Moving, building a new home, or remodeling your home? You've found the perfect post for you! Before you finalize your plans, learn how to select and/or design your new home to improve your overall happiness. Who doesn't want to be happier, right?
I recently finished reading "The Blue Zones of Happiness: Lessons from the World’s Happiest People" by Dan Buettner. The ideas in the book are fascinating. I highly recommend you read it for yourself. Of course as a declutter coach, I found the lessons in this book about people's personal possessions and houses most interesting. If you feel unhappy and you suspect your home is a big culprit to the problem, I especially recommend chapter 10, "Designing Your Home." I boiled down the lessons in this book (many coming from Chapter 10) of what you can do in your home to design an environment optimized for happiness.
I've broken the lessons into two separate lists: (1) things you can do inside your home and (2) things about your home's design or location. The first list you can find here and the second list is below. The list below is not in any particular order. The more things that are true for your home, the easier you will find it to be happy. If you a considering a move or ready to remodel, do your best to implement the ideas you can, and don't worry about the ones that are not feasible for you. (Worrying about what you can't control will NOT make you more happy.)
Okay now, let's get to it!
LOCATION: Live in one of the happiest countries in the world, or in the happiest state, province, or city in your own country. Considering moving far away? Where you live has a huge impact on your happiness. So choose wisely. In the book, people who were unhappy in their country of origin, tended to increase in happiness to the same average happiness level of those in the new country they moved to, regardless of many other factors. Read the book for more ideas and resources on where to live, but the top 3 happiest countries listed in the book are Costa Rica, Denmark, and Singapore.
TO RENT OR BUY? Consider both. Homeowners tend to be heavier than renters (about 7 pounds on average) and not necessarily happier. Consider if you are going to live in that home for less than 5 years or more than 5 years. If less than 5 years, financially and for your happiness, it's probably better to rent. If longer, consider both options carefully and choose the one that is best for you. Buying is not necessarily best for everyone.
WINDOWS/LOCATION: Have views of nature. Whether you are indoors or outdoors, views of nature increase happiness. So why not increase your daily happiness by choosing to move to (or building) a home where you can see nature when you wake up (bedroom), eat (kitchen), hang out with your family (living room), and even when you brush your teeth (bathroom).
WINDOWS: Get lots of natural sunlight. Natural light is not only a giver of vitamin D, it also makes us happier. Choose a home (or design your home) to have lots of natural sunlight coming through your windows. More specifically, make sure there are multiple big south facing windows. These windows let in more sunlight in throughout the entire day. BONUS POINTS if you have a home with a south facing sun room filled with plants. That way you can be sort of outside in nature, even from inside your home.
LOCATION: Live within walking or biking distance of a park or body of water. As noted in tip 3, nature is a big happiness booster. Choose to live close to a park or body of water; particularly a park or body of water where you can easily walk and enjoy nature at the same time without even having to drive there.
LOCATION: Live within walking or biking distance to a grocery store. Commuting is one of the biggest drainers of happiness. If you can, live where you can take a short walk or ride and get your fruits or veggies for dinner without ever having to get in your car.
LOCATION: Live within walking or biking distance to your work. Seeing a pattern here? Commuting is no fun. So if you can, live a walk's or ride's distance from your place of work. Or if you can't, live a short driving commute away or in a place where there is access to public transit. If you can't live within walking or biking distance of a park/body of water, grocery store, AND your work; at least live within a short commute of work and have one of the other two within walking or biking distance. Reduce your weekly driving time and maximize your weekly exercise outdoors as much as possible.
LOCATION: Live somewhere with minimal traffic and traffic sounds. Listing to honking cars all day (and especially all night) and sitting in long lines of cars are big stressors for many. Do your best to choose to live in a location where these are limited.
OUTDOOR SPACE: Have space for a garden or bushes/trees that produce things you can eat. Gardening is a habit of many of the happiest (and oldest) people in the world. So if you can, choose a home where you have space to grow things on your property and then make it a habit to tend to it. And if you don't have space on your own property, maybe you can find a local community garden to help tend to.
OUTDOOR SPACE: Have a nice front porch or front yard space that faces a low-traffic, walkable road where pedestrians often pass. Then sit there rather than in your back yard as much as possible. This way you can occasionally interact with neighbors, strangers, or friends passing by. The happiest people socialize for up to 6 hours a day. So rather than hiding out in your private, fenced back yard, sit where you can have social interactions as much as possible.
