When I come home, I want to hang up my coat, kick off my shoes, make a cup of coffee, sit on the couch, wrap a blanket around me and read a book.
That’s my Cozy Home.
I mean, it’s my dream for my cozy home. My reality is more like, walk in the door, hang up my coat and pick up all the other coats that are lying over the backs of chairs, leave my shoes ON because the floor has crumbs and hopefully nothing worse than crumbs on it, look at the couch and think about sitting on it wrapped in a blanket reading a book, sipping a coffee, but actually, the couch is covered in laundry and there are dishes in the sink and someone really needs to vacuum the crumbs up off the floor. Or else I’m never even going to get to kick my shoes off.
I think you see my dilemma. Cozy is about more than just the cup of coffee, comfy blanket and good book.
What Is a Cozy Home?
Cozy to me is more than just the way your house looks. It’s not a style like “Modern” or “Boho”. It’s how your home affects your senses. When you walk into a cozy home, there’s nothing distracting you from feeling at peace.
What Does a Cozy Home Smell Like?
Your sense of smell is tied very closely to your memory and emotions. If you have kids, someday they are going to grow up and move out and catch a scent of something and they are going to be flooded with memories and feelings about home.
You want that smell to be something like “fresh laundry” or “vanilla” or “baking cookies”. Not “kitty litter” or “mildew” or “I didn’t wear socks with my sneakers today”.
Yankee Candle is not coming out with an “I Didn’t Wear Socks with my Sneakers Today” candle. Not ever.
There are amazing and creative ideas for how to make your house smell good. Candles are great, but not always practical for every room in the house. There are simmer pots for the kitchen, diy and natural air fresheners for the bathroom, diffusers for the bedroom, linen sprays for every room you have linens in.
So, don’t be afraid to get creative with how you build your homes scent profile. (I just made that up, your homes “scent profile”. Just now. On the fly. It makes sense though, doesn’t? OOOOOh, and I got a pun in that sentence).
What Does a Cozy Home Look Like?
My cozy home looks like a place you can kick your shoes off, sit on the couch with some coffee and a blanket and read a book all day. Your cozy home might look Modern or Traditional or Joanne Gaines Farmhouse. Which aesthetic you choose doesn’t really matter, as long as it appeals to you.
What does matter is that the home decor ideas you have for your home are pleasing to your eye and are interesting in some way.
When I’m choosing wall decor, for instance, I don’t go for just pretty. I want something that you have to look at for an extra beat. Either because it’s so beautiful it stops you in your tracks for a moment, or because it’s just a tiny bit weird and it takes a moment to fully register in your brain.
Whatever you choose to hang on your walls, or place on your coffee table or toss on your sofa make sure it does something more than just look good. When you look at a piece of decor in your home, you should feel something. That’s what a cozy home looks like.
It looks like you picked each piece because it was special in some way beyond just pretty.
What does a Cozy Home Feel Like?
Itchy does not appeal to me. Sticky does not appeal to me. Cold does not appeal to me.
A cozy home is filled with things that feel comfortable when you touch them. Warm blankets, fluffy pillows, cool sheets.
Have you ever worn a shirt all day that had an annoying tag? And it made you itch all day? And you thought about that tag and scratched it all day?
That’s not cozy.
I want no annoying tags in my cozy home. I want to be able to sit in any chair in the house and feel comfortable. I want to be able to lie on the couch and not get a crick in my neck because I don’t have a good pillow to rest my head on.
What Does a Cozy Home Sound Like?
I love visiting my parents. They live right around the corner from me. They are the best parents a person could ever have. They are generous and welcoming and kind.
But, their TV is SO loud. And their family room has vaulted ceilings so it’s like watching Jeopardy on 40 volume in a concert a hall. It’s almost painful.
My cozy home has music on when I’m cleaning. It has sports on the television (at a reasonable volume, like a 9).
It has laughter.
In the winter, when it’s cold, my cozy home has the sound the radiators make when the heat comes on. Like a click and a trickle of water. Which might drive some people nuts, but it sounds like home to me.
What does a Cozy Home Taste Like?
No, don’t go take a bite out of your front door. Also, I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m going to post recipes on this blog. But home and food are linked together very tightly.
Do you like it when you open the fridge and stare inside, slide the mayo to the side, open the drawers hoping that somewhere in there is some delicious thing you forgot you had?
I don’t like that either. 🙁
I do LOVE looking in the fridge or the pantry and thinking, “MMM, which thing should I eat??”. Truthfully, that hardly ever happens. Maybe after Thanksgiving when I have leftovers for a week.
But wouldn’t it be nice? To peek in the fridge and have stuff in there that you love and that is ready to eat?
A cozy kitchen is stocked with the healthy food that you love. There’s always coffee AND cream. There’s maybe even some frozen meals because you meal prepped, anticipating a lazy Saturday when you wouldn’t want to cook. Past you thought about future you and said, I’m going to make this for you for when you don’t feel like cooking but you DO feel like eating. Thanks past me. You’re the best.
A cozy home has things like a “snack station” and a “coffee bar”. A cozy kitchen has those weird things, like parchment paper, that you never seem to have when you need it and you actually need it more often than you think.
A Cozy Home is a Clean Home
I hate cleaning. Hate it. I will think of a thousand other things to do besides clean.
I’ve had to train myself to clean the house in bite size chunks. I used to spend all Saturday cleaning. I was miserable. Everyone around me was miserable. By the time I was done, I was too tired to enjoy the lovely clean house AND by the next day, the house was a mess again and I was too worn out from cleaning the whole previous day to even think about cleaning MORE on Sunday.
Now I have sort of a cleaning routine that breaks up the house into zones and allows me to spend just 15 minutes on each task. This is manageable and not overwhelming.
Is my house perfect? Would I eat off of my own floor? Umm, no of course not, that’s disgusting.
But if someone walked in unexpectedly, I wouldn’t die of embarrassment. If I put my hand down on the counter, it’s almost never sticky.
A cozy home has a balance of being clean without spending your life cleaning and without obsessing about everything looking “perfect”.
A Cozy Home is an Organized Home
Now that you’ve read my idea of a “clean” home you probably are laughing that the next header here is “organized home”.
You got me, I am NOT organized.
And I don’t need to be that person who has labels on everything and compartmentalized drawers and whatever else organized people do.
All I really want out of organization is to have all of the things that I need in the places where I expect them to be.
I don’t think that that is so much to ask of an Organized home.
My kids are into sports. Every year (every.year.you.think.I.would.have.learned.by.now.they.are.14.and.11) we have to produce their birth certificates for their teams. Every year I have to go on a mad search through the house for their birth certificates.
Some years, I have to DRIVE to the town they were born in to go to the TOWN HALL to get another copy of their birth certificates.
One year, I found the birth certificate on the copier. Where I left it the previous year after making a photocopy of it.
This is not cozy. A cozy, organized home has a place for things like birth certificates. Again, it’s “past you” doing a favor for “future you”.
So, organized, not my area of expertise, but I’m going to do my best to manage my bad habits and get things under control.
What is Your Cozy Home Like?
So, that’s what my cozy home is. What’s yours like? Do you have a “scent profile”? Do you have some tips for where I can keep those pesky birth certificates? What things do you need help cozying up?
Leave me a message in the comments and let’s figure it out!
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