Having a home centered life has become a major goal in my life. And like so many other goals, it isn’t achieved at the flip of a switch.
First, let me start off by saying that I am not an expert on what it means to have a home centered life. I am just starting the journey, so please know that this lifestyle is a work in progress for me.
But like all things that really matter in life, being a home centered family will always be a work in progress.
What does a home centered life mean?
When I first googled this question, I didn’t find the cut-and-dry answer I was looking for. There’s lots of great answers out there. But as I looked through them, I didn’t really find one I could just copy/paste.
So instead, I decided to come up with the answer on my own. For me, a home centered life is one where we spend a good deal of time in the home. Not that we would never leave home, but that we would spend more time at home than we previously were.
Thinking back to the years before the pandemic, I saw a trend. We were gone a lot. And while some of it was out of necessity, the rest of it was just out of habit. While my husband and I talked on and on about how much we wanted to spend more time at home, we inevitably filled our calendars with lots of events that kept us from doing so.
From outside the home to inside the home
As you know, we all ended up with lots and lots of home time in 2020. And there was something to that simplicity of life that was lovely. Yes, a good deal of frustration came with it, but I chalk a lot of that up to not having a home centered life beforehand.
Once the worst had passed, we began going back to some of our old habits. Granted, leaving home to go to work isn’t really an option as much as it is a necessity. But by that time, we were doing everything we could to get to our dream of having a homestead faster. I kept thinking, “Once we’re there, it will get better; we just have to get there first.”
Home centering can begin at any time
After a few months of the daily grind, and watching us fall back into our pre-pandemic ways, I realized something. If you wait for the perfect opportunity to start, you won’t get started.
So I started. I thought of how we could start becoming more home centered while waiting for our homestead dream to happen. And one tiny step at a time, we began to make progress.
How I started to become home centered
Since I know we all love lists, I came up with a short one. This has some of the steps I took in the beginning to start our home centered life. This list is not comprehensive, nor is it in any particular order of importance. My advice is to pick the thing that will be easiest to execute, and start there.
1. Pick a day to stay home
This one is pretty simple. And you may already be doing it. I started my home centered journey by picking one day each week to stay at home.
As both my husband and I were working full time Monday-Friday, it had to be a weekend day. Not always the same day, but we made an effort to stay home one day a week.
We had some weeks where it didn’t work out, but beginning and sticking to that routine created a domino effect.
2. Say no to social events
We didn’t become hermits and stay away from everything, but we did begin to carefully choose which social events we would put our time towards.
The wedding of a good friend is an important social event to go to. The weekly happy hour on Thursday nights just isn’t.
At least, that was the case for us. Maybe you need that weekly happy hour to connect with people because it’s your main social interaction of the week. Personally, I had plenty of social interaction at work, and felt like I didn’t need to commit to any more than that.
Start saying no to things, and instead, spend your time at home doing something for you and you alone.
3. Lump errands together
Instead of hitting the grocery one night, going to Menards the next night, then stopping by Target to get the drive up order, we started lumping those errands together.
That freed up time later in the week when we could just relax at home and spend time together.
I know for me, the mom guilt of not being there with my girls was a very heavy burden I carried around when I was working outside the home full time. Add having to run errands every night of the week to that, and the little time I had with them became less and less, and the guilt more and more.
We actually got time to hang out. We played outside, built forts, and had family movie nights. And the mom guilt wasn’t so bad. I felt a little bit of that weight fall off, and it was all because we chose to run errands on one night instead of 3.
Lumping errands together and limiting trips gave us more of our week back. I talk more about the benefits of limiting trips here.
4. Meal prep on the weekends
As we didn’t have a lot of time at home during the week, my husband and I decided the best way to make sure we had enough food for the week was to cook it all that weekend. And boy did that change things for us.
Having dinners at-the-ready, so that all we had to do was reheat and eat, made our weekdays so much less stressful. I wasn’t standing in front of a stove for another 30 minutes to an hour after a long work day, just to get 5 minutes to sit down and eat before beginning the night time routine for our girls.
We got home, heated up the food, then sat down and ate together. We had time to read extra stories. Or make a small, non-messy craft. Or spend the evening in the backyard playing pirate ship.
If you can, make 4-5 big meals on the weekends that can get you through most of your lunches and dinners for the week. The upfront work is worth the weekly payoff of more relaxing time after those stressful work days.
This home centered life is still a work in progress
Some of these steps have changed for our home. I no longer meal prep on the weekends like I used to. But that’s because I’m not heading to a Monday-Friday full time gig anymore.
But we still try to run errands in as few trips as possible. And we still pick our social events carefully.
We don’t have a dedicated weekend day when we just stay home together. But the girls and I do have at least 2 dedicated days at home per week. And we’ve added many other home centered activities to our roster.
If you’re looking to begin a more home centered life, remember that any step you take is a step in the right direction.
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