Discover the transformative power of visual quietude in your own sanctuary. As winter's chill encourages a landscape of serenity outside, we invite you into a realm of peaceful interiors through the art of house hushing. This episode of Create Harmony delves into the wisdom of blogger Myqullin Smith, whose philosophy on calming our living spaces ignites a conversation about the balance between minimalism and coziness. My own journey of moving homes and the subsequent unintentional embrace of a less cluttered environment underscores the unexpected joy that can be found when we align our indoor spaces with the tranquil dormancy of nature's winter.
As you listen, you'll be equipped with practical tips for sifting through post-holiday clutter and discerning what truly brings joy and tranquility to your space. Whether it's your home or your office that could use a touch of hushing, this conversation is your guide to creating an oasis of calm. We explore the delicate act of reintroducing items into your space in a way that harmonizes with your sense of well-being, ensuring that each piece contributes to an atmosphere that's both restful and rejuvenating. Join me in this reflective episode to carry the calm of winter through every corner of your life.
Discover the transformative power of visual quietude in your own sanctuary. As winter's chill encourages a landscape of serenity outside, we invite you into a realm of peaceful interiors through the art of house hushing. This episode of Create Harmony delves into the wisdom of blogger Myqullin Smith, whose philosophy on calming our living spaces ignites a conversation about the balance between minimalism and coziness. My own journey of moving homes and the subsequent unintentional embrace of a less cluttered environment underscores the unexpected joy that can be found when we align our indoor spaces with the tranquil dormancy of nature's winter.
As you listen, you'll be equipped with practical tips for sifting through post-holiday clutter and discerning what truly brings joy and tranquility to your space. Whether it's your home or your office that could use a touch of hushing, this conversation is your guide to creating an oasis of calm. We explore the delicate act of reintroducing items into your space in a way that harmonizes with your sense of well-being, ensuring that each piece contributes to an atmosphere that's both restful and rejuvenating. Join me in this reflective episode to carry the calm of winter through every corner of your life.
To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com
Speaker 2:
Welcome back to the Create Harmony podcast. I am Sally Burlington and I am so glad that you are here. So if you are new here, let me tell you what our podcast is all about. In this place, we focus on refreshing your life. We focus on raising your well-being and returning you to peace and joy. So this is episode 57 and we are continuing through our Winter Well-Being series.
Speaker 2:
We started this series two weeks ago by talking about the need to shift our mindset during the winter onto more restorative things, onto self-care and ways that we can brighten our spirits during the winter months. So last week we talked about how to practice deep listening as a way to reframe our thoughts, and this week we are going to talk about house hushing. So if you have not heard of house hushing, you may be wondering what am I talking about, and I am pretty new to the concept myself. But the way that I understand it is, it is a form of decluttering. It is a way to declutter your house with a focus on quieting things down, and I don't mean quieting them down in terms of noise, but more of visual quieting them down. It means taking things out of your house that do not serve a purpose or kind of scaling back on decor in terms of improving your well-being. So this concept is often tied to Interior's blogger Michael and Smith. She has a website called the Nester and she began talking about home noise sometime last January. So I found a quote from Michael in where she explains this concept and the quote says some voices are louder than others. If you have a bright, red, chunky mirror, its voice is louder than the white taper candle that sits on your dresser, but both have a voice taking up visual, physical and even emotional space in your room. And then she goes on to talk about how she makes her home quieter by removing everything except for her large items of furniture from the room, and then she decides what she wants to bring back.
Speaker 2:
So to me, this is the perfect time to do house hushing right after the holidays, because during the holidays we've gotten out all of our glitter and our glitter and our glitter and our lights and our bright things. And once we put all of that stuff away, it's nice to keep things a little more streamlined, a little more low key, a little more quiet as we move through winter. It's kind of similar to what's going on outside Everything, the trees are bare. There's a lot more. There's a lot less color. Things are quiet and dormant and sort of a nod to what nature is doing. We're doing the same thing on the inside. That doesn't mean we can't decorate it all. It just means you need to analyze what things surround you and make sure that they're still making you feel good, and if they're not, you can put them away or you can give them away.
