Refresh Your Home With Dorothy
I am thrilled to be introducing our guest blogger today! When I thought about our Refresh, Renew, and Repair Challenge for April, I knew I had to have Dorothy write a guest post! Dorothy is a wife to Jack and soon-to-be mama to Olivia. She is passionate about all things home related and enjoys organization. When she's not sipping iced coffee and journaling, you can find her running half-marathons, shopping at staples, or spending time with friends and family. Dorothy has a lovely clean style that she tries to incorporate into her daily life. I know you're going to love her as much as I do!
Dorothy has been my dear friend for many years. Dorothy and I met for the first time at high school choir practice and we've been friends ever since. We've had the opportunity to walk through several seasons of life together. Dorothy and I are both nurses and even got to work together at our local hospital. We share the same faith in Jesus and strive to live lives of value. Dorothy and I started blogs at the same time. It would make me so happy if you would check out her blog at www.sheseekspearls.com and show her some love!
Thanks for reading,
Abby
I am honored to write about the topic of refreshing your home as part of the Refresh, Renew, and Repair challenge by Home in the Hollow!
When Abby asked me to write this guest post for Home in the Hollow, I got SO EXCITED! Ever since I my husband and I got married and we had our own space for the first time, I've been obsessed with making our home our own! I love everything about home organization, functionality, and maintenance. The info you find here is something you'll see I'm very passionate about and work very hard on!
To me, the concept of refreshing your home is not about covering-up-the-problem. Instead, refreshing looks at the current issues in your home and directs you in advancing one level at a time. Taking this approach means you're refreshing your home and improving it a little bit at a time to achieve a sense of refreshment, rather than approaching it with impossible standards. You can't refresh something unless you start from the ground up or else that's just considered a "bandaid approach" (which has only short-term benefits). We're going for true, long-term refreshment here, so no "bandaids" or quick fixes are allowed!
Everyone has a variety of ways to address their home's needs. The Hierarchy of the Home, which I'm discussing in my post today, is a mindset/method I've developed that works well to address the core the issues of your home, and help you work your way up. The most effective method to improve a situation is to start from the ground up!
Refreshing Your Home - The Hierarchy of the Home
Let me introduce you to what I consider to be the pillars of priority in your home, or The Hierarchy of the Home, if you will! To me, this is equal to the concept of how you can't enjoy a burning candle in your kitchen, if your sink is full of dirty dishes and your countertops are overflowing with stuff. Or, how a student cleans their study space, before they can focus on a school project (hello, it's me!). The concept of this hierarchy is the same. To explain the hierarchy of the home concept, I would like to discuss each of the five levels below!
No. 1
I believe the first level of achievement in the home needs to be a declutter of the "stuff" in your home. Maybe your clutter isn't hoarder-level status, but we all have things in our home that take up space that we don't want or need. Especially if we don't regularly declutter the spaces in our homes! Once you've decluttered to some extent (not perfectly, but just a decent declutter to start), then you've given yourself more mental space to move onto the next phase of refreshment. Which brings us to the next level in the hierarchy!
No. 2
Next, the sort level is about ensuring your items are organized and put away in their appropriate spots. You know you've achieved this level in the hierarchy when you look around your room and see that the items in the room both belong, and are put away in their appropriate spaces! Ensure that items you frequently use are in a space make sense to you and are easily accessible. Feeling a sense of refreshment in your home yet?
No. 3
The clean level is about cleaning the dirt and dust. You've accomplished this level when the space in your home is free of the constant out-of-the-ordinary grime! Kitchens and bathrooms are alwayssss going to be sources of constant dirt due to the nature of those environments. For example, in my kitchen, I had a problem with mud and dirt always entering and spreading throughout the rest of the house. So I achieved the "clean" level when I found a workflow that prevented the excessive, out-of-the-ordinary dirt. I did this by getting a better rug to put in the kitchen as well as a boot tray for all our shoes and a rag to use on my dog's paws for when it's wet or snowy outside. My kitchen still certainly gets dirty every day from cooking, but it's a normal, attainable and expected amount of dirt.
You can also trial certain products to make dirt less of a problem in your kitchen. For instance: investing in a nonstick pan so that clean-up is more attainable on a daily basis (I LOVE my Caraway fry pan because it's so easy to clean and it's worth every penny!). So go ahead and spend some time contemplating what out-of-the-ordinary extra dirty places you have in your home and brainstorm ways you can minimize the routine dirt! I feel a HUGE sense of refreshment after this level!
No. 4
This upper level is where it gets more rewarding: style! Updated interior design can totally rejuvenate your space, accomplishing an even higher level of refreshment in your home! For example, I achieved this level in my kitchen after I painted my kitchen cabinets white, placed new hardware on them, bought new lighting fixtures, and made beautiful board and batten walls. Once I achieved the style I wanted, through completing those renovations and projects, I felt so much more refreshed by this space! I no longer look at the once stained, plain walls with disdain; but now, I enjoy walking into my beautiful little kitchen with it's fresh style!
No. 5
The most satisfying level is the top level: Fine-tune. This is akin to Maslow's hierarchy of needs where the top achievement is self-fulfillment: the most content you will ever be. So, in my analogy, this is when you perfect your area by adding little extra touches or embellishments, like picking out what specific kind of oils you like to diffuse in that space. I believe that it's in this level when you actually have enough mental space to enjoy something like a piece of art. In this level, you can enjoy experimenting with adding specific soft background music into your space. Whereas before, you likely couldn't enjoy those things or even think about them because you were drowning in clutter or battling excessive dirt on the daily. But when all of the other levels are achieved, and you find yourself aligning with the fine-tune level, you can appreciate those extra touches like hand-lettering a scripture verse, or rearranging certain books on your shelf, etc.
To bring it all together, there are five basic levels of achievement to work towards in your home to get the refreshment you're after! To refresh your home, simply identify what problem you're stuck in, and work up the hierarchy one level at a time. All it takes is advancing one level to find a little more refreshment. Before you can truly enjoy the little touches in your space you need to update the style of your space. And before you can enjoy the style of your space, you need to remove the dirt and dust. And before you can enjoy a clean area, you must sort and arrange the items in their appropriate spaces. And before you can arrange the items in those spaces you must declutter and clear out the junk!
This order of achievement sets you up for success with the interventions you put into action to help improve your home. Just adding a candle in a room isn't going to improve your home refreshment long-term. A longer lasting solution is taking this approach and using the method of The Hierarchy of the Home to know the next thing you want to work on to achieve a higher level of refreshment! You can totally aim to achieve the top level of the home hierarchy, but if your goal is a simple home refresh, simply go room by room and determine what level of the hierarchy that room is and advance just one level at a time (unless you're ready for more work)! This method, in my opinion, gives you a true sense of refreshment because it strategically addresses the issues in your home!
If you felt inspired by this blog post, please head to my blog or my Instagram page to follow along with me for similar, helpful content!
Until next time,
Dorothy
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