Make a list of 20 things you love about your home (31 days to Love the Home You Have)

This post is part of a 31 day series – 31 days to Love the Home You Have.  I am blogging through the 31 day challenge in the back of the book “Love the Home You Have” by Melissa Michaels of The Inspired Room.  You can read all the posts in the series so far here.  And to make sure you don’t miss a post you can sign up to have every post delivered to your inbox , or follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram to get even more home decorating ideas and inspiration to help you fall in love with your home.

---

We have talked a lot of about some simple things you can do and also different ways you can look at your home to help you love the home you have more – you can go back and read all of those posts here.  BUT this activity today may be my favorite one of all.

ALL of us probably have things we would love to change about our home.  I am sure very few people live in a dream home with everything around them being 100% what they would ultimately desire.  BUT even if there are a few or many things we want to work on, improve, or wish we could change about our current home we all can find things we love as well.  Sometimes it is just the difference in changing your perspective.

Because we truly can create the home of our dreams right where we are and LOVE that home even if that takes a bit of a change of perspective.

So here is the 20 things I love about my home:

1. The outside.  While my dream home style would be more craftsmen style and this is very much of a builder basic/traditional style, I truly do love the outside of my home.  It has a bit of character because of the shutters and the front porch and I smile when I pull up in my driveway.  Painting my shutters and front door from burgundy to black was a small change that made my love my home so much more.

2. My front porch.  I would LOVE to have a bigger front porch with room for a swing and door centered with steps leading up to it that would be so pretty to decorate for seasons… but I made some simple changes to add that “homey” feeling to my front porch such as add a bench a few years ago and some decorative touches and I truly do love my front porch.  This is my fall front porch this year.

and here it is in the spring/summer with lots of blooming flowers

3. The open concept in my living/kitchen/breakfast nook.  I don’t even think I had watched an HGTV show before we bought our house 11 years ago and heard the term “open concept”.  But when we viewed our home one of the first comments I made was how I liked how the kitchen was open to the living room and that I could stand at the sink washing dishes and yet still be apart of what was happening in the living room.

4. My mantel.  I am so thankful to have a mantel to decorate seasonally.  I encourage you if you don’t have a mantel to make a “faux mantel” – a shelf above a piece of furniture, the top of the piano, the top of a dresser in the entryway.  This is my fall mantel this year with DIY wood shutters and DIY wood pumpkins.

5. My breakfast area.  I LOVE the light that this area gets all throughout the day.  And we have spent so many family meals around this table with lots of memories. 

6. My kitchen!  Oh, this would have been the one room that I would have said last year was the worse room in our whole house.  I have always liked the layout and enjoyed being in the kitchen but my kitchen was in sad state.  I hated the counters, the cabinets were chipped/warped and in bad condition, and the brass/white handles were not very attractive.  But for less than $1000 and lots of work we have transformed our kitchen to one that I truly do simply love.  It is not elaborate or elegant but it is functional and pretty and looks much more upgraded.  You can find details in these posts: New light fixture, new handles, installing our own counters, painting/repairing our cabinets, installing a DIY beadboard backsplash.

7. Our living room.  This is the room we spend the most time in and in our next home we definitely would like for it to be a bit bigger.  BUT it is cozy and I do like the layout and the open concept.

8. A split level home.  Since this is our first home I am not sure if I would enjoy a ranch style home better than a 2 story home but I truly do love our 2 story house.  I like that the main living areas are downstairs and the bedrooms are upstairs – it makes it easier to keep the “mess” of bedroom stuff from taking over the living spaces. 

9.  Having a laundry room upstairs outside all of the bedrooms.  Oh this makes my life so much easier!  Laundry is one of my housekeeping struggles – more the folding than the actual doing.  And I can’t imagine adding lugging dirty and clean laundry up and down stairs to the task of doing laundry.

