Welcome to week 2 of #cljsummerschool: How to fall in love with your home in 30 days. You all went to WORK last week. I loved seeing all your purging before and after photos and honestly felt inspired. You guys keep me going! This week we’re talking all about how you can love your home by developing simple, meaningful rituals.

The time we spent last week purging, organizing, and cleaning has hopefully given you some appreciation and new eyes for your home–even though it’s a new week–don’t stop! Let’s use that momentum to establish some moments in your home to keep you feeling centered and more “at home.” I believe anybody can love where they live if they really want to, and one way to really love where you live is to spend some time doing things that bring you comfort and joy in it. I’m naturally a bit of a homebody and I think that’s because I really try to make the mood in my home special by doing little things that make the every day moments feel special. This week, we’re talking about the power of at-home rituals.

What do you do to welcome in the evening, or morning? How do you differentiate your work from your home (especially if you work from home). Do you open all the window coverings, light a candle, turn on music? I actually changed my morning alarm to a gradual wakeup once and I wake up much happier now. On Saturday mornings, when I clean the house, I start by lighting a candle and that’s also the time when I put in my headphones and listen to my fav podcast. By the time I am done, I’m fulfilled, the house is tidied, and it smells great. Plus now we can enjoy the rest of the weekend together as a family. Rituals allow you to elevate normal time or activities into something that brings happiness and comfort.

Dinner time can sometimes be chaotic, but it’s important to us to make family dinner a priority. Instead of shouting for the girls to come down to eat, we got a dinner bell, and now it’s easy and dare I say, pleasant? Almost like a sacred tradition. Our dinner bell is now on its third home.

Another ritual that we love in our home is Friday night family movie night. We try to make it special every week–introducing the girls to the classic family movies we grew up with mixed in with new ones. Our basement family room was designed to be a cozy, lounge-y gathering space for this exact reason. Chris will whip up a board of snacks, and we had a basket of blankets perfect for snuggling under, readily available. Traditions might happen yearly, but rituals happen OFTEN (daily or weekly!) and can make the ordinary feel extra special.

Customize your home to support your rituals!

Here’s a few ideas of how your home can be set up to optimize your little routines into energizing rituals.

• If you’re a book snob and love reading books in bed for 30 minutes before lights out, maybe your nightstand doubles as a little library, and has a drawer for your reading light, pens and highlighters (if you really like to get into it).
• Some people like a slow start to their mornings. Maybe you go over to your coffee station, brew a cup, then head to your favorite cozy seat in the house, pull up a blanket, and sip on you coffee while you listen to a podcast.
• Baths are such a relaxing way to wind down in the evening but it can be even more magical with the right lighting, surrounding scents, and a luxury body scrub. It’s the little things.
• We’ve been trying to grow our record collection because there’s something so joyous about putting on a record after dinner and having a dance party to get out all of our tension and wiggles.
• My girls love having sister sleepovers on the weekends and was one reason why we had two beds in Greta’s room! Weekends felt more special for them and exciting because of it.

Rituals are about care (self care and home care), and creating meaningful traditions out of the seemingly mundane. What are some of your home rituals that you currently have in place (or want to put it place?). My sister has spaghetti and watches one episode of the Sopranos every Sunday. A friend starts EVERY morning with a dance party with her kids. Every evening, after dinner, our girls have “sister time” together before bed. We named it. We set aside the time and it’s something we all look forward to.

Share yours in the comments so we can all get some more ideas of how to fill our homes with memories and rituals!