Gardening not carpentry

Nine ways to create an emotionally healthy home, especially for your children.

The title of this post refers to two opposing ways of ‘being’; carpentry reflects a process of chipping away at something to craft it to be just so, versus gardening, an approach that evokes nurture and the encouragement of growth. It’s a simplistic analogy of course, but the point is clear — do you want the emotional culture of your home to be steered towards uplift and support, or control and curtailment?

Because, when thinking about a healthy home, it’s not all air purifiers and non-toxic paint. The emotional health of your home is just, if not more, important. This is the wider circle of the environment that you are creating, and it’s also why I deliberately extend my writing remit to cover many aspects of mind and body alongside the more obvious nuts and bolts of home-making.

You, after all, are an essential part of the energy metric of your home.

How you feel affects how your home feels, and vice versa. Establishing an environment that supports good psychological well-being and robust mental health is paramount to becoming the best you. In this way, devoting time and energy to how your home makes you feel isn’t fickle or indulgent, it’s an act of self-care.

Here are eleven ways to create an emotionally healthy home…