5 Things Holding You Back From Creating a Truly Great Home

Want a truly great home? However you define a truly great home for you, there are a few things that can hold anybody back from achieving a great space that brings them peace, motivates them and is a place they love being in. Peruse this list to see if any of these items are keeping you from creating the kind of space you’d like to have.

Again, it doesn’t really matter what your definition of a truly great home is — maybe it’s one that’s clean most of the time but fun all the time, maybe it’s one that’s always filled with friends and family or maybe it’s one that’s your private oasis — one of the biggest things holding you back from creating a truly great home might simply be you trying to make your home something you think someone else might want.

When you care what others think — when you worry that people don’t think you’re entertaining enough or are too weird because you want to hang your collection of vintage sci-fi memorabilia on the wall as art — you deprive your home (and the world!) from your very home unique style. So instead of having a home that expresses your personality, it expresses what you think it should look like based on others’ expectations.

You can interpret this as both physical and mental things you don’t need. From paperwork clutter to furniture you should have gotten rid of long ago to negative beliefs that make you think your home (or your life) is worse off than it actually is.

Maybe you’re busy at work. Or you’d rather just lay around. Or you think you can’t do anything because you don’t have a lot of money. Or you’re not going to be here very long so why bother? Lack of effort — really trying to take the home you’ve got now and turning it into the home you want today — is a big road block on the road to creating a truly great home. It doesn’t take a lot of money to make a home you like, it really does just take a little effort in the form of working with your home’s limitations, your dream home fantasies and making it work together some how, bit by bit.

The phrase “eh I’ll do it later” might be standing between you and a truly great home. From DIY projects and design ideas (see above) to cleaning tasks that will just get worse the longer you let them be, don’t wait until later or tomorrow or next week. Do something now to make your home a little better. All those “little betters” add up after awhile. And many times they add up to a truly great home.

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There’s something on the other end of the spectrum — opposite of what we’ve been talking about above — of not waiting until later or putting in effort. And that’s putting in too much continuous effort. That’s always looking toward the next project, the next goal, the future — and never taking time to enjoy your home. Because maybe the true trick of a truly great home isn’t getting to some end point with a sign that says “TRULY GREAT HOME;” but rather taking the time, gratitude and presence along the way to appreciate the small things, be grateful for the bad things and notice that the home you have right now is kind of pretty great already for a lot of reasons.