“My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest.” — Isaiah 32:18

✨ What If Home Could Heal?

When we first got married, my husband used to always say that he didn’t care where we lived or what our house looked like, that he would be just as happy in a tent. There’s a lot to be said for not putting too much importance on the building that makes your shelter. You and I have seen plenty of people who buy houses more expensive than they can afford, purchase furniture and appliances that end up on high-interest credit cards, and who feel the stress each and every time they walk in the door about what all this is costing them. So, yes, I certainly appreciate my husband’s laidback perspective when it comes to a house as a shelter.

But we’ve also realized some things through the years.

Your home, well, it’s more than a shelter. It’s where you build memories with the people you love. It’s where you cook meals that nourish your body. It’s where you lay your head to sleep at night, and it’s where you raise your kids. Your home is the place where your body, mind, and soul recharge after a long day. is more than a shelter—it’s the place where your body, mind, and spirit recharge. Your home doesn’t have to be fancy or up-to-date on all the latest furnishings or something to make your frenemies jealous, but there’s a lot to be said about making your home your sanctuary for wholeness and wellness, the place you go to rest, recover, and restore you and your family.

🧠 Why Home Matters, According to Science

It’s a mistake I’ve often made through the years when it comes to home. I’ve equated design and decor with environment. And, sure, a house with great interior design certainly can be easy on the eyes. But environment also has to do with clutter or the lack there of. How organized a space is or not. Whether the rooms feel restful or chaotic. How the people in the home feel being in the home, both in relationships and in the space itself. The way a house feels, whether big or small, cottage or modern, impacts your sense of health and wellness significantly.

  • Lower Those Cortisol Levels: Neuroscience News published an article in 2023 with research that found that individuals who described their homes as “restful and organized” had 33% lower levels of cortisol (the stress hormone). 1
  • Clutter Can Give You the Munchies: You might like to think that you thrive in a cluttered environment, that you’re a creative who isn’t bothered by the piles around you. But that clutter could lead to more snacking and compulsive eating. In a study from 2016, researchers discovered that college students living in cluttered and disorganized dorm rooms ate over three times the amount of calories their fellow students in organized and decluttered spaces did. 2 If you’re serious about healthy living through diet and exercise, you might consider getting serious about the state of your living environment as well.
  • Let in the Light: You’ll likely feel better and have better healing if your home has natural light coming in the windows. Psychologist Roger Ulrich conducted a noted study in which he monitored the healing rates of patients recovering from gallbladder surgery. Those patients in hospital rooms with natural light, with a view of trees from their windows, healed more quickly than those patients who had restricted natural light and whose rooms faced a concrete wall. 3

Your body and your brain are far more impacted by your surroundings than you might think. Noise, harsh artificial light, dust bunnies, overflowing trash cans, clutter, closets so crammed you can’t find anything, it all exacts a toll on your nervous system. It’s hard to embrace wholeness and wellness when the environment you’re consistently living in doesn’t support that. 

So what can you do?

🪴 7 Ways to Make Your Home a Sanctuary for Wholeness

1. Decluttering Baby Steps That Leave You Feeling Hopeful and Motivated 

When it comes to decluttering efforts, in the past I’ve often shot myself in the foot. I dump out the whole dresser, pile everything from the closet on the bed…and then stand back in complete overwhelm. My grand visions of getting my whole house decluttered before dinnertime stop right about where they started, just with me having moved one huge pile to a slightly different location.

When it comes to decluttering, give yourself small wins. Visual clutter = mental clutter, which means that even when you declutter a relatively small space, like a shelf, you’re still giving your brain a rest, a little place to delight in the order you’ve created. That in turn can help foster feelings of clarity, making it easier to move to the next small job and to the next. 

“Outer order contributes to inner calm.” — Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project

📦 Try this: Choose one drawer, one shelf, or one room this week to bring to order. You already know the drill, to donate or toss things that you don’t need or don’t use. But also make time, as you finish each small area, to celebrate. Take a before and after picture on your phone, to remind you of what you’ve been able to do. And be sure to check in with yourself; how do you feel with this area tidied up? What about that feeling do you want to remember, to carry forward into the next week?

“Outer order contributes to inner calm.”

Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project

2. Become a Plant Parent

If you’ve ever wanted to justify your indoor plant habit, now is your chance. As it turns out, adding a few plants to your rooms helps with your sense of well-being, as well as helping filter the air in your home. 4 (You can read more about simple ways to detoxify your home and improve air quality here.)

