Day 4 was about making your home welcoming. A place to put your feet up. While I want my home to be clean and clutter free, I don’t want it to be SO clean and perfect that people are afraid to mess anything up. To me, a big part of making a home inviting is letting it look lived in. It’s clean, it’s lovely, but people aren’t afraid to get comfy on the couch with a throw blanket and put their feet up on the coffee table.
I am not naturally one of those clean people that has everything organized and in it’s place and everything arranged just so, however, when I decide to change something (like my housekeeping habits) I tend to go too far the other way so this was a good reminder for me.
So what are some ways to make your home an inviting relaxing place? The first suggestion in the 31 Days to Clean book made me laugh.
“1. Don’t, under any circumstances have plastic coverings on your furniture. Nothing says uncomfortable like plastic under your behind.”
Some other suggestions are to have throws and pillows (but not too many) on your couches and chairs. To many pillows are uncomfortable and get in the way but sometimes people need to put one behind their back. I have a dear friend who is 9 months pregnant, and she likes to have some back support when she sits on our couch. Unfortunately we have NO throw pillows though so she ends up using a folded throw blanket. It works but it’s not the most inviting and welcoming thing, is it!
Pillows are moving to the top of my list. 😉 (Right above getting or making a piece of artwork for that wall! Yikes!)
Also having tea and coffee ready when guests arrive and having tea ready to be made for surprise guests is a very welcoming thing to do. Yesterday I made some Red Rooibos and Orange tea sweetened with honey and put it in a pitcher in the fridge. It’s yummy 🙂 If I keep something like that all the time Josh and I can drink it whenever we want it and I’ll have something to offer the occasional friend that drops in. 🙂 Just making the tea made me feel like a good hostess. lol
The Martha challenge for this day was to clean the oven and microwave. We don’t have a microwave so I cleaned the oven and our toaster oven, which really needed it! While I was at it I wiped down the breadbox (which is currently full of seeds for my garden instead of bread). It feels good to have little things like that taken care of since those are things that sort if bug me but I never take the time to clean. 😉
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