How to Create a Peaceful Home and Life by Removing Excess

Learn to create a peaceful home and life by removing excess in all areas of your life. Clear the clutter and find peace.

Over the years both family and friends have given myself and my home one of the greatest compliments that I could hope to receive. I have repeatedly heard the statements:

“Your home is so peaceful.“ and “I feel peaceful when I’m around you.”

I don’t share these statements from a place of pride but rather from a place of gratitude. When I first began hearing these statements from others, I was thankful but didn’t think much more of it.

Over the years I began to ask myself, what brings peace to a space and a person? What creates a peaceful home?

What is Peace?

The dictionary defines peace as a state of tranquility and freedom of the mind from annoyance, distraction, anxiety, an obsession.

This is the point in the article where I could give you a list of things to do or a ten step routine to help you achieve this definition in your life, but I don’t think that is the answer. And let me be clear, what I am about to share isn’t the answer to internal, spiritual peace. That kind of peace can only be found in Jesus Christ.

The type of peace I am describing is the kind of peace that makes an environment calm, relaxing and stress free. The type of place yourself and others want to be in. This is the type of peace that a homemaker exudes to her family and those around her because her life is not in chaos but in rhythm.

How to Create a Peaceful Home

After repeatedly hearing others say that my home was peaceful I began to contemplate how I actually achieved this type of peace. I never sat down and told myself I was going to have a peaceful home or wrote out a list of things to do to achieve tranquility in my life.

However the more I contemplated why my home and life was/is peaceful I landed on the same answer every time. No matter the area of my life I was considering the reason for peace was the same.

I want others to know and find this peace for themselves, their families and their homes. The answer is:

Remove the Excess

This is the answer to reclaiming peace in your home and your life. When there is excess there is chaos, disarray and disorder. Control begins to slip away. Removing the excess from your life is transformative. It is a principle I live by in all areas of my life.

Excess can be found in so many areas of our lives. Removing excess from our lives sounds simple enough however in practice it can prove more challenging. Below I will share several areas of your home and lifestyle you can remove excess from and reclaim PEACE.

Remove Excess From Your:

1. Possessions

Possessions are one of the first places to start when trying to create a peaceful home. If a home is full of clutter and excess stuff it will never feel peaceful. This doesn’t mean that a home must be bare, modern and decorated in a minimal black and white aesthetic. A home can have less possessions but still feel warm and cozy. You can take a tour of our minimalist home HERE.

I started removing excess possessions from my home years ago and I haven’t looked back. I continue to reassess our home and spaces for any items that don’t serve a purpose or bring joy to us as a family.

Excess possessions don’t just consume space but they also consume our time, energy, money and ultimately peace. When we have more than we really need we spend our time, energy and money cleaning and maintaining those items. We spend the weekends “re-organizing” just to have to repeat the process several months later.

Removing excess possessions from your home is the first step in creating a peaceful home. Joshua Becker from Becoming Minimalist in his article Don’t Just Declutter, De-Own, says “Removing possessions begins to turn back our desire for more as we find freedom, happiness and abundance in owning less.”

Start the journey now of removing excess from your home and begin to find those items being replaced by peace.

2. Calendar

Excess doesn’t just apply to your possessions, it applies to your calendar as well. Time is precious. We have a finite amount of it and no one knows how much. When you or your family’s calendar is full and you run from activity to activity, event to event, social gathering to social gathering…there is no peace. A family needs time of togetherness, at home with nothing to do. Time to relax and be together.

You might be thinking, well all of my calendar events are important. If they are stealing peace from your life, I don’t think they are. Make it a goal to sit down and go through your calendar and social obligations one by one. If they aren’t absolutely necessary and helping your reach your goal of a peaceful home and family life, then they need to go.

Removing excess from our calendars isn’t always as easy as canceling a few appointments or social obligations. Often a person that fills their calendar to the max is striving to fill their time in order to fill a void they feel within themselves. Filling your calendar so that you don’t have to be alone with your thoughts and self will never bring peace. Evaluate yourself as to the deeper meaning of all of the excess filling up your calendar.

3. Diet

You might be scratching your head about this one but our diet is an area of our lives that is often full of excess. How often do you and your family eat out every week? Are you all eating at different places and at different times because you have so much going on? Are you consuming foods that are processed and full of preservatives and sugar? This is all excess.

Eating home cooked meals around the dinner table as a family is such an important way to create a peaceful home. Now if you have little kids like I do the environment around the dinner table might not always be peaceful but time spent as a family at the dinner table cultivates peace in a family unit.

In a Harvard Graduate School of Education interview, family therapist Anne Fishel, shares the importance of family dinners:

“Yes. I’m a family therapist, and I sort of half joke that I could be out of business if more families had regular family dinners, because so many of the things that I try to do in family therapy actually get accomplished by regular dinners. There have been more than 20 years of dozens of studies that document that family dinners are great for the body, the physical health, the brains and academic performance, and the spirit or the mental health, and in terms nutrition, cardiovascular health is better in teens, there’s lower fat and sugar and salt in home cooked meals even if you don’t try that hard, there’s more fruit, and fiber, and vegetables, and protein in home cooked meals, and lower calories. Kids who grow up having family dinners, when they’re on their own tend to eat more healthily and to have lower rates of obesity.

Then the mental health benefits are just incredible. Regular family dinners are associated with lower rates of depression, and anxiety, and substance abuse, and eating disorders, and tobacco use, and early teenage pregnancy, and higher rates of resilience and higher self esteem.“

Eating healthy food is also a way to create peace in your home. When our bodies are healthy we feel more peaceful and subsequently our homes can be more peaceful. When our children are consuming foods that are nutrient dense instead of sugar laden, they will be calmer and more enjoyable to be around.

Make it a priority to remove the excess from your diet. Eat homemade food, made with real ingredients, with the people you love around the dinner table each night.

4. Mental Consumption

It is a known fact that what we allow into our minds greatly affects our peace. If our minds are constantly consuming negativity, commercialism, comparison, immoral material then our lives and homes are sure to be anything but peaceful.

Removing excess mental consumption is crucial in cultivating peace. What are some areas of excess mental consumption that rob our homes and minds of peace?

• Entertainment
• Social Media
• Emails
• Online Shopping

I stopped using social media several years ago and it was a game changer for my mental health. I know, the thoughts of giving up social are scary. When I considered deleting my accounts my mind came up with every excuse possible as to why I should stay “connected”. However, the more I thought about the role social media played in my life and mind the more I realized it was just excess. The truth is Social media cultivates a lot of things in our lives but peace is not one of them.

I encourage you, remove the excess mental consumption in your life. Free your mind from the things that don’t truly matter.

5. Relationships

This category of excess is one we all probably struggle with to some degree. Whether its a family member that is toxic or a friend from the past that we really don’t have anything in common with anymore, excess relationships are all around us.

Calling these relationships excess doesn’t devalue the importance of the person but instead emphasizes the necessity of releasing relationships in our lives that no longer cultivate peace. As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that I really only have time to intentionally invest in a handful of relationships in my life.

When I consider those handful of people in my life I want them to be ones that challenge me to be a better person. I want them to be goal driven to help motivate me in my own goals. I want us to invest and encourage one another.

Jim Rohn’s quote, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with” is one that I think about often. When considering my relationships I want the people I surround myself with to bring my average up.

Removing excess relationships from your life might prove to be the most challenging task of all but also the most beneficial to cultivate peace.

I hope you have been encouraged to remove the excess in your life. Whether you start with possessions, your diet or relationships, removing excess in these areas are sure to cultivate a life of peace. Comment below with your thoughts and strategies to create a peaceful home and life.