The following contribution is from another author.
Have you got a dream home in mind? A living situation that you spend your evenings and weekends fantasizing about and planning out? If not, you might just be missing out on an incredibly uplifting and fulfilling goal and aspiration that can add a lot of richness to your life.
Our homes are naturally the places where we feel most comfortable, at ease, and secure. When times are tough — as they inevitably are now and then — coming back to a home that has been customized to our exact preferences and requirements, can transform our mood and situation for the better.
Of course, any significantly ambitious dream-home project will hinge on the fact of you owning a home to begin with. Therefore, getting a mortgage through a company like Altrua Financial is likely to be one of the most substantial steps on the way to achieving your dream home vision.
Here are some tips for ways in which you can structure your dream home that can improve your quality of life.
Turn it into a peaceful minimalist’s paradise
It’s undeniably a very busy world that we all inhabit these days, and for some of us, it can seem all but impossible to get a break. Not only do we have responsibilities of various types, but they follow us home, too. At any given time, our boss might call, text, or email, or else a colleague might contact us asking if we’re free to fill in for a shift.
On top of that, add the need to properly decorate, style, tidy and balance our homes, and ensure that we’re buying “the right things” to keep up with our friends and give out the right impression of ourselves.
With all of that, it’s no wonder that more and more people are finding themselves chronically stressed, and are turning to minimalism as a solution.
The basic concept behind minimalism is that we only own items which are directly useful to you, or emotionally valuable to you, and do without all of the rest.
Structuring your dream home as something of a “minimalist’s paradise” can help you to take a step back from the rat-race, and catch your breath in those moments between work and social obligations.
Turn it into a futuristic smart-home and tech-haven
Not such a surprising suggestion, huh?
We live in very exciting times — the most technologically advanced time that has ever existed, where new technologies are coming out virtually daily and redefining the way we live and experience the world.
If handled properly, these technologies can potentially enrich our lives in all kinds of ways, not to mention the fact that having cutting-edge gadgets just feels plain cool.
There is a huge amount of equipment on the market today that will allow you to turn your home into the kind of futuristic smart-home and tech-haven that people imagined in The Jetsons or in the Sci-Fi novels of yesteryear.
You can have a two-in-one camera and doorbell that streams video feed and a visitor alert to your phone, no matter where you are. You can have features installed in your home so that you can adjust the heating, or lighting, or any number of other things through voice command, or via a tablet.
Then, you can turn in for the night, and have cutting-edge technology monitor how well you’re sleeping, and provide positive suggestions for improving the quality of your slumber.
The options are virtually limitless here.
Create an old-time library and reading room where you can get away from technology for a while
Just to provide a bit of balance to the last point — you should seriously consider creating an old-time library and reading room in your dream home, where you can get away from technology for a while, and absorb information at a more leisurely and old-world pace.
Technology can be great, for many of the reasons mentioned earlier in this article. But being constantly plugged in can also lead to a degree of mental static and chaos that can be jarring.
Sitting down in a quiet, low-tech room with a good book, can allow you the chance to get some real perspective on things, and to slow down. It’s worked well for many people for the last few centuries, after all. And it’s impossible to deny that there’s just something timelessly classy about having a private library and a leather chair to read in.
Writing in his book, “The Shallows”, author Nicholas Carr points out evidence that excessive time spent online changes the structure of our brains, and influences our attention, so as to make us better at handling rapid-speed information, but less able to consume in-depth information, in the form of books. Keeping a bit of balance in life, therefore, seems especially important.
Set up space for creative hobbies
These days, most of us are essentially pure consumers. That is, we spend all of our leisure time-consuming products and utilizing services, but not creating much, if anything, of our own.
This can lead to a somewhat detached view of life in general, and a kind of restlessness. It can also mean that we become dependent on others in order to have a good time, or to even just relax after a tough day at work.
Taking up creative hobbies can provide an excellent counterbalance here, and can give you a newfound respect and appreciation for the tools and services you use in your own life.
Setting up space for creative hobbies in your dream home can, in turn, be a remarkable cathartic thing to do, and can help to provide the right setting for you to explore your hobbies in earnest.
This could mean setting up an entire workroom, garage, or shed for your personal DIY projects. Or it could mean setting up a sewing room. Or an area for pottery, maybe complete with a kiln.
