A fantastic video of two hilarious English women who clean homes! We are not saying that everything they use are non-toxic, but check out how they clean the bathtub and sink which have not been cleaned in at least 10 years– goes to show you don’t have to kill yourself with chemicals to get even the most disgusting jobs done.

Cleaning? Yuck!

We ask you to consider changing your mind around it.

Take a moment to look around your space and see all that you already have in your life, giving it a thankful stroke or two to make it shine. Take a moment to connect with pieces in your home that resonate with you, and acknowledge those things that whisper (or scream), time to move me along and let someone else enjoy me.

We can also choose to look at it as:

• exercise (keep those arms up and incorporate squats where applicable)
• a stress reliever (cleaning ranks high on the list of stress busting activities)
• yoga & living meditation (get in the present moment as you inhale fully and exhale completely and mindfully stroke the surfaces of your house)
• therapy (try it and you’ll understand)
• feng shui (clearing away the past)
• And you get your space clean.

It’s multi-tasking the way it was meant to be.

what bliss is made of

 

George on natural products and what makes Blissful Home products so amazing. Also, Dr. Marny Turvill, founder of Evanston’s Healthy Green Goods, makes house calls for healthy living, healthy home.

happy and wise is why

 

… introducing Evanston’s Greenwise Organic Lawncare… and why founder Marc Wise loves Blissful Home.

cause you can’t afford to get sick

introducing Ronda for Arbonne International on “can’t afford not to use good products.”

being in the moment

Hello from the founders of Blissful Home.sty

Bliss to Go: Connecting to my Bliss on the road

One of the things that comes with having a business like ours is visiting retailers, some of whom are outside of the Chicago area.

The good news is: I love to travel. So this is a really fun part of my job! I especially love it when I get to go “home”. For me, that is Ann Arbor, MI.

I have lived in a lot of cities in the U.S. and there is just something about the “vibe” in Ann Arbor that allows me to connect with my true self. Maybe it’s the trees, the beautiful and expansive Huron river, dear friends, old and new…… There’s just something about being in Michigan that allows me to refresh, renew, and re-organize my spirit.

I am back in Chicago, in my physical home, sitting with my dog and looking out onto the beautiful park on which I live. I am feeling grateful for today and grateful for the opportunities that having a company like Blissful Home offers for me to visit wonderful people and places.

With Bliss,

Mahandeva

Stress and the Miracle of Mindfulness

Historically, when I felt anxious, overwhelmed, and completely stressed out, I would go into my soft addictions, which, for me, are eating, talking on the phone, and napping. The one thing I can tell you for sure is that I never felt replenished or energized afterwards. My stressors did not go away. In fact, the monsters grew.

What to do? I am stressed from work and need to step away. Yoga and meditation would probably feel great, but I can’t get to a yoga studio at the moment, and I am distracted by the housekeeping duties that my house nags, and I know I ought to move my body to get my energy flowing…

How do I find nourishment when I am feeling low energy and in scarcity mode? Can’t I nap first and figure it out in 15 (actually 60) minutes?

So I tried something new. I started by drinking a tall glass of water. I realized that I was thirsty after all and didn’t even know it. Then I started picking up the stuff, from where I call the “hotspots,” where things tend to accumulate: my workspace, the kitchen counter, the dining room table, and so on. I turned on some of my favorite yoga music, connected to my breath, and put away one thing at a time with no other thought than the task at hand: this book goes here. these go there. I sprayed and wiped my countertops with my preferred Bliss flavor of the day until I got them clean and shiny. Somehow I forget how good the aromatherapy makes me feel. I proceeded to put the dishes away. The shoes. And so on.

The next thing I know, not only did I find parts of my house cleaner and less cluttered, I also found myself cleaner and less cluttered… I moved through my emotional disarray. All at once, I took care of my space, I moved my body, got intimate with my stuff (finding gratitude for what I already had), got my yoga and meditation in by being in the moment. Mindfulness. I like to call it Pure Presence.

