Lifestyle 06/04/2022

Create Serenity At Home This Stress Awareness Month

Stress: A state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or demanding circumstances.

This Stress Awareness Month is all about creating ways to reduce stress in your life and those around you. Stress Awareness Month has taken place every April since 1992, and after the last challenging two years, there’s never been a more important time to consider the stresses in your life and the ways to reduce them.

One place that can cause a lot of stress is your home. From simple things such as a messy cupboard, to not practising a proper bedtime routine, the simple things can build up and cause avoidable stresses in your life.

This month, take the opportunity to organise your homelife and transform your mind from ‘stressed’ to ‘best’.

De-clutter

One of the easiest things you can do to de-stress is to ensure your home is tidy and organised. There’s nothing worse than coming home after a stressful day to an unkempt house, so spend a day or two ensuring your home is sparkling clean and that every item has its place.

To make your life that little bit easier, make sure every member of your household knows where things belong to avoid being in a constant ‘search’ mode, and if you have children, task them with age-appropriate jobs such as dusting, unpacking the weekly shop and putting it away, or emptying the dishwasher, to help make your life that little bit easier.

Enjoy your Home

Turn your house into a home by creating space for the things you love doing in life. Whether it’s transforming your spare room into a painting studio or taking a corner of the living room to practice yoga, ensure you make space for the activities you love doing in life, as after all, a home is for living in.

Make use of your Kitchen

We all know the temptation of picking up the phone to order a takeaway, but a fresh home-cooked meal not only helps to create a healthy body, but a healthy mind too. With hectic lives becoming the norm it can seem a chore having to cook every day, but with these quick and simple recipes you’ll be creating five-star dishes in no time at all.

Community

One of the big themes of this year’s Stress Awareness Month is ‘community’. It doesn’t mean you have to invite the whole neighbourhood over for dinner, but socialising with a few others has multiple benefits for our mental health.

Set aside a day or two in your diary to invite your nearest and dearest over for a much-needed catch up and feel the boost in morale that it will provide. Don’t add more stress to yourself than needed, simply provide a cup of tea, soft drink or a small glass of wine and enjoy some one-on-one time with loved ones.

Switch Off

We all know the temptation of scrolling through our phones before bed and feeling the regret of it when you struggle to drift off to sleep with the agonising stress about how long it is until you have to be up the morning.

It can be hard to put smart devices down when your emails, favourite TV shows and social media channels are a simple click away, but taking an hour away from the screens before bed could transform your sleep from drab to fab in no time at all. Instead, try grabbing your favourite magazine or book and enjoy a spot of reading instead.