Being Home: The Art of Belonging Wherever You Are

by Rebecca Ross

Winner of the 2016 International Book Award for Self Help Home is more than an address. It’s a place you belong, one that reflects who you are. This feeling of belonging comes from your being, as well as where you are. Recognizing that relationship between you and your environment opens a door. When you understand the link between these two, you can step across a threshold and make your home a place that works well and feels right.Being Home teaches you how to establish this link between you and the outside world byCreating awareness about your natural and energetic boundaries,Finding your own roots and how to connect to your spaces, andUtilizing the three fundamental qualities of an environment to create a feeling of home wherever you are.Each lesson is supported by a variety of exercises that can be performed at home, at the grocery store, even while stuck in traffic. When you engage with your surroundings, you’ll move with fluidity and confidence anywhere—a crowded room, an empty street, and anywhere in between.

Genres: Self Help, Nonfiction

174 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 30, 2015

About the author

Rebecca Ross grew up wanting to know
why some houses felt better than others.
Helping people in their real spaces
became Rebecca’s mission. In 2000, after
twenty years as an architect, she founded
The Composed Domain, which melds
her architecture background, her understanding
of spatial energy, and her skill
at organizing things and information. As
a professional organizer, she works directly with home and business
owners in their spaces to reduce clutter, restore balance, and
enhance well-being. She teaches classes, speaks at ADD and OCD
support groups, and has appeared on local Seattle NPR station
KUOW and the KING 5 New Day Northwest morning show. She
was also featured on three episodes of TLC’s hit reality TV show
Hoarding: Buried Alive. Rebecca has become a specialist in hoarding
and chronic acquiring, partnering with Seattle-area therapists
to support people dealing with serious issues.
Visit her online at: www.composedomain.com.

Reviews

[Bill McCarthy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything has to be so accessible these days. It has to be easy, or quick, or child-toy basic, or flashy and instantly memorable, or high fructose corn syrup for the mind. Books like Being Home, against this cultural backdrop, often need a "how to use this book" discussion because they are not instantly accessible. Just as our own true sense of place is not often articulately conscious in our own minds we may need the friendly guide to open doors and show rooms. Rebecca Ross does this beautifully and it is worth your effort to step inside and truly look around Being Home. I read this book at a time in my life when clutter was rampant. I lived in SE Turkey 70 km from Syria, from the village of Kobane if you watch the news, 150 km from Aleppo. My neighbors are all Kurdish refugees who have attempted to extricate themselves from a "house" gone madly into disarray. Such is the cluttered world today in grave need of a sense of being home. At the same time as reading this book a friend of mine developed tongue cancer, had a devastating operation, and is struggling to regain health, speak, swallow and live a life into which enormous "clutter" and disarray has fallen. The advent and onslaught of disease or war disrupts our order and, like hurricane winds, rearranges or destroys all that was familiar. Working with the concepts in this book can help heal. It can be used to make "sense of" or bring "order to" disarray of the body, the community, the world. I truly recommend that you work with this book, look into the windows and walk the rooms and learn to remember Being Home.

[Anita Boser · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is unlike any other. It teaches you how to be comfortable wherever you are. Not just comfortable, but at home. Saying it like that, it sounds like a health book, and it is in a way. But really this book is an organizing book. Unlike books that teach you how to organize your drawers and closets, this book teaches you how to organize your environment.

Because the scope is larger than rearranging clothes and dishes, many of the concepts presented are new. Each concept includes an exercise or two so that the concept becomes more familiar. I read the book once through, which gave me an overview. I didn't start to "get it" until I did the exercises. They each took about 15 minutes. As a result, the second time through the book, I got a lot more out of it even though it took me a couple of months to complete it.

At the same time, my home and my office became more streamlined. I found it easy to get rid of stuff that wasn't serving me any longer. And habits that I've had for years (like saving little pieces of aluminum foil that might get used one day, but just jumbled up a shelf until I threw them out anyway) didn't seem so important.

I write this review sitting content in my home with some stuff on the counters and it doesn't bother me. I also look around at the items that are meaningful to me spread throughout my home and realize that Being Home helped me make this space a place I truly am happy.

[Cara Ball · Rating 2 out of 5]

Putting the woo-woo into home. I don't think I'm the right person for this book. I was looking for inspiration to resume my old Fly Lady methods but in a new and fresh way. This book didn't address those needs. Instead, it is an explanation of your body, chakra, meditation and how this impacts your home. I got it, but it wasn't what I needed.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you don't like the first 5 pages of this book don't bother reading the rest (or maybe just read Chapter 4 and then stop). If you can keep an open mind, it makes some good points about you and the space around you and how you interact with that space. Ultimately, this book is not quite my cup of tea, mainly because I found the language/descriptions too far out and was not what I was hoping for based on the description but it did a good job within itself and what it set out to accomplish. It is not a general purpose reader sort of book.

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this book on goodreads.
This book would make a great housewarming gift.