Natural Medicine Clinic Publications

Your Home: Is it a Place for Healing?

By Nancy Aagenes, ND

Take a minute to think about your home. Make a list of things you are tolerating and want changed. Get creative. Switch things around-what if your big bedroom became a family room and your bed went to a smaller space. How much space does sleeping take?

This topic is much on my mind with the opportunity to sell one home and buy another. As I prepare this house for showing and sale, I love it more. I am uncovering relatively simple and inexpensive solutions to things I wanted changed and have tolerated. My closed in kitchen has bothered me for years. At no cost and almost no time, I removed a couple of cupboard doors and the light and spaciousness are instant.

This spring clean your home as if you were doing it for a potential buyer, as if it were a precious thing that you were offering to another and for which you want to receive full value. Even ask a friend or realtor to come look so you can see it with new eyes. Go to an open house one Sunday. See what you notice when you have the opportunity to examine another home at a deeper level.

Throw stuff out. Ask yourself if you were moving only what you needed and love, would you take this? If there is any doubt, get rid of it. We suffer from abundance in many ways.

You will not delay things you previously thought too cosmetic and indulgent. For myself, I would have invested time and dollars differently and could have been more creative about how I lived in this house.

In wanting something else, like another car or another home, we often fail to fully develop the thing already in our hands. Each of us could do some small thing today that would make our home better. This is not about the expensive remodeling. Its much more simple-the short in the bathroom light fixture that has annoyed me for years is finally getting fixed!

Is there anything that more affects the quality of our daily life and health than our home? If you live in a place you love, my guess is you are healthier because it is here that you spend the most time. It is in our homes that we accommodate daily good habits, or don't.

Do you have an easy place to stretch and do yoga? Do you really enjoy being in your kitchen? What small thing would make it better right now? Is it a good place to relax while preparing a meal for friends? If it isn't you aren't going to like cooking. If you don't find a cooking style that you enjoy, you aren't going to eat as well. Is your bedroom soothing and beautiful? Does your bathroom allow a beautiful and generous ritual of relaxation and cleansing?

As a young woman in the 70s I remember distinctly the moment a friend of my mother's said she loved cleaning house because she felt it was a service to her husband and her children. She said she felt closest to God when she was dusting. I was astonished and even a little appalled.