To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends. — Samuel Johnson, the Rambler, No, 68.
That’s the very first quote in Gretchen Rubin’s brand new book, Happier at Home (affiliate link) which — like its predecessor The Happiness Project — is sure to be a blockbuster. The Samuel Johnson quote immediately hit home for me, because golly, isn’t this blog about finding happiness in our sweet little midcentury homes… about loving the house you’re in, instead of pining after what it may lack… and about giving our houses our tender loving care — so that they can give theirs back?
Crikes, sorry to get all mushy there. But in case you haven’t guessed, I am hugely enormously, gigantically, sentimental about happiness in house and home. It is kind of… all that I think about. I also just read Gretchen Rubin’s first book The Happiness Project (affiliate link) in July. I thought that the book was hugely enormously gigantically brilliant. It was a #1 New York Times best-seller for good reason. The book is NOT self-help FLUFF. This woman is a take-no-prisoners serious, avid researcher. She wrote lauded history books about Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy before she turned to the more prosaic, yet elusive, topic of Happiness. In a nut, with The Happiness Project, she synthesized amazing amounts of research on the topic… and then… and this was the especially brilliant part: She put her findings to work in her own life, small-step-by-small-step, over a 12-month period, and chronicled her experience. The book is super easy to read, super encouraging — but at the same time, it’s deeeeeep. How often can you say that.
Now, Gretchen (I don’t think she will mind my familiarity) has followed up her first best-selling happiness book with a second one that focuses even more specifically on cultivating happiness within your home and with the creatures who may live there with you. UPDATE: Happier at Home has just hit #2 on the New York Times best-seller list, in just its FIRST week on sale. THIS BOOK IS A MUST-HAVE!
One more happy thing: Gretchen once gave a shout out to Retro Renovation on her blog — and send several hundred new visitors our way. She like the retro. Can ya believe it. I can: Retro is Happy!
Alison says
I’m happier when I’m wearing socks. Warm feet make a big difference.
Kellie says
I’m happier at home when I can see (and smell) my childhood teddy bear, so I keep him on a miniature chair on a bureau in our bedroom. I’m 43 years old with two sons and it *still* makes me happy to touch that bear.
Judy says
I am happier at home now that I take time for myself.
maria ball says
I am happier when I channel my mother. She truly found happiness in the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Diane says
I’m happy when I can open the windows WIDE, and let the fresh air in, after a summer of air conditioning, or a winter of heat. Ahhh.
Diane Granic says
The best thing I ever did was to quit caring about delighting other people with my home, and start delighting ME! No more magazine-picture standards. Comfortable, with the things I love and use the most easy accesible, and neat and attractive to MY EYES! Oh, and my husband gets a vote too.
JamieK says
I’m happy at home when it’s cloudy and cold outside and I’m in the kitchen working on a loaf of bread that I can slather butter all over when it comes out of the oven
Brenda says
I’m happiest when our daughter is home!
Jeanne Jacob says
I’m happier at home now that we’ve moved house (just 3 weeks ago) and I have a garden that looks out onto the woods. From my bedroom’s tall French windows I can see small birds feeding on the yew’s red berries and wood pigeons sampling ripe elderberries. (I hope the pigeons leave us some for making into cordial – it’s supposed to be good for coughs). For the past week I’ve been ill, but staying home has acquainted me with all the activity out in the garden. Birds whose names I have yet to discover fly in and out, singing or calling out, as they peck at fruit or insects; one red squirrel (unlike American ones, European ones are red) hops and glides over branches, from a tall poplar over to a Juneberry (the first tree to sport coloured leaves) to search for nuts in the hazel hedge. My camera is ready to hand and I’ve photographed a wood pigeon and possibly a sparrow, but have yet to catch the elusive squirrel. Now that I’ve become more attuned to the wildlife in the back garden, I’m revising the all-wild-rose hedge I had initially planned to a mixed one of roses with big hips (Rosa glauca, Rosa sweginzowii macrocarpa), blackthorn, and other plants to feed and shelter them throughout the year, especially the winter. The blackthorn in particular will be much appreciated by nightingales, which I’ve read prefer to build their nests in it, and which I’m trying to attract back into this area, as the little lane where I live is named after them.
Teresa says
How I laughed at the paper towels! This is the bane of my existence because it’s my husband’s job to stock them and he clearly thinks it’s OK to run out of them. I am always telling him—buy a year’s supply!!!! Yes. That makes me happy too!
I am happiest at home when I have a cat on my lap, I am reading a great book, watching a fun movie, my kids are playing nicely and humming along. Being by a window in winter on a sunny day and having the sun warm you is amazing. As is having a fall breeze cruise through the house just after a hot summer.