A Happy Home!

When we are kids we don’t realize how important our home is and we certainly don’t know we’re making memories or family traditions until we grow up. We play, we share fun family meals, we hang out in tree houses and build sand castles at the beach. But most of all we spend time at home. Home is our territory. We are invincible there. I have so many fond memories of my parent’s house with my siblings and relatives. It was always a safe space for us to be ourselves and feel nothing but love and support all around us.

I vividly remember movie nights with the whole family and board game nights. And even as a teenager, I remember just talking with my mom on our sectional sofa until we couldn’t keep our eyes open any longer. I remember cooking together, especially on Sundays. There was always laughter. When we all visit my parents house now, the same home I grew up in, I get a warm happy feeling and almost like a sense of security.

When we get older and start our own families we realize how important those feelings are, those memories, those traditions of family dinners or the kids-only clubhouse and living room “camping”. We realize how important our home is to our family. It is our touchstone, our center. I make an effort to cultivate that same sense of home for my children. We cook together—we clean together. We play games and watch movies. The kids build forts and lose themselves in play. When I look around at our sometimes cramped space I also feel the love. We are lucky to have a happy home, no matter the size, no matter the location, because we’re there together. I always want my home to be a clean, safe and happy space for my family.

A new website and app that was recently created, called CleanandHappy.com, is an online community for parents and caregivers to connect on likeminded topics such as sleep, healthy eating, behavior, child proofing and home safety. This is a great platform for parents to share their experience and come together. You can get started by logging on to www.cleanandhappy.com or downloading the app (available on iPhone and Android devices), and engage in conversations about specific topics or answer direct questions from other users, participate in surveys/polls and connect with other parents locally or anywhere.

Everyone deserves to feel the same sense of safety and happiness in their home. The Clean and Happy website and app are ways for parents to connect with and support each other to help us all create clean, healthy and happy homes for every family. For me, I had a hard time actually training my sitter and giving her the reins on certain things, because it was a chore that I was use to doing. I turned to the app, and loved hearing the community’s suggestions on how to work on this.

I know now how lucky I was to have a happy home as a kid. That makes me even more focused on creating a happy home for Ryder, Siella, and Gemma. If I can help other parents create their own happy home through encouragement and advice—or even just a small connection, I’m in. I’m psyched to have partnered Clean and Happy and invite you to join and grow the community of parents who also want to create happy homes for their families.