Little Rituals

The last week has been all about settling in again. Settling back into our new routines, our new life here in this house. It felt like my first real week of normality, now that we have finished unpacking and the children are back at school after the Easter holidays. Just me on my own, going about my day, as the house and I quietly get to know each other. Routines are being established and honed as we find slightly different ways of doing our usual things. The children's bedtime seems to have crept forward half an hour and yet they seem to be up earlier, but I think that's the lighter days. But it's all quite lovely and I'm very happy, if a little absent from this blog, something I fully intend to rectify as soon as I have a minute.

I have been thinking a lot lately about what I do to make a house feel like a home, and why I do it. Which little habits or rituals I enact on a daily basis that I only do in my own home, rather than on holiday or when staying with family or friends.

:: My mid-morning coffee. This has to be the most important to me, my favourite and my best. A punctuation mark between chores and errands, a small pause.

I do this when I'm on my own in the house, and make a single stove top pot just for myself. I grind the beans in a grinder my good friend Kate gave me before she moved to Australia (and every time I use it I think of her and our many coffees together) then brew it in a little Bialetti pot I bought on holiday in Milan in 2005. 

There are lots of happy associations and memories in that one cup of coffee. I top up the espresso with just boiled water and a dash of cold milk, nice and simple. I'm not really a fan of frothy, milky coffees, give me a white Americano any day. Then I drink it in a nice cup, usually standing up in the kitchen leaning against the counter while reading stuff on my phone.

:: Watching where the light falls. This is how you really get to know a house. Here, the kitchen and dining room benefit from morning sun, while the living room faces west and is flooded with light in the afternoon.

:: Changing the sheets. 

This is a chore I don't mind, I even enjoy choosing the bedding and making the bed look nice...but that feeling of getting into a freshly made up bed at the end of the day, with the smooth, cool sheets and crisp, freshly ironed pillow case. Always a pleasure, always.

:: Flowers in the house. I'll happily buy them, but finding some growing in the garden or wild to bring into the house feels extra special somehow. 

On the sideboard this week, supermarket daffodils and some grape hyacinth picked from the garden.

:: Baking a cake. I remember reading Nigella say somewhere that she didn't consider a kitchen really her own until she'd roasted a chicken in the oven. That's how I felt about making this cake. This made me feel like the kitchen was really mine; making a mess, cleaning it up, the smell of baking. (And look, a utensil rail and shelf above the cooker! Storage!)

I made lemon syrup loaf cake, one of my favourite bakes. I probably make this about once a month and it is ludicrously easy, very tasty and keeps for ages so it's a popular one. 

:: Listening to the radio. I have the radio on all day long and used to listen to Radio 4 constantly but have lately switched (defected?) to Radio 2. Even if it's just background noise, and I'm not actually listening that closely, I like it. It makes me feel connected to the world beyond my four walls. (And spot the open kitchen door - I would have that door open all day long if the weather permitted.)

:: Selecting clean tea towels from the cupboard and hanging them on the oven door, ready for use.  These are Good tea towels and must not be used on things like roasting tins. I have old, faded ones for that job. 

:: Sleeping with the window open. The nighttime sounds here are different to the ones we heard in Leeds. No airplanes, but the distant hum of motorway traffic instead. No buses or trucks rattling along the bottom of our street, but instead car traffic. Lots of cars and not many buses - one of the downsides of moving from a city to the suburbs.

And in the morning, birdsong and the sound of seagulls. They go mad in the morning. Actually, that is something I like to do on holiday too - listen to those outdoor background noises and compare them to home.

:: Hanging the washing on the line. Never a chore, this task, especially when I can feel the warmth from the sun on my face while I peg things out. I don't like rotary lines, such a faff to put up and down, and instead have two long lines reaching right across the garden from the house to a tree in the corner. Items must be pegged from the bottom or else you get peg marks on the shoulders, and I have re-pegged things that were incorrectly hung.

What about you, what rituals do you have when pottering about the house? What makes your house feel like home?

And - I'd really, really love to know this - what can you hear outside your open bedroom window? I wonder what it says about where you live, how rural, coastal or built up it is, and if the sounds you hear differ wildly from what I hear on the south coast of England. 

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I enjoyed reading your comments about Tunnocks Teacakes so much. They hold such a special place in our hearts, don't they? And not just in the UK, but also abroad, where it seems they are quite expensive but no less popular.