Home Makeover

January is the month of the year to take stock of your life. The urge to examine your life and check how you’re doing at the beginning of a new year is universal and, I believe, entirely healthy.

There doesn’t have to be anything wrong with your life to want to run a check, and ensuring your life is still fresh and in good shape is preferable to waiting for a crisis to prompt a change.

I’m going to work with you here to reappraise the different areas of your life. This is a terrific opportunity to take a look at your home, career, self-esteem and money.

Quality of life

The place for us to begin our inquiry is with your home. Improving the quality of your life begins at home. Putting your house in order can mean just that, organising your home so that it enhances and supports the rest of your life.

As the pace of modern life speeds up, the greater the need for your home to provide you with sanctuary, a retreat where you can relax and recharge. The more complex your life, the more important your home becomes as a place to unwind and unravel.

Having a solid base, a place to call home, underpins your life, strengthening every other area, giving you a sense of feeling grounded and secure. Home is the one place where you can really feel safe. We Brits, more than any other nation are obsessed with owning our own home.

Renting like the New Yorkers or Parisians holds no appeal. Perhaps it’s our island mentality that drives us to own our own piece of the world, but we all share a desire to have our own place. This is something Mrs Thatcher fervently encouraged in the eighties, and, nowadays, with the widespread availability of mortgages, investing in bricks and mortar is open to more of us than ever before.

The need to “cocoon” ourselves from a busy, sometimes hostile world was first identified by the trend spotter, Faith Popcorn, over twenty years ago. Since then, we have seen an explosion of home delivery and home shopping services that allow us to nest and snuggle up, entertaining ourselves in our own homes. Popular home improvement programmes such as Changing Rooms and House Doctor and the upsurge in DIY confirm that, now, more than ever, your home really is your castle.

Clean home, happy home

Even housework has become hip as we reconnect with our inner domestic goddess and learn to love cleanliness and respect housework. Whether it’s Kim and Aggie from “How Clean is your House” or Rita Konig, Vogue’s glamorous housework columnist, there’s no shortage of experts encouraging you to clean up your life with a good clearout.

But this surge of interest in the art and craft of proper homekeeping should not really be surprising – a smoothly run, clean home not only gives immense pleasure, but it actually saves time and stress.

Jennifer’s story

I remember meeting a new client, Jennifer, in her home, a vast loft style apartment overlooking the River Thames in London.

The place was incredibly impressive with breathtaking views, but it felt cold and uninviting. I couldn’t imagine anyone actually living there. It had the look of one of those uber-trendy hotels, the sort that look great but feel awful. The kitchen was full of cutting edge appliances that she’d clearly never figured out how to use.

As a successful city lawyer, life was fast for Jennifer and she felt she’d forgotten how to slow down and relax. She was getting increasingly tired, feeling overwhelmed and out of control with her life.

I suggested she begin to make her new flat into more of a welcoming environment that she’d look forward to coming home to and spending an evening in, at least twice a week. She had to really think about softening up the entire place to be a more relaxing place to be in.

Cooking a meal for herself, even heating up a take-away was progress as she’d actually be eating from home. The more time she spent doing this, the more she came to love this downtime, and the more energy she had as a result.

I also encouraged her to throw an open-house party and meet all her other neighbours. She had been living there for nearly a year and hardly knew anyone by name. This was a tremendous success, with absolutely everyone coming and it really changed the atmosphere of the entire building from that moment onwards.

Coming home to a place that feels like a home provides you with a stability that you need in order to successfully handle a busy, ambitious life.

Homeworking

We’re happier working from home too. More and more of us are choosing to work at home rather than commute to an office. In a recent report by the UK Centre for Economic and Environmental Development more than 86 per cent of homeworkers surveyed felt more healthy as a result of their decision to work from home.

The same study also found that homeworkers were more efficient – with productivity up by anything from 60 per cent to 80 per cent.

Attending to your home, ensuring it provides you with a solid base for the rest of your life is vital. Investing a little time, thought and effort taking care of it will pay dividends giving you a feeling of comfort and control over your life. A tidy house and a tidy mind always go hand in hand.