Speaker 2:
You could always apply this concept to your office. If you work outside the home, you might want to look at your office and think is this really do I need all of the stuff around me? And calming the environment around you in the office? It could not be a bad thing. So last year, if you've listened for a while, you know that last year we moved from one house to another house and, in order to get our former house ready to be sold, we did some house hushing or decluttering. We didn't call it that at the time because I didn't really know that much about house hushing, but we did that in order to get the house ready to go on the market and what I found was I really liked the results.
Speaker 2:
I didn't think of myself as having a real cluttery space. I liked to live in a fairly streamlined environment, but when I decluttered some things, I found it was easier to live in a space that was less full, and so I've tried to keep that in mind as we create our new spaces and our new house. And when I did a little research about house hushing, one of the articles I read said that it was important to strike the balance between minimalism and coziness, and that sentiment really spoke to me. I'm really not a minimalist. If you are, that's great, it's fine but I don't want to go so far to be a minimalist. I like cozy things, but I like to strike that balance between those two concepts.
Speaker 2:
I just like the concept of thinking more deeply about our environment and making it pleasant, and I think that the winter is an ideal time for this for two reasons One, we're inside more in the winter and two, as I said earlier, it aligns us with what nature is doing outside. When the trees and plants are bare, the earth is dormant, it's a nice time to think about how we shed a few of our things to make our homes more streamlined, and once nature opens up in grander ways, we will have purged things that are no longer serving us and are left with all the things that really matter. So that relates back to our discussion from last week, which was cultivating what matters. So I urge you to consider house hushing it's a little difficult to say house hushing for your house and see if that improves your winter well-being. So now it's time to turn our attention to our Huga habit for this week, and we're doing a Huga habit at the end of each of our winter well-being episodes.
Speaker 2:
So today's Huga habit is all about gratitude. We're going to take a moment to be mindful of some of the things that we are grateful for. So we're going to shift into our mindful posture. We're going to settle our body into whatever position is most comfortable for you. If you're walking or driving or doing something else. Just relax whatever tension you can feel in your body. Relax that tension right now and let that go.
Speaker 2:
Take a deep breath, breathe in love and breathe out fear, and if it makes sense for you to close your eyes, you can do that. Now, as you become aware of your body, just relax into the deepest state of relaxation you can and begin to bring to mind three things, just three that you are thankful for. And in order to make this a little simpler, you can consider them one at a time. Start with the first one, make a picture of it in your mind and dwell on how it blesses you. Give thanks for that special blessing. Now move on to your second thing and, in order to make this a little simpler, create a picture in your mind how lucky you are to have it, how lucky you are to have it.
Speaker 1:
Saver this moment with this blessing and now shift to the third thing.
Speaker 2:
See it very clearly with your mind's eye.
Speaker 1:
And, in order to make this a little simpler, focus hard on this good thing and give thanks for its specialness in your life.
Speaker 2:
God is good all the time, and all the time God is good. Now you can bring your awareness back to the podcast.
Speaker 1:
Bring the good energy from your blessings with you.
Speaker 2:
You can keep that with you for the rest of the day, if you close your eyes, you can open them now. And, in order to make this a little simpler, you can open them now and, in order to make this a little simpler, focus hard on this good thing and give thanks for its specialness in your life. God is good. Thanks again for joining us as we move along through our winter wellbeing series. I wish you good luck on all of your house hushing this week. We'll be back next week with another installment in our series and you won't want to miss it. And also, if you are still enjoying this podcast, feel free to share it with your friends. I encourage you to share it with other people who might want to improve their winter wellbeing. Maybe there are others who might want to join in the house hushing process. So let's spread the word about winter wellbeing to others and get a little help enduring those cold winter months. And until next time, peace.