Slow Living: Furnishing Your Home to Create a Peaceful Space

We’re learning to embrace the concept of slow living. These days, many others are too! 

With many of us maintaining a busy lifestyle packed full with work, social obligations, and family duties, it’s no wonder we’re seeking a break from the noise.

Slow living means to consciously live in the moment, while taking a step back from hyperconsumerism and the ‘always on the go’ feeling of everyday life. 

Essentially, slow living is all about being present in the moment to curate a more meaningful and fulfilling life. Dedicating your time, money, and energy to the things that bring you happiness is the first step to creating a slower-paced lifestyle. 

How to Bring Slow Living into Your Busy Life

It seems like every day there’s a new must-have item or an upgrade for something you already own. Adopting a slow living practice means deciding with intention whether you need to purchase more things and consciously choosing to buy higher quality products that will last longer.

The same can be said for choosing where to spend your time. 

Do you need to take on yet another obligation? 

Packing our schedules full of commitments leaves us feeling stressed and drained. Slow living encourages us to think carefully about how we want to spend our lives. 

What activities are important to you, and how do they make you feel? Consciously choosing to dedicate your time to the things that leave you feeling fulfilled is a great way to slow down and build the life that you want.

Starting Small

It can seem like an impossible task to pare your life down to the essentials. You’ve already committed to too many things and purchased all this stuff — how do you start slow living? 

The key is to start small. The whole purpose of slow living is to reduce stress, focus on what brings you joy and stay present in the moment. You don’t need to overhaul your entire life right now. Taking small steps forward is a great way to bring a feeling of slow living into your busy life. 

When you wake up in the morning, take a moment to enjoy the stillness before your day gets started. 

When a friend asks you to pack yet another social obligation into your calendar this weekend, pause for a moment and decide whether it would bring you joy to attend or whether you’d rather sit this one out. 

While shopping, visit an antique store or a local artisan shop to find something special instead of buying yet another low-quality, mass-produced piece online. 

Curating Your Home to Encourage Slow Living

Curating a sense of slow living in your home is done by surrounding yourself with items you’ve chosen with intention. Your environment affects your mood, and reducing clutter and unnecessary items is a great way to calm the mind and slow down your pace of living. 

You can start by decluttering your home room by room, and giving away anything you no longer use or that isn’t your style. Clearing out your home allows you to free up both physical space in each room, as well as mental space. 

Think about how your home makes you feel. Does the decor in your home lend itself to a sense of tranquillity? Find joy in the process of curating your interior space. Make your choices count, and select special pieces that you and your family can enjoy for years to come. By limiting the consumption of fast furniture and fast decor, you're taking a big step towards creating a space that supports a life lived with intention. Not only is buying fewer, higher-quality pieces better for the environment, but it’s also a great way to start purchasing mindfully. 

Slow living is all about living mindfully and consciously creating a fulfilling life. Slow living looks different for each of us— there is no one way to do it correctly. One of our core values at Acre Made is embracing a more intentional lifestyle. That’s why our pieces are all made to order, using sustainable materials and built to embrace a more intentional lifestyle. From our daily life on the farm, to our made to order pieces built with care, this philosophy lives in every aspect of what we do. We take a slow-build approach to our production, always keeping quality and durability in mind. 

Acre Made can help you curate your home with solid wood furniture pieces made in Canada with care. We offer a collection of made to order pieces; choose from dining room furniture like tables and chairs, or living room furniture pieces like consoles and coffee tables. If you’re looking for something special, or have a specific design in mind, we also offer a custom furniture service to help you bring that piece you’ve been dreaming of to life. Explore our collection to find the perfect piece for your home.