The most basic things in witchcraft can be applied in most functions of our lives-including in our everyday aspects of the home. Most people have a safe space in their home/apartment/room, a space that is supposed to be theirs and where they keep their most personal items. This space is sacred in a different manner than an altar, it is sacred to the self. It’s our privacy, our abode, where we are to be comfortable. In this blog I will be focusing on how I maintain this safe and energy.
Below I will mainly be getting into how I maintain my spaces physically and magically, mainly focusing on cleaning and decoration. I’ll likely make more posts to detail this further but would be a bit much for a singular post.
How I Approach It
Some of the best practices I use in my home are relatively simple and almost mundane in action. To many peoples surprise I have a big focus on magic in taking care of the home, but I’m not really a ‘hearth witch,’ or at least wouldn’t describe myself as one. But I have a schedule and routine for the home to do my upkeep and maintenance, and it includes some more magical and ritual approaches. Because I do base it off more of a schedule, that is how I am going to break it down here.
Monthly:
Every month there as a few things I do. First, I dust every corner, nook, cranny, and crack with the purpose of clearing out old energy and stagnant air. I’ll start from the top and work down the room deep cleaning, until I get to the floors to sweep and mop. In the warmer months I like to leave an open window at one end of my house and work from the opposite end to it. I like to do some form of cleansing, so that I can slowly push all the old air and energy out as I go room to room. I also like to try and get cleaners that are scented like peppermint or lavender. Not only because the properties these two herbs symbolize, but peppermint can also be very good at deterring insects and other pests.
Doing this deep clean at the beginning of every month helps me keep open space for the new and get rid of the old that is not serving me anymore. Stagnant energy is worse to me than bad energy, I can recognize and deal with bad energy a lot quicker, and by the time I realize I’ve fallen victim to it it’s already left its marks. You don’t have to approach it this way-realistically I do this because it benefits me-if it doesn’t benefit you, it’s likely not worth it to do this as often.
After I do all this cleaning, I like to take the extra time to revamp or set up protections in my home. I like to keep a pair of iron keys and witches’ bells on my doors that lead outside, this doesn’t take much maintenance, but I do like to take them off, smoke cleansing them occasionally, and deep clean the knobs they hung off of to rid any residual bad vibes. These are to keep ill intentions and negative energies out, so I like to try and keep them nice and refreshed.
I like to keep besoms in my entry way as well. You can order those cinnamon scented ones they sell in big chain stores like target in the fall online all year round. So, I like to get one each month or so and use them to keep the entryway clear and sweep it out with the besom. My entryway is more so a covered porch so often times I find it traps energy that can’t go beyond the door there, and I like to sweep it out every now and then. Plus, the cinnamon scented ones I like to use to bring abundance and success to my door.
I also take the new month and all my dusting as a chance to redo any of my protection lines, sigils, wards, and so on. This would take a lot more to dive into each one, but I will likely detail them more in their own posts later on. This part is more so focused on protection for me and my family than it is the energy of the house. I like to just keep active protections up instead of doing new ones with each spell or ritual-and it is nice to help maintain the energy and space more hands off-though a bit more energy consuming for me.
Bi-Weekly:
Every two weeks I like to take the time to organize. I feel like a cluttered and unorganized home carries its own bad energies and it upsets a level of balance. So, while I may not be doing a deep clean, I like to go through everything and make sure it’s where it should be. Even stuff that I have in my storage spaces I try to prevent from becoming piles of stagnant old energy collecting around old items. This one is the quickest usually, because since I’ve already deep cleaned this is just a bit of a tidy up in between. Makes it easy to stay on top of everything for me with this set up, because even if I have a bad, low spoons week if I can manage to keep up even with this stuff the house will stay relatively easy for me to manage on my own. Because if there’s any kind of energy that affects my house its mine-and I have a hard time dealing with mess and clutter mentally. This helps me not just spiritually but mentally as well, so it has stayed apart of my routine for years. I can’t promise it’ll help you in this same manner, but I recommend it a lot.
Weekly or Daily:
Weekly I do a cleaning of each room. I like to split this up to do one room in my house for each day of the week, this helps me stay up on my general upkeep without completely draining myself. This works out for me, and since I have seven areas of my house, I have one room per day of the week. The only thing I do as often as daily for my house is lightly incense. I find it keeps the air light and clear and helps me find my creative flow when I’m writing or painting.
Overall, I just take the very mundane process of cleaning my house and find the places where I can work in magic without overwhelming myself. I don’t think there always has to be a grand ritual or deeply thought through spell, and this helps me stay connected with my practice even when this is all I can manage. It’s helped me form habits and stay on top of my day to day as well, and I would say once I started doing this it all became a lot easier for me.
Using Magic in Decorating
On a note different from cleaning, your decor can have a very specific vibe while still being beneficial to you and your craft. I like to customize each room to the energy I want it to have, and curator how I decorate it around this. My kitchen I painted light blue for healing, with an accent color of green, for abundance and luck and prosperity. I primarily decorate it in lemons to add not only a bright color to contrast the more pastel blue and green, but they have a lot of symbolism in the sun, carries invigorating energy, and works as a protective charm. The kitchen is the first room you enter in the home, and since it’s where I prepare the food to take care of my family (and where I do my witchin’ in the kitchen) I wanted it to have more upbeat, positive, and rewarding properties. I won’t bore you by going through all of my decorative choices, but hopefully this is a good example for what I mean.
Feel free to play with this in your own way, and don’t feel discouraged if you rent. There’s a lot of renter friendly options in decor, and you don’t have to paint. I had the option to and did, but it’s not a requirement to this in anyway. I’m going to get more into the thought process behind it all as well since that will be easier for you to use to apply it to your own space if you wish to.
First, I usually look at the purpose of the room, I like to look to color associations, symbolism, and the correspondences of items when I consider them for decoration. Since it’s likely to be the most common one, we’ll look at a bedroom. Even if you don’t own your own home, you likely have a space for a room, or space in a room that is yours. Now people have different wants for their bedroom but mostly the goal is to relax and recharge. The bedroom is where we sleep, so it should be comfortable and calming. It’s usually where we are safe to get away from everything, so it should reflect that.
What are colors that represent these feelings? What are things that symbolize them to you? Do any of these things call out to you, and make you feel connected to these aspects? Is there anything you’d like to add to it? Outside feeling comfortable and safe would you like to add in things that bring out happiness in you, or maybe even motivation? What are ways you can combine that with what you have already?
Once you have a general idea in mind it’ll be a lot easier to build. In each room of my house, I just started with a color to paint the walls and went on from that so that I didn’t overwhelm myself. As time has gone on, I’ve been able to really curate everything to have its place and purpose. It definitely took some time, and while it wasn’t hard work it wasn’t something that could be feasibly completed in a few days, this stuff does take money after all.
Share your thoughts!