look like? How you want the people to feel when they interact with you and the things you influence like your family, your work, and your home? I started thinking about a word for the year on the last day of December, and what I wanted my life to look like for 2020. Overwhelmingly, the word "home" kept popping up.

We've spent a lot of time in 2019 working on parts of our physical home and we plan to continue this in 2020. But "home" felt like something that could be broken down into a lot of little pieces that kind of encompassed a lot of my thoughts at this point in my life. So I started asking myself a lot of questions about the intentions I had for my space, things, life.

• Inside my home: I want the spaces to feel cohesive. Right now, our upstairs and downstairs are like night and day and it drives me nuts. I dread going upstairs because it just feels so different than the first floor. Our first floor is clean (for the most part), organized (or at least getting there), inviting, and a place I enjoy being. Upstairs is where we dump and hide all of the things. It's not been painted since before we moved in so it visually doesn't match the curated look of the rest of the house. It's also cluttered, which I'm working on, and there is too much visual stress and mental weight to enjoy being in any of the spaces. I want my upstairs to feel just as good as the downstairs. I imagine a home where I never stress when people drop by and the whole space is fluid and open.
  
  
• Inside myself: Similarly, I want to experience the same feelings of curation, organization, and welcome in my heart that I experience when I step through my front door. I want things to make sense: does this outfit reflect how I feel; does this activity or organization complete or deplete from the image of who I want to be and who God made me to be. Do I make people feel welcomed? Am I organized in my behaviors, with my things, etc.? It's a lot when you start think about it! A lot of it boils down to being intentional.  I want to feel put together, so I have to be intentional about establishing routines and opportunities for that feeling to even exist. I don't feel curated when my house is a cluttered mess and my closet is a mash up of random 'in the moment' interests. 

I know a lot of this may come across as setting an unattainable goals, but I think you have to sit down and figure out what you what your life to look like as some sort of guide. Otherwise it's all a clustery mess! I want people to feel welcomed in my home and in my life. I want to feel put together on the outside and the inside, like everything has a place and that it all belongs, just like a home. I need things to be organized and uncluttered at home and at work to free my mind from stress and be more productive.


So what do you want your life to look? How do you want people to feel when they're around you? How do you want to feel when you're in your space? Do you feel like you're at home? If you have a word of the year, let me know!