Simplify the Gathering Space

There’s no place like home. -L. Frank Baum

If you close your eyes and think back to your childhood home, what do you see? Hear? Feel? Smell? Taste? What are the clear markers that point you home?

Thinking back to my childhood home, I can smell the garlic that was prominent at dinner time, see my Dad is in his chair watching football, and taste the macaroni and cheese with hot dogs and ‘homemade’ pudding for dessert in those cute plastic dishes. But for me, it’s mostly a feeling. I felt safe. I felt loved. Most of the time it was organized chaos, but it felt like home.

How do I want my home to feel?

Now that I’m a mom, I want my kids to remember and cherish their childhood home. They may not remember a single smell or sound, but I want a good, warm feeling to come over them when they think of home. I want them to remember it was peaceful even with all the people. I want them to remember it was a place they could be completely themselves. I want them to remember it was a place of curiosity, learning, and where there was always room for one more book.

Take Action: Be Thoughtful

How do you want your kids to feel when they think of their childhood home twenty years from now? Truly take a few moments to think about it and jot a few notes down.

What needs to be done so my home can feel how I want it to?

I’m going to take you from big picture to practical quick. I want to be intentional with my home so it can serve the people in it. If I want it to be peaceful, I need less stuff so most of the noise in our home will be coming from us and not the stuff around us. If I want the people in our home to be completely themselves, there needs to be room and space for them to paint or kick a ball or bake or tell stories. And if I want our home to be a home of curiosity and learning, there should be a variety of books always available and spaces for us to snuggle up to read and talk together.

Take Action: Be Intentional

With the notes from the first question, think about what you need to do to get there. If you want a peaceful home, it may require getting rid of visual clutter to make room for one another. If you want to invite people into your home often, it might mean feeling confident and good about your home at all times so you can have an impromptu dinner date with the neighbors. If you want to have a home that’s playful, you might play music and have games within arms reach. Write a few notes listing something intentional you can do for each way you want your home to feel.

Simplifying can help!

However you want your home to feel to you and the people in it, I believe simplifying can help you get there. Simplifying shared living spaces can maximize the quality of time spent with your people. It can enhance everyone’s feeling of home because stuff won’t be in the way.

Don’t misunderstand me. Some of the best days in our home are when the pantry is emptied and the kids are playing grocery store with the real groceries or when the dining room chairs are pulled out and replaced with a city of magnatiles, wooden blocks, cars, and dinosaurs. Our homes are meant to serve us and by getting all of the unnecessary stuff out of the way, they can serve us well.

Where does your family gather?

We are living in the main living area today. I’m going to call it the gathering space. Where does your family spend the most time together? The family room? Kitchen? Basement? Where is your gathering space?

For our family, it’s our great room that includes our kitchen, living room, and dining room.

Look at your gathering space and ask yourself: Is it serving us well?

If it is, you probably can stop reading and go pour yourself a cup of coffee. But if it’s not, maybe some simplifying will help. Keep reading…

Myquillin Smith aka The Nester suggests quieting a space before adding anything or trying to figure out what’s missing. I like the idea of getting rid of all the unnecessary stuff to see what is actually needed.

Four Steps to a Simplified Gathering Space

After choosing the room or rooms in your home where your family gathers, these next steps will help you minimize the stuff to maximize the quality of time with your people.

1. Box It Up

Grab a box and go through the gathering place of your home and put anything in it that doesn’t help make your home feel the way you want it to. If you’re going for peaceful, the battery operated anything goes in the box. If you’re going for playful, the games can stay but the stacks of miscellaneous bills, ads, and magazines can go. Box up anything that doesn’t align with your intentionality for the space.

2. Clear a Surface

I believe wholeheartedly visual clutter matters. Choose one surface in your gathering space to keep clear. For our family, it’s the kitchen island. Besides two candles and sometimes a vase of flowers, nothing is stored here. This doesn’t mean there isn’t anything on it. In fact, plenty of things litter our kitchen island throughout the day: papers and paints for art projects, cutting boards and veggies for lunch, 108 hot wheel cars lined up going to ‘Starbucks’. Those things are the exact reason the island needs to stay clear: to allow the surface to do its job and serve us.

Choose a surface that can serve your family well, clear it off and make it a priority to keep it clear.

3. What do you need?

I’m usually not advocating for people to add things to a room, but because we want our homes to serve our families well, this step could be necessary. What things are needed in your gathering space to make time with your people better? What is missing that will give you and your family that feeling you are after? Is it books? A caddy holding art supplies? A speaker to play music?

About 6 months ago, I made a decision to move almost all our books upstairs to the dining room bookshelf. They were housed in different places around the house, mostly in the basement and I wanted them all in a place we spend lots of time. Moving the books upstairs to our gathering space made them more accessible and a part of our everyday life.

There is a good chance you need only a few items or possibly nothing at all, but think through what needs to be added to the gathering space to make it serve your family.

4. Sort

There is a good chance you have a box of items to sort from ‘quieting’ your space. If you need a break, put them in a closet and sort tomorrow. If you’re feeling motivated, sort these items right away. Put items back where they belong out of the gathering space or find a new home. This is a great time to donate items no longer needed.

Enjoy

Enjoy your reclaimed gathering space! Intentionality and a little time and effort can go a long way to make your home feel the way you want it to and serve your family well. Tell me: What space did you choose to simplify today?

P.S. If you’re looking for more ways to simplify check out Simplify the Closets, 3 Ways to Simplify Today, and How to Declutter by Category.