It goes without saying that a divorce is a life-changing event. For many, divorce means a dramatic shift in not only their social lives but in their living situation as well. Whether you find yourself living in a home that has become significantly roomier or if you’ve found someplace new to make a fresh start, there is bound to be a period of adjustment where you work out the kinks of living on your own again. Fortunately, this is a fantastic opportunity to forge a home that is perfect for you, driven by your vision, and a place that you can be genuinely happy in your new life. Here are some helpful tips to create the home you need after divorce.
Tips to Create the Home You Need After Divorce
All The Work, Half The People
There is a good chance you spent a great deal of time and effort dividing and conquering daily tasks around your home. Once your ex-spouse has completely moved out and you’ve made an effort to cleanse your home of their personal effects, you will find that not only do you have way more space, but half as many hands to maintain it. Where you once might have relied on your spouse to do any number of vital things around the house, those duties now fall to you.
This can, of course, feel a bit overwhelming for many, especially for those who spent a huge number of years cohabitating with the same person. However, there is indescribable freedom that comes from living on your own and taking on the responsibilities that follow. The knowledge that, should anything need tending to or fixing in your home, you alone are the only person that can do it can be a source of great pride and a sense of accomplishment.
Learning to take on life on your own again can be an incredibly empowering experience, and the way that you go about doing it can set a tone for how you approach all things in your life going forward. Taking the opportunity to start your journey off on the right foot by tackling your new living situation with vigor and a sense of excitement will benefit you far more than you might first think.
Learning How To Do Everything!
While finding a renewed sense of independence and empowerment in the idea of living on your own is all well and good, you’ll quickly find that practical skills are equally as important as a positive attitude. Knowing what to do when your dishwasher refuses to drain might not seem like a big deal until it happens in the morning before you are headed off to work. There is an endless number of situations that might arise that you should be prepared to deal with, or at least know how to quickly educate yourself on how to handle them when they do pop up.
Fortunately, we live in the information age and have the collected knowledge of the world at our literal fingertips. Finding out how to safely replace an outlet or clean out your gutters is as simple as doing your due diligence and researching things online prior to attempting them. There is no shortage of instructional videos or informative articles on the internet that makes learning the new skills you’ll need to make life a breeze is easier than ever.
Not all of your newfound responsibilities require a huge amount of work, either. Now that you’re free to make any and all decisions about your home, you can turn a spare room into a functional office space for yourself or decide to completely redesign the landscaping around your home, filling it exclusively with plants that you love. Sure, you will be setting these things up on your own (unless you call a professional) but that simply means that you’re completing a task that can fill you with pride once finished as you’ll know you did it all on your own.
Making A Happy Home Starts With You
Once you get into the habit of keeping a tidy house and managing all of your new responsibilities living alone, you’ll want to take a good long look at how you’re going to make your house into a home for yourself. You may have gotten used to checking in with another person when making decisions regarding the most minute details of your home from what scent of candles you buy to the accent colors in your kitchen. Now that you are living on your own, those decisions are completely yours to make and can allow you to craft a home that is warm, inviting, and fits you perfectly.
Developing your own personal style isn’t something that just happens overnight and is, in reality, a lifelong pursuit. Take the time to really think about what you want your new home to look like and feel like, considering the thoughts and judgments of visitors little if at all. This is your home after all, and you have the chance to really express your own style in a way that you might never have had the chance too before. When your home reflects your personality, it will easily become a place of comfort and respite for you instead of simply a place to eat your food and sleep.
By using the above tips to create the home you need after divorce, your mood will be lifted as you embark on the healing process ahead of you. Jean-Paul Sartre famously said that “Hell is other people”, and while that might seem a bit extreme, once you’ve experienced the joys of living on your own, the confidence that it instills in you, you can easily get past the hyperbole and see that Sartre meant that being alone gives you plenty of time to get to know one of the best people in the world: yourself.
Your blog brought back memories of when I was moving on after divorce. I was on my own with two children.
Once I learned that I could always find a way to handle situations that I never had to before, I felt empowered and more confident.
It was amazing some of the things I could fix or figure out what to do to solves the problem.
Now that children are grown and gone, it was an opportunity to purge what I no longer wanted or needed.
My new place is simple but elegant without all the “stuff” around. It has become like my mind—uncluttered and a peaceful sanctuary.