I read somewhere, “studies show that mindfulness can be helpful in stopping ruminations over things that cause stress.. it helps people keep from dwelling on negative thoughts. Mindfulness can also be used to decrease anxiety over the future. It can provide a break from stressful thoughts and allow you to take a mental break and gain perspective, among other things.

I found a great quote by Winston Churchill who said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Indulging in soft addiction is sort of like stopping in hell and anesthisizing myself. Feels good for the moment. The problem is, once the numbing is gone, I am still in hell, and it is looking bigger than ever. Homecaring is choosing to keep on walking, and mindfully “cleaning house,” on all levels. It connects you to your space, your abundance, and it also crosses off multiple things on your to-do list, which is an excellent added benefit!

Constancy of Life

There is something about cleaning house that is deeply cleansing to the soul. It is something that must be done, yet many of us are often reluctant to do it. Once we get started, we find ourselves in the trenches, digging up the old, the stuff we’ve left behind, a remnant of our past. Even clearing the sink from the night before becomes history. Two glasses once filled with wine, two other glasses filled with sparkling water. Two forks, two knives. Evidence from the dishes of a meal enjoyed by two people. Or perhaps there were five plates in the sink with bits of macaroni stuck to the dishes next to colorful plastic drinking cups spilling out children’s favorite drink left over from a moment ago. Whatever the experience of the evening, a complete exhale is in order as the clearing begins so that we may begin anew with possibilities of more experiences to come. Once the clearing is complete, like a rite of passage, we are happier, more relaxed, and we experience a connection with ourselves that perhaps we had forgotten about.

The gift of purging that comes with homecaring offers us opportunity to dance in our lives. To get unstuck. To move freely in our space. To breathe and to connect with those things that have meaning, or at least once had meaning, in our lives. To decide on what to do with this or that, and to reflect, redefine and recommit. To find gratitude in all that we have as we lovingly touch our surfaces and clear away the dust that represents our past so that we may flow into this moment and become, once again, the creators that we are.

As we flow from our breath and move our bodies to the shape of our home, and as we reshape our home, we honor the constancy behind such a dance as it represents the constancy of life.

-Savitree Kaur

can following bliss increase my intelligence?

In my research over the past couple of months, I keep running into Sir Ken Robinson, who is known as an internationally renowned expert in the field of creativity and innovation in business and education.

According to Robinson, we have a very limited view of intelligence, and that we confuse it with academic ability. We have a tendency to place creativity and intelligence in two separate categories when, in fact, creativity is fundamentally linked to intelligence. “Education as it is structured today is geared towards the industrial era,” and in light of current economics, “imagination and creativity is what we will need more than anything else in today’s world.”

At every moment, we create. In order to create harmony in this world, we want to create harmony within our world. In order to create harmony within ourselves, we want to be in line with our true nature. Robinson calls this ‘being in our Element’.

To find my element, I pay attention to what inspires me, what makes me want to get up in the morning, what causes me to forget about time and what nourishes me. I also pay attention to my fears, hungers and justifications. More often, my fear has nothing to do with a lion running after me, and more to do with going out of my comfort zone because I am afraid of the unknown, afraid of not being accepted, afraid to fail, or perhaps to succeed. This is important to note, because it means my fear is something to harness rather than to run away from and hold me back.

To live in my element and create what I desire, I make intentions, and I keep my focus on my intentions as my guiding force, then I surrender to the creative process, holding on to my discipline, and at the same time, I ask myself, “am I having fun?” Because if the answer is “no,” I know to realign. The more I stay in my element, the smarter I become. Because when I am in my element, that is, in my own space, I love what I take in and what I share, and I retain everything and see different sides in everything. And it’s fun. In contrast, when I am out of it, my IQ, my EQ, and all of my other cues feel completely downshifted.  –Savitree Kaur

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