Items That Turn a House Into a Home
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The other night during one of our live chats, a reader asked what items we recommend that turn a house into a home. That’s something I’ve never actually thought hard about before. I think our philosophy has been to always fill our homes with items that bring us joy, and sometimes they work out looking nice all put together.
So I started making a list of things we have in our house that make it feel like a cozy, welcoming home, and it turns out there are definitely certain things we gravitate towards as a whole. We lean more on the side of maximalist, so if you’re craving more of a minimal vibe, the items on this list may not be for you. We like our home to feel collected, lived-in, and aren’t afraid to show a little evidence of the real life that happens within these walls.
Here are some thought starters for you that you can incorporate in your own home:
Display Art/Picture Frames
We have a thing for photos on the wall. Or on the desk. Or on the bookshelf. Basically, if we think it looks pretty or fits the vibe of the room, we’re displaying it. Sometimes the art we hang is meaningful to us, like the paintings that hang in our living room that PJ painted, or the cutout of our Out.com magazine article that my mom had framed in our office. Other times, they’re not sentimental, we just like the way they look, and that’s okay. Not every piece of art has to mean something to you in order to display it. Plot twist: You can just like the way it looks.
The wall in our hall bathroom has a mix of photographs torn from picture books and art that I did, along with a framed letter from a sweet reader.
Lamps
I can’t tell you how important lighting is when making a room feel cozy, welcoming, and homey. Anytime lighting is too hard, like stark overhead boob lights, it completely throws off the entire feel of a room. It casts awkward shadows and everything looks (and feels) scary. But the warm glow of lamp light softens a room and says, “Sit and stay a while and relax.” I like to have at least three to four lamps in every room for balanced lighting and to create a cozy atmosphere.
We’re so into lamps that our oldest son will now go into a room when it starts getting dark out and turn on all the lamps because he, too, wants it to be “cozy”. I don’t think I have ever been prouder as a parent.
Meaningful Tchotchkes
The hutch that lives in our front room, and is the first thing you see when you walk in our home, is filled with little items that are meaningful to us. We displayed all of the Delft Blue Houses we’ve collected from flying with KLM over the years to remind us of our time in Amsterdam. Also on the bookshelf are some of our favorite books, as well as rocks from places we’ve traveled to as a family. We always let the kids pick out a few special rocks from beaches or towns that we visit and we love that these little items that mean something to us are displayed for everyone who walks in our home to see.
If you can find items in your home that you want to display, try laying them out on a shelf or in a jar or on a bedside table. Anywhere that brings you joy and that you see often is the perfect place for them.
Practical Objets
We all live in real homes, not show houses or museums, so you will inevitably have real, every day things that just have to be out for one reason or another. We wouldn’t be able to function properly if we didn’t have a wall calendar somewhere in our house, and since our kitchen is the hub of the home, it ends up in there. It’s so easy for us to be in the kitchen cooking or making coffee and glance over at the calendar to see what’s on the schedule for the day. Wall calendars are not the prettiest things in the world to look at, but they’re convenient and useful, so we grouped them together with some other photos and stuck a plant in the corner and suddenly, it’s fine. It’s a cute little corner.
Another practical thing? All the bills and papers that accumulate because real life happens and we all have them. I get so very tired of seeing picture-perfect homes all the time with no signs of real life in them. But we all have bills and papers and things that just collect over time, so things like paper sorters and organizers really come in handy to keep things in order. We have several on the desk in our office and they’ve been so useful lately with even more papers accumulating now that the kids are back in school.
And lastly, a lot of the items in our kitchen that we use every day we leave out on the counter so we have them within arms reach: Coffee, oatmeal, brown sugar, cooking utensils, olive oil, etc. I pretty jars with wooden lids from Target (they’re sadly all sold out) and keep the things we use every day within them.
Basically: Don’t be afraid to show signs of real life happening in your house. That’s how people know it’s a home.
Books
Even if you don’t have bookshelves to display them on, books can add such a touch of coziness to a room. We have bookshelves in our front living room, which is where a lot of our books live, but we also have them on our kitchen counter, on the TV console in our living room, on my bedside table, in the kids’ rooms, and in our office. Basically, if there is a surface for them in our house, you will find books there. Yes they get dusty, but I couldn’t live without them.
So there you have it! Those are the items that make up a home, or that make up what a home means to us. I hope this gets you started on the right track into turning your house into more of a home! xoxo
