Creating an Outdoor Oasis in Your Home
Recommendations for bringing the outdoors into your home can range from the sensible to the eccentric. The following tips will most likely read like the Captain Planet Motto and, rightfully so, since bringing the outdoors into your home helps you to feel closer to nature and, hopefully, inspires you to protect it.
Earth
The grounding element, bringing “earth” into your home, might initially sound kooky but keep an open mind. You don’t have to dump dirt on your floor or hoard exotic plants to incorporate the rich textures and sumptuous colors of the mountains, prairies, and forests into your home. Simple touches like shells, rocks, and pine cones during the fall can make your home feel warm and magical.
Put pine cones collected on a hike in a glass vase, filling in the spaces with cranberries for a festive Thanksgiving or Christmas centerpiece. Line your windowsills with rocks you’ve collected on various travels and adventures. Glue to the rocks a colorful label telling when and where you collected the rock.
For you beachy folks, visit your local thrift store and buy a variety of colorful glasses, viles, and containers. Fill them with sand and seashells.
If the mountains are your forte, print on canvas your favorite photograph taken on your mountain adventures and hang them throughout your home.
If you have a green thumb, plants are most certainly the more concrete way of bringing the outdoors in. Try succulents to start, since they require little attention and are beautiful.
Wind
Often times, we rely far too much on our air conditioner and heating system to regulate the temperature in our home. This can often lead to allergy problems, mold, and a feeling of stagnation in the home.
Thus, you should open the windows and doors in your home as often as possible. To suck in cool air, place a box fan in a window that is central to your home. Leave it running throughout the evening and then, as soon as you wake up, close the windows immediately. This will keep the cool, fresh, air trapped for several hours.
Windchimbs both inside and outside the house can add an enchanting and musical quality to any space.
Fire
This element might seem too dangerous or hot to introduce into your home, particularly if you don’t have an actual fireplace but, truth be told, it can be simple as lighting a few candles, burning incense or adding warm pictures depicting fiery colors in your home.
Choose one room of your home, preferably the living room or kitchen since these are the primary gathering spaces, and set up a nook filled with candles that you have collected on various journeys or from thrift stores. Light them each night and allow them to burn for several hours before bed.
If candles just aren’t your thing, add touches of red, orange, and yellow to your living room or kitchen to warm it up. You can easily do this by adding red pillows, trimming out your kitchen in mustard yellow, or merely by opening the windows during sunrise and sunset, allowing the oranges to flow into your home.
Water
One simple way to incorporate water into your home is by opening your windows every time, let it be stressed, every time it rains.
You can also find a shallow glass bowl at your local thrift store, fill it with water, and then place flowers, pine cones, shells, various leaves to flower serenely.
If you have the time, patience, and money, dedicating a corner of your home to an indoor fountain is a perfect way to incorporate water into your home.
Simply purchasing and old fish tank or opting for a singular fish in a fish bowl will emanate transparency and flow.
And, of course, Heart
Heart in your home is anything representing the outdoors that you dearly love. Perhaps it’s photography, an old pair of skis mounted on the wall, or a wooden table made from repurposed wood. The best way to do this is, of course, to bedeck your home with picture of you, your friends, and family enjoying the outdoors as much and as often as possible.
