How To Love Where You Live // The Cycle of Care & Enjoyment

Hi friends! Today I’m sharing a homemaking “hack” that has helped me a lot over the years!

If you’re struggling to love where you live, can’t find the motivation to clean, or if you’re wishing you were in your dream home, this is a practical strategy that can help you with contentment in your current place! I’m convinced that applying this strategy will make a world of difference!

**Note: click HERE or scroll down to the bottom of this post if you’d prefer to watch this tip in video format!**

Today I wanted to talk about something called the Cycle of Care & Enjoyment. I came up with this with a few years ago, and it hit me as important enough that I actually teach about it in my course, The Present Mama Playbook! This has been a life-changing perspective shift for me in terms of homemaking, especially.

For a little bit of background: right now as I type this, I’m sitting in our house and not an apartment or rental house. We own a house and live in southern Minnesota. This is where we call home! Roughly half of the year, every single year, we actually live in a different location. We move to the Twin Cities for a number of months, due to my husband’s job, and that makes for a pretty mobile lifestyle, depending on how much driving “up and down” we want to do during that chunk of time. So, for about 5 months of the year we are living elsewhere. For multiple years, it was an apartment. This year, it’ll be a rental house.

Sometimes in life, you are called to different places for different seasons. Sometimes you’re called to live for a couple years in a completely different state. Sometimes you’re called to shift around even throughout a given week! I’ve learned how to “do” apartment life with multiple young children – and it’s a whole different world/approach than living in our house in our small town! But homes can have their challenges, too. Perhaps like us, you have lived in houses that are over 100 years old! They have their own quirks and issues (and charm)!

My husband and I have been married almost 11 years and we’ve moved around a couple times – a few times – especially if you count moving up and down every single year for the past few years or so. (If we counted that every year, that would be quite a few times!)

We’re firm believers in the phrase (that I hung over our bed in our apartment bedroom): together is our favorite place to be. 🙂 Of course, that is what’s most important! But over the years I’ve still had to learn to appreciate and love and care for the homes in the locations that God has called us to live, and sometimes that has been a struggle! When we (any of us mamas!) move around throughout the years, it’s not always to a brand new home or a fancy place. It takes intentionality to learn to enjoy and cheerfully care for wherever we live.

That’s why I have the words “care” and “enjoyment” feeding off of each other: they are both a crucial part of a cycle! (And of course, very creatively, I named it the Cycle of Care & Enjoyment!)

Here’s How the Cycle of Care & Enjoyment Works:

I’ve found over the years that if I put in the effort of physically actually caring for the home (taking care of that place), then I find myself actually enjoying where I am more!

Then, when I’m liking where I’m living more, that in turn makes me more dedicated and committed to keeping it tidy, and keep keeping it clean and homey and special and cozy.

Once I have worked on caring for that place again, then I find it IS more homey and I AM enjoying it even more.

As you can see, the two words “care” and “enjoyment” play off of each other. They spin around and around in a cycle! I have found that if I put the effort and time and commitment in to care for a place – wherever it is – I will definitely find that I am enjoying it more. Once I’m enjoying a place more, then I find I’m more committed to it and I have more of a desire to care for it!

It’s a good, good cycle to get into!

It’s sometimes hard to know where to begin with this cycle. It’s kind of like Double Dutch or like jumping rope, where you don’t really know where to run in to begin. The place where I would recommend jumping in would be the “care” aspect of it. You do not have to force yourself (and sometimes you can’t force yourself) to absolutely love a more temporary apartment situation or a temporary place you find yourself living. And I know we can all look around on Pinterest or social media and decide that where we’re living is somehow not adequate. (Then we decide we really don’t like where we currently live and that can be a dangerous cycle as well!) But if you make the commitment to put in the effort to care for the place you’re currently living, then you’re off to a great start!

I like to think of Ma Ingalls from the Laura Ingalls Wilder or Little House on the Prairie books, because Ma did what was needed as part of her Care & Enjoyment cycle! I just envision the scenes where she’s literally sweeping a dirt floor with a broom and she’s tidying up whatever she can in her current living situation. And she probably wasn’t thinking how amazing it was compared to other homes that she had seen, but she knew that it was a place she was grateful for – a place where she could continue to raise her family – and so Ma jumped right in with the effort of caring for wherever it was she was living, even when it was a temporary housing situation. Even when it was a covered wagon!

So, if you jump into this cycle with the care step, you’ll become more and more grateful for where you’re currently living, because you’re caring for it well! You are putting in the effort to really look at every nook and cranny of the place, or you just get in a good routine with tidying and systems in that place, and I think you’ll find that you are going to have more of a heart of gratitude towards it and you’ll start loving it more!

I hope this helps you, friend! I hope it’s a good reminder to you and offers you some encouragement, because I know there are so many seasons of our life (and sometimes in our marriages) where we can find ourselves living somewhere that isn’t the dream home we dreamt about a decade ago. And that is okay! It’s okay to sometimes briefly mourn that fact, but then it’s time to dive into that jump rope game of the Cycle of Care & Enjoyment!

I’d love to hear about any strategies you have for becoming more grateful or learning to like where you live! If you are interested in hearing more tips and strategies, then be sure to watch my free webinar linked below – it’s all about productivity secrets for moms of young children.

You can also join the waitlist for The Present Mama Playbook, my online homemaking and motherhood course!