The space that surrounds us can evoke emotion and change the way we feel.
Seniors who choose to stay remain at home often find themselves spending a lot of their lives in their houses. As seniors continue to grow older, it is not uncommon for them to find themselves spending less time away from the house overall, whether this be because of health concerns, limited social involvements, or just because they feel safer and more at ease within their homes. Spending a lot of time within the same physical space means that it is more important than ever that seniors’ living space not only meets their physical needs concerning mobility and accommodation to the many changes that come along with growing older, but also that their living spaces are pleasant, calm, comfortable, and filled with positivity.
Creating a Positive Space
By taking a few important steps and putting some care and thought into filling each room with the kinds of calm, happy, and positive energy that will help create and uphold a positive mental state, seniors and their caregivers can design their homes to suit their needs and desires so that the time that seniors spend in their homes each day is as calm, happy, and comfortable as possible. The following are some guidelines that can help in the process of arranging a calm and happy living space:
- Remove Negativity: It can be hard to feel happy and calm in one’s own home if the furniture, pictures, objects, or other physical things that are all over the place bring up unpleasant feelings. Identify items or elements within the home with which negative feelings or memories are associated so that they can be removed from the environment.
- Add Positivity: Just as physical things can be attached to negative emotions, other items can also be pleasant reminders of happy thoughts or memories. Items that bring a smile to seniors’ faces or add some joy to their day should be accentuated so that seniors can feel happy and uplifted by the things that surround them.
- Let There Be Light: For many people, any exposure to sunlight and fresh air from outdoors is powerful enough to help lift their spirits and put them in a good mood. For this reason, it can be helpful to emphasize the natural light that comes in through windows.
- Invite Nature Inside: House plants can serve many purposes beyond just being nice to look at. Plants can help to clean and re-oxygenate the air inside, and can provide an opportunity for seniors to care for and nurture something that also adds beauty to their homes and fosters a sense of connectedness with nature.
- Declutter: A tidy environment can help contribute to a calm and tidy mind. Reducing clutter and unnecessary items, and making sure that everything has an appropriate place and purpose is not only practical in the sense that it can make sure things are simpler to find and environments are easier to navigate, but it can also help foster a better mental state and sense of clarity. Clutter can be distracting, stressful, and unpleasant to deal with, but having a clean and tidy environment can help to calm the mind and help seniors to feel a sense of peace when they walk into their homes, rather than feeling overwhelmed by clutter.
- Separate Areas: Spending a significant amount of time within the context of the home can often make it difficult to feel as though different activities have any separation from one another. Making conscious decisions about what area of the house certain activities occur in can help to create a healthy level of separation and can help the home feel more varied and open.
- Think About Colour: While colour may seem an arbitrary thing at first thought, the colours that we are exposed to actually have the power to significantly alter the emotions we experience. Every person’s preferences and reactions to colour are unique, so finding the best colours to suit a person’s environment can involve a little exploration or trial and error, but ensuring that seniors’ homes are filled with colours that evoke the emotions they want to feel when they are at home can help keep them happy, calm, and comfortable.
The spaces that surround us can significantly impact our state of mind and emotional wellbeing, so it is worth putting some care and thought into setting up seniors’ living spaces so that they are filled with good energy and help seniors in Ottawa to feel happy, comfortable, and at ease in their homes.