It’s no surprise that being outdoors brings with it many mood boosting benefits. We all understand the importance and likely have the best intentions to get our butts outdoors, but probably find that it isn’t always so easy. Especially during the winter months, right? The good thing is that there are plenty of ways to incorporate more nature and natural elements into our daily routine to enable the therapeutic and rejuvenating benefits. By incorporating some of these ideas into your daily life, you can keep a healthy, positive outdoor mindset all year-round.
1. Sprinkle Plants Throughout your Home
Bringing more plants into your home is a great way to incorporate nature into your life. Choose plants that are easy to grow indoors (e.g., spider and snake plants) and ensure they are placed appropriately in order to get the sunlight they require. This is a great opportunity to get the kids involved as well. You could even let them choose their own and make the care part of their responsibilities. Having plants around brings you that much closer to the outdoors plus they help reduce the number of airborne pollutants in your home. Score!
2. Add Natural Items to Décor
Another way to incorporate nature into your home is to use natural items as home decor. When choosing colors, accent pillows, and other decorative accessories consider natural-made or natural-looking items. Adding in decorative items made from wood, stone, driftwood, pebbles from the beach or other textures found in nature is beautiful and easy to incorporate to any style. Things like wood shelves or wicker baskets are a great way to add some natural elements and texture as well.
3. Natural Scents
Bringing in the smell of nature is a wonderful way to awaken and excite your senses and one of our favorite ways to experience nature indoors. This is one of very reasons we quickly added candles to our offerings at Michigan Nature Co. Plus ours provide a wood wick which really provides a way to bring you even closer to nature. Whether it is one of ours or another candle, diffuser, spray, etc. pick a scent you love and bring it in to your home.
4. Nature Journaling
Nature journaling is a wonderful hobby that you can do both in and outdoors. Gather a journal (like our idea journal), some pens, colored pencils, or some watercolors and take some time to reflect on your favorite landscapes and memories outdoors, and just draw, paint, write about the details. We promise it will provide some real stress – relief.
5. Bring the Garden Inside
Incorporate nature into your life by bringing the garden indoors. It’s pretty easy to do and so rewarding. Your salad will taste that much better given that some of the ingredients are straight from your garden. Start with some herbs on your windowsill…basil, rosemary and mint are wonderful ideas to get you started.
6. Find the Sun
Pay close attention to where the sun shines through your windows and make it a point to set up shop with a comfy chair and a great book and soak in the rays. Enjoy the light and the warmth it brings and take it all in. Perhaps it makes a great place for your desk, or maybe it’s a special space you escape to relax and close your eyes if only for a few minutes. Regardless, the sunlight will make your heart and mind happy.
7. Fresh Flowers
Decorating your home with bouquets of fresh flowers are a wonderful way to incorporate nature into your daily indoor life. Grab some flowers at the local market and before just throwing them into a vase, examine each flower closely, smelling each one. Then ensure they are in a space in which you spend a lot of time. Seeing the beautiful colored flowers can bring so much freshness and happiness to your indoor space. And this one brings with it a bonus. Save the flowers and press them. Once flattened utilize for artwork or to create cards and stationery for friends and family.
8. Display Nature Art
Displaying nature art on the wall of your home is another easy way to incorporate nature into your indoor space. Our favorite is printing photos and framing or ordering canvases of our family adventures out in nature. Each glimpse offers an escape to that magical moment. And shop small local shops and thrift stores and find vintage paintings of landscapes, wildlife, and other natural elements and photography by local artists.
Now sure, these don’t quite compare to experiencing the real thing, outdoors, but they are all sure to bring you a bit closer to nature and that much happier!