10. My actual laundry room!  While this room is not large it is in actual “room” and not just a closet.  And after I gave it a very inexpensive but high impact makeover last month this room just absolutely makes me smile. 

11. My bathroom.  There are still things I would love to change or wish were different in here – counters, faucets, flooring – but with new paint, some new décor and a few DIY projects this bathroom is so pretty to me now.

12. My master bedroom.  I loved how big this room was from the minute we saw it.  And even though it took many years before I could finally get rid of my husband’s bachelor furniture, I have worked on creating a room I am proud of and that is a lovely space to rest in.

13. The wainscoting I have added over time in our home.  We have the wainscoting in our dining room, a chair rail in the breakfast room, beadboard on the back of the bar and a beadboard backsplash in the kitchen, beadboard in my 1/2 bathroom, and board and batten in our upstairs guest bath.  I have added all of that wainscoting to our home over the last 11 years and it is one of my favorite parts of our home.  I would love to add even more!

 

14. Built in bookshelf in our master bedroom.  I love built in bookcases and would love to one day have them in our living space or office space. So I was excited and honestly surprised at how well this weird little nook in our master bedroom turned out as a built in bookcase.

15. The yard sale dressers all throughout my home.  I have a small dresser in my dining room that I use as a buffet, 2 small dressers that serve as nightstands in our room, a long and tall dresser dresser in our master bedroom that I painted, and another dresser that I used as an entryway table – all found at yard sales and painted/refinished!  They have added so much storage to my home as well as fun place to decorate.

16. All of my secondhand finds!  One day I want to do a tour through my home and show you every single yard sale/thrift store find – but honestly it would probably be easier to tell you what DIDN’T come from a yard sale or thrift store.   I had a friend spend the night with us this past weekend and as we talked about decorating and homemaking, I literally looked around my guest room and realized that literally maybe 10 things (including linens on the bed) did NOT come from yard sales.  I cannot describe the blessing that secondhand finds have been in helping to create a welcoming/beautiful home. 

17. Our deck and all of the trees in our backyard.  I can see the deck and the trees from where I sit in the living room and it is my favorite view.  I love the outdoors and am glad I get to enjoy a view of it from inside my home.

18. The way I have poured myself into my home.  I look around and see walls I have painted, molding I have added, furniture I have hunted down at yard sales and then painted and refinished, décor I have collected over time, and much more.  And I love that our home is ME!  Although it would be amazing to have an unlimited budget and hire a professional designer to come in and do it all… you know what, I am not sure I would totally want that.  Because I love being able MYSELF to make my home what it is today. 

19.  The space of our home.  This is probably one of people’s biggest complaints about their home.  And honestly we would like a little more space – an office space for me, a workshop space for my husband and I, and possibly one more bedroom.  BUT I also know that with more rooms/space comes more work to keep it clean.  This home has grown and fit us fine for 11 years and I am thankful for the space we have.

20. The people I share my home with.  All of the things I have mentioned above are all things I really do love about my home.  But you know what if I was in a one bedroom apartment, with no character, and not much I could change about it… I would still love that I shared that space with the ones I truly love.  They are what makes the space that I reside in truly feel like HOME.

I can’t tell you how I feel after writing this post and looking through these pictures… my heart is filled with thankfulness and love for my home.  Now why did we want to move??   This is not our forever home or our dream home – in fact we are planning on moving in the next year.  BUT I will carry a love for this home, for the things I learned how to do in this home, and how I created a HOME that was uniquely us in this house for the rest of my life.  I probably should stop before I start to cry thinking of leaving it.  

Challenge for you: Make a list of the things you love about your home.  I did 20 and I bet you could find 20 things too.  These don’t have to be “dream home” kind of things but things that you truly do enjoy about your home.  And then think about how you feel about your home.  Just taking a time to truly think about and put down on paper things you love about your home will help you fall in love with it even more.  I would love to see your list if you wanted to share it with me!  Share it on facebook or email it to me.