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Loving your home for exactly what it is

Let me ask you a question; do you love your home? I mean do you really love it?

KIM MECKLER

Let me ask you a question; do you love your home? I mean do you really love it? Do you long to get back to your favourite corner after a stressful day and do you treat it lovingly and with great care?

Our homes are our soft place to fall and part of our reason for getting up and going to work every day. We work to provide for our families and to buy things which bring us joy.

A home is a definite need but what we choose to put into that home surely falls under the ‘want’ category of our lives. We often make decisions to improve or adorn our homes with non-essential items which make us feel better but otherwise offer no improvement to the function of our houses. This is a part of design, the want overpowering the need in our lives and I think that it is ok to spend some of our discretionary funds this way because it feeds our love affair with our home.

Maybe you have lived in your home for decades and it has grown and evolved with the ever-changing needs of your family or maybe you are like me and have lived in dozens of abodes and are constantly on the hunt for that next great dwelling. I came to the realization that my two great home loves in my life are replicating the centurion beauty that I grew up in. My passion for heritage homes has been with me my whole life and nothing says home to me like creaky floors and drafty rooms.

Whether it is a hut on the beach or a mansion surrounded by palm trees we all have that dream space in our heads and hearts, that home that speeds up our heartbeat and makes our eyes mist up with tears.

What I see all too often is people who are not in that ideal space, people who don’t truly love their homes. This often makes them overcompensate with stuff, they become shopaholics or chronic renovators. They often put too much value in this next purchase or that new kitchen – they think that just one more thing will make the home happier but it often falls short.

Please don’t misunderstand, I’m all for home improvement (obviously) but sometimes I feel less is more. Sometimes you need to step back and take an honest look at why you are trying so hard to make something work when your heart isn’t in it.

When we truly love something we love it despite its flaws and we make allowances for those little imperfections. I think about how some men love their garage spaces despite the lack of glamour and the often dirty and disorganized spaces. They love being in their shops working on cars or building things and the space they are in is wonderful even though it isn’t perfect.

If you love your home, the space should be a celebration whether or not it is sporting the latest fads. You will embrace your beloved house with its flaws and it will bring you comfort even if it isn’t perfect because you realize that love is blind and often hard of hearing but it is truly magnificent to be in a home that you really, really love.

Kim Meckler is an interior designer in Red Deer with Carpet Colour Centre.