{"id":609,"date":"2017-11-14T01:35:30","date_gmt":"2017-11-14T01:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jameswritinganddesign.com\/wordpress\/?p=609"},"modified":"2017-10-29T16:40:03","modified_gmt":"2017-10-29T16:40:03","slug":"making-your-home-a-refuge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jameswritinganddesign.com\/content\/making-your-home-a-refuge\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Your Home a Refuge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have been in a lot of homes, and I am amazed at how many of them are sterile. They have<br \/>\nwhite walls and nothing on the walls, or if the walls are painted, it has no decoration. It reminds<br \/>\nme of a hospital. Our home is our soft landing place. We come back to it tired, irritable, or just<br \/>\nbummed out after our days out and about. We relax and regroup here. We should invest in our<br \/>\nown mental and physical well being (as well as our families) by making it a place of inspiration.<br \/>\nYou can do this in numerous ways for instance:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Make art, or invest in art. You can read this article, which gave me some thoughts to ponder:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>http:\/\/studiosixtysix.tumblr.com\/post\/151158596757\/13reasons<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Buy a candle warmer, and infuse your house with delightful smells. I have been doing this for a<br \/>\ncouple of years now, and my family loves it. There is something wonderfully homey about having<br \/>\nthe smell of coffee cake or cookies constantly floating the air. It is a small investment (less than<br \/>\ntwenty bucks initially to buy a warmer at a retail store, and it costs less than two dollars to buy<br \/>\nscents, which last a couple of months. You can find this at Walmart in the candle area).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Play soft music. I have been experimenting for twelve weeks now with this idea, and I have found<br \/>\nthat some soft music adds a pleasant touch to the home. If music soothed Saul, from the Bible,<br \/>\nthen surely it can sooth us when we are irritable too. You can open a free Pandora account, and<br \/>\ngive it a try. Some of my favorite artists right now are the following:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Michelle Mclaughlin<\/p>\n<p>Brian Crain<\/p>\n<p>Jennifer Thomas<\/p>\n<p>Helen Jane Long<\/p>\n<p>Ludovico Einaudi<\/p>\n<p>Lindsey Stirling<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When I find myself getting irritated, I just turn the music on. It helps me tremendously.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Keep it clean. This sounds obvious, but it isn&#8217;t for a lot of people. People don&#8217;t want to go back to their home<br \/>\nwhen it isn&#8217;t clean because it isn&#8217;t relaxing. A lot of life is about forming habits. It is hard to develop the habit,<br \/>\nbut then you don&#8217;t think about it anymore. You just have to learn discipline.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Make it a family affair, and team the things you don&#8217;t want to do with something that is more pleasant. My kids and<br \/>\nI do a big clean up on Saturday. That means we vacuum, wash the floors, dust, and do anything extra to spruce up<br \/>\nfor the week. We don&#8217;t like to do it, but we put on music, we try to have fun (obviously some days are better than others),<br \/>\nand we get down to business. We know good things await us when we are done. We have lunch, have a treat, and we<br \/>\nget to play or paint the afternoon away in a nice tidy house.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Pick one thing you want to change, and work on it. When you have that down pat, add another thing. Sometimes<br \/>\naccomplishing things is all about taking baby steps in the direction you want to go!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have been in a lot of homes, and I am amazed at how many of them are sterile. They have white walls and nothing on the walls, or if the walls are painted, it has no decoration. It reminds &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jameswritinganddesign.com\/content\/making-your-home-a-refuge\/\">Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"kt_blocks_editor_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspirational","category-resource-for-growth"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.jameswritinganddesign.com\/content\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/November-14-2017-Making-Your-Home-a-Refudge.jpg?fit=1200%2C600&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5khoZ-9P","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jameswritinganddesign.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jameswritinganddesign.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jameswritinganddesign.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jameswritinganddesign.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jameswritinganddesign.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.jameswritinganddesign.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":613,"href":"https:\/\/www.jameswritinganddesign.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions\/613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jameswritinganddesign.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jameswritinganddesign.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jameswritinganddesign.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jameswritinganddesign.com\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}