🌱 Easy starter plants: aloe vera, ZZ plant, succulents. 5

3. Create a Cozy Corner for Prayer, Bible Reading, and Journaling

There’s something special about setting aside a comfortable chair by your bay window or creating a nook out on your front porch where you spend a little time each day in prayer, in scripture, and in journaling. It’s a visual reminder to take time to focus on your spirit. It’s a statement about making sure that your spiritual walk is a priority. And it also helps make the most powerful wholeness practice, spending time with God, a sacred spot in your home. 

“Be still, and know that I am God.” 

Psalm 46:10

📖 Want some bonus points? Add your favorite cozy blanket, devotional book, and candle.

4. Smells Good, Looks Soft

The way your home smells is an important signal to your body and mind. You can try using lavender, eucalyptus, or frankincense essential oils to convey a sense of calm. .Aromatherapy seems to help calm the nervous system, lowering anxiety and alleviating stress. 6

Warm, soft light is also helpful in promoting wellness when you’re home. Lowering the lights and using ambient light instead of brighter overhead lights can help promote melatonin in your system, which can lead to better sleep.7

🕯️ Try this: Swap out harsh overhead lights for a soft lamp or Himalayan salt light, especially in the evening. Also look for lightbulbs that are ‘warm’ instead of ‘cool.’

5. Screen the Screens

You’re on screens all day at work. And then you’re on screens when you get home. Sure, there are those families out there who seem to ditch screens entirely, but for the rest of us, we’ve got to come up with ways in which technology and the blazing blue light of all those devices isn’t on constant blast in the sanctuary of our homes. While all those screens can help us with work, homework, and staying connected, over exposure has significant effects on our brains and stress levels. Heightened attention deficit disorders, disruption of sleep, and social isolation are just a few of the possible outcomes of screens always being on. 8

  • Create screen-free zones (like the bedroom or kitchen table), where devices, monitors, and televisions aren’t allowed. Do you really need that TV out on the back porch, when you could just enjoy sitting outside at sunset? Why risk missing out on a great conversation at dinner because everyone’s phones showed up for the meal, too? You can also adopt screen-free hours in your home, giving every device a time-out for a couple of hours.
  • That blue light can give you the blues. Use apps like f.lux or Night Shift to soften and change the light coming from your computer and phone screens.

📵 Bonus: Instead of immediately clicking on the TV after dinner, swap out that streaming habit with a walk outside, soft worship music, or game night with your family.

6. Make Room for Movement

It doesn’t need to be a full-on, completely appointed gym in one of the rooms of your home. You just need a little room to move. Even a small spot in your real estate to stretch, dance, or do light body weight movements can help relieve stress and get your mood up by releasing endorphins. 9

🧘‍♀️ Create a small space that makes it easy to move, with a mat, some light resistance bands, or a couple of free weights.

7. Bless Your Home

It used to be customary to bless a new home when someone moved in. I particularly love the Irish custom of bringing bread, wine (you can substitute sparkling grape juice), and salt to a new home and praying over the home:

“Bread, that this house may never know hunger. Salt, that life may always have flavor. And wine, that joy and prosperity may reign forever.”

When you pray God’s blessings over your home, when you intentionally set aside your home as a place where His love and guidance will lead, you create a place for wholeness and wellness.

  • Play worship music, affirmations, or calming instrumental tracks.
  • Read scripture or express gratitude aloud as you clean, cook, or rest.

“As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

Joshua 24:15

 

🙏 A Home that Reflects the What’s Most Important

Your home doesn’t have to be ready for a magazine shoot or be Pinterest-perfect worthy.

It just needs to be intentionally nurturing.

Home is where your children will learn their earliest lessons about God. Home is where your marriage abides. Home is where you retreat from the challenges of the world and rest. But home is not something that just happens. It’s built, intention by intention. Commit to making your home a place of wholeness and wellness, a crucial component of your health and spiritual journey. 

1 https://neurosciencenews.com/anxiety-stress-messy-home-23874/
2 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292946138_Clutter_Chaos_and_Overconsumption_The_Role_of_Mind-Set_in_Stressful_and_Chaotic_Food_Environments
3 https://www.newportinstitute.com/resources/mental-health/physical-environment-affect-you/#:~:text=Scientists%20have%20been,a%20brick%20wall.
4 https://www.piedmont.org/living-real-change/health-benefits-of-indoor-plants
5 https://www.healthline.com/health/forget-you-have-plants-11-types-that-will-forgive-you#My-plant-picks
6 https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/aromatherapy
7 https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT01855126?cond=Sleep%20Disorder&rank=9&tab=results
8 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7366948/#:~:text=Abstract,mechanisms%20and%20underlying%20causal%20relationships.
9 https://www.health.harvard.edu/topics/mind-and-mood#:~:text=Exercise%2C%20healthy%20eating%2C%20and%20stress,getting%20worse%20or%20becoming%20permanent.