LOCATION: Live near a small coffee shop, park, or semi public place where you can easily meet with friends or neighbors. As socializing often is a key to happiness, living near a place(s) where you can easily meet with friends is a key to a happy life.
HOME DESIGN: Choose a home layout that is not too spread out. Smaller kitchens, more cramped family rooms, and small children sharing a bedroom is more likely to facilitate close relationships. In Denmark, people have significantly smaller homes on average than people in the U.S. and they tend to also be happier.
HOME DESIGN: Own a smaller house. Choose a home size based on what you need and can comfortably afford, not based on what others have or to make it your status symbol. Getting a big house and going into a lot of debt to buy it (and then fill it with stuff you don't really need) will not make you happy.
HOME DESIGN: Have a hygge/flow room. Hygge is a word in Danish and Norwegian that describes a cozy, contented mood evoked by comfort and conviviality (from Wikipedia). And according to The Blue Zones of Happiness, a hygge room is a room that has no technology, seating, maybe a table, and space to socialize and do hobbies you enjoy. This is also called a flow room, referring to the flow state a distraction free room can facilitate. Buy or design your home with a room like this in mind. If you want to have a TV room, perhaps have a small TV room separate from a larger, more central, functional living room that can function as your hygge room. Or have a large dining room that functions both as a place to do hobbies and as a place to eat and have your TV in the living room. Whatever room you decide to leave tech free for your hygge space, design it in a way so that you can easily socialize and do hobbies you and your family enjoy in that space. REMINDER: And add a south facing window or two in there if you can while you're at it.
HOME DESIGN: Design your home to be mostly technology free. As mentioned in the previous step, if you do plan to have a TV, make sure you only have it one of your main spaces. Design one or two rooms for tv watching and computer use (e.g. a small TV room and one shared office/homework space) and design all other rooms to be technology free (this includes living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms, kitchens, bathrooms, guest rooms, etc). If you are going to have a TV, consider building a cabinet where you can hide it away when not being used. Don't design or choose a home that has multiple media rooms, video game rooms, or movie screening rooms. The happiest people in the book were noted to watch less than 1 hour of TV per day while unhappy people watched over 6 hours of TV per day. Make it harder for you and your family to get sucked in by technology.
HOME DESIGN: Make socializing and hosting easy. Buy or design a home a home that facilitates having people over often (for fun, food, or to stay the night). Socializing often is a key to happiness and if your home makes it easier to do that, the happier you will likely be.
ACCESSORIES: Dim the lights. Lighting candles is a common Danish habit that adds to their hygge, or coziness. If building or remodeling your home, consider adding dimmers to your lights so that making a cozy, warm environment in the evening is as easy as the click of a button on the wall (or if you have a smart home/lighting system, you could dim all the lights in the entire house with the click of a single button!).
ACCESSORIES: Bring music into your home. Invest in a home-wide music system (or wireless speakers) and keep music on in the background when appropriate. Soft classical music can help you relax, Motzart can help with productivity or "make workloads lighter," upbeat music can help you get going in the morning, and highly emotional music can release dopamine in your brain and bring you pleasure (one of the three strands of happiness mentioned in the book).
ACCESSORIES: Install black out curtains and shades to anywhere in your house that might have a sleeping person. To improve sleep quality, and therefore happiness, make sure each bedroom and guest room can be completely dark. BONUS: Include black out shades or curtains (that are easy to completely open during the day) in the living room if you might have people stay on your couch someday.
ACESSORIES: Design your home/windows so it is easy to open your curtains and shades daily. Natural light is a key to happiness as already mentioned. If you can, buy/design a home so it is only a button push to open all (or most) of your window covers each morning.
No matter if you are planning on moving, building, or remodeling, decluttering before hand is a great idea.
What's harder than moving to a new place or house? Doing so with WAY to much stuff.
What's harder than building a new home from scratch? Coming home from the job site after a long day to a clutter filled house.
What's harder than remodeling? Remodeling around a ton of boxes.
Having a clutter-free, minimal space is another important part of optimizing your home for happiness. Clutter negatively impacts mood and self-esteem. Clutter literally stresses your body out. Read about how clutter increases your stress hormone, cortisol, here.
Clutter robbing your of your happiness? Want to declutter but not sure where to start or need some additional accountability? Let's dig you out together.
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