The You-Now Home: Why It Feels ‘Right’ (When Everything Else Feels ‘Off’)

The You-Now Home™ is about creating a home for the life you’re actually living, right now. If your home feels off in some way at the moment, then setting it up for You-Now is what will finally make it feel ‘right’.

When I was 24, I broke a bone in my left foot. Playing chase. In a soft play centre. On a work night out. Don’t judge!

I was living miles from home in my first job out of university – a small village, no public transport – and shift work meant thirty minutes on the motorway each way, twice a day. My car was a manual. My left foot was the clutch foot. Bit of a problem.

My parents had an automatic car. So for a few weeks, they kindly swapped with me.

It definitely wasn’t a forever fix – it was never meant to be – but it worked for the time I needed it to.

And then, once the foot healed, I returned the automatic to my parents and went back to using my own car again, exactly as I had been before.

I think about that swapped car a lot, because it’s the clearest example I’ve got of a solution purpose built for the life I was actually living in that exact moment.

And that’s the whole idea behind what I call the You-Now Home™.

What the You-Now Home™ Is: 5 Crucial Traits

All we really want from our homes when it comes down to it is that it works for us, and feels ‘right’. A place that helps us thrive, because it supports us exactly as we need it to.

That’s exactly what the You-Now Home™ is.

And the set up of it looks different in every house, because every “you” and every “now” is unique, just like a fingerprint. That being said – there are five traits that are common to every single one:

#1 – It’s true to those in it

If you’ve got three kids, two dogs and a full-time job, then your “You-Now Home” will be set up to support exactly that – it won’t try and make you fit into a glossy, clutter-free version of family life you think you need to look like.

It simply reflects the people actually living in it, so they all feel at home in their own home rather than guests.

#2 – It’s intentional

It doesn’t just happen by accident. It’s chosen thoughtfully. Decided on carefully. Built on purpose, for those actually living there.

#3 – It’s unapologetic

It doesn’t owe anyone an explanation. If it works for your home life, it’s right – full stop.

A corner of the kitchen permanently taken over by homework, so the island’s never quite clear? If that works for you, then that’s exactly how it should be.

#4 – It feels effortless

A home built to support and reflect your actual life doesn’t need constant willpower to keep it running.

It goes with the grain of how you actually operate, with your capacity in mind – so maintaining it doesn’t take all your energy.

#5 – It’s allowed to evolve

The You-Now Home™ isn’t a fixed state you arrive at and stay in forever – it’s an ongoing agreement between you and your space, renegotiated every time your life shifts.

As such, there can’t be a finish line. The job you have this year won’t be the job you have in three. The kids who need you every hour of the school holidays will, at some point, need you far less.

Real maintenance, then, isn’t really about tidying and keeping the status quo completely. It’s more about staying honest with yourself and identifying when things should stay static and when they should change.

It’s noticing when a system that used to work has started creating friction, or a space doesn’t flow the way it used to, and being willing to tweak it rather than white-knuckle your way through it out of habit.

Worth a look: The Feel Good Home – the course that walks through exactly this kind of ongoing, tweak-as-you-go maintenance

What the You-Now Home™ isn’t

There are 2 key types of home that yours may well be set up as at the moment.

Understanding what they are and why they’re different from the You-Now Home™ will help you move away from them, and towards a home that feels more ‘right’, more quickly.

The “Past-You” Home

Past-you already set up the home you’re living in at some point.

And now? some things may be working well still, but other things not so much anymore.

Why? Because your life has moved on since that set up happened, but the issue happens when your home hasn’t caught up yet and things are still set up for a version of you that long since left.

It shows up in subtle ways – for instance – you may start to notice things like the fact that getting dressed feels harder than it used to, or that dinner’s more irritating to cook than it was last year.

These are small irritants that may pass you by for a while, but can build up into bigger issues over time as they snowball – until you notice them and stop them in their tracks.

The “Future-you” Home

Future-you sounds so reasonable. She’s the version of you that you want to become because your aspiring to a goal. This goal could be one of 2 types:

Firstly – A vision you have for your future self. For example – you will be a person who has morning coffee on the patio while journalling, or you’ll start crafting each evening for an hour… Led by aspiration.

Secondly – Something that you think you ‘should’ be, which is common when you start looking online and comparing your home with others (this shows up in goals that you haven’t really thought about in terms of your lifestyle, you just want things to look a certain way – like the perfectly organised pantry, for instance). Led by duty and a little guilt.

Trouble is, Future-You doesn’t live here yet.

As such, setting your home up for her is a guess dressed up as progress – she might not even want what you’re planning for her, when she gets here.

And in the meantime you’re left living in a home that’s not right for who actually lives here. YOU-NOW..

What the You-Now Home™ is built on

If you’ve been with me for any length of time, you’ll know that I believe that home life works when three foundations: SELF, SPACE and SYSTEMS, are all set up well:

SELF – What makes your home feel good to live in – for those in it and their tastes, capacity, and needs.

SPACE – The stuff in your home – what it is, where it lives, and how it looks.

SYSTEMS – How your home runs, day to day – managing things as smoothly as possible.

The only version of these 3 that makes sense is when each is based on the Goldilocks version of you – You-Now.

After all – You know exactly what your life looks like today. You know which rooms you actually spend time in. You know which systems you follow and which you don’t – because you know yourself the best. You know what’s ‘Just Right’ – just as Goldilocks did, There’s no second guessing needed.

And so, to align these with the You=Now Home™ is quite simple.

Every decision you make has to run through one filter: does this work for the life I’m actually living?

When this is applied consistently, it changes everything.

How to get started creating your You-Now Home™

The best place to start is with an honest look at where you’re actually standing today – what your home and your life within it looks like.

Because when you know that, you can make changes that are the most effective in the quickest amount of time. You won’t waste time on the wrong things, and you’ll feel more aligned to your home, more quickly.

In years of doing this work, I’ve seen that most women are one of 4 types:

• Some are overwhelmed. The home feels like it’s running them, and they don’t know where to start.
• Some are frustrated. Things look fine from the outside, but something doesn’t work – and they can’t quite name what.
• Some are overloaded. The home runs well, but only because they run it – and holding all of that is exhausting.
• Some are refining – everything is going well, but there are always tweaks still worth making (good when looking from an evolving perspective, but not so good if you’re endlessly fiddling just for the sake of it).

Wherever you are doesn’t really matter – it’s just helpful data. Information that can tell you exactly where to focus first. And that’s powerful…

Ready to find out which of the 4 types you are? Take the free two-minute Homebird Type quiz – it’ll tell you whether you’re an Ostrich, Swan, Puffin or Owl, and exactly what that means for your home. 👉 Take the Homebird Type quiz here

Past-you built some good things. Future-you has some genuinely good ideas that may work one day. But neither of them lives in your house at this moment in time.

You do,

And the home that works best for you is always going to be the one built around exactly who you are, with exactly the life you’ve got – right now.

The You-Now Home™