Can Your Home Be the Ticket to Health and Happiness?

Wellness. It’s been the word on everyone’s lips for the last couple of years, but it feels like in this year of 20/20 clarity (see what we did there?) we’re actually getting serious about what this word actually means.

Workplaces and even schools are citing ‘personal wellness’ as a key goal and performance indicator. As a society, we’re finally starting to realise that our well-being is by far more important than our bank balance or our piles of stuff. Hallelujah.

So, what can we do as individuals to look after our own personal wellness?

Often, it starts at home. Literally. Creating a positive and nurturing home environment and adopting healthy daily habits or rituals are huge steps toward feeling healthy and happy.

Endeavour Foundation’s ‘Healthy’ Prize Home at Buderim on the Sunshine Coast is the perfect example of how your home environment can genuinely make a difference to your well-being.

So, what are some of the things that make a ‘healthy home’, inside and out?

1. Natural light

It may seem simple but having an abundance of natural light in the rooms where you spend most of your time can have a positive effect on your state of mind. Our Buderim Prize Home has been designed with banks of huge windows to ensure that the light streams in, wherever you are in the house. In any home, there are simple ways to brighten your environment including keeping curtains and blinds open as much as possible and decorating with mirrors to reflect light from outside.

2. Connection to the outdoors

It’s been well documented that being outdoors, getting fresh air and enjoying nature is fantastic for your health. Homes designed with living areas that flow out to an outdoor space like a deck or a patio and to the yard beyond really help to incidentally get everyone outside more often – even if it’s just for a few minutes at a time. Bi-fold doors or stacking sliding doors (like those in our Healthy Prize Home) help to merge the boundaries and bring the fresh air in.

3. Views of nature

Studies have shown that just looking at nature (like a nice green view) can help lower stress levels, help your brain to work better, increase productivity and even increase rates of healing for patients in hospital. So, if you feel like you need to unwind a little, soaking in a view like the one from our Healthy Prize Home could be just what the doctor ordered. Gazing out from the deck each morning with a cuppa in hand (herbal of course) could genuinely do wonders for your well-being. If that’s the kind of commitment we need to make to our health, sign us up.

4. A beautiful environment

It’s no secret that spending time, or better still, living in beautiful surroundings is great for your mood and attitude toward life. And, perhaps more surprisingly, being exposed to a pleasing environment can even improve your immune system and physical health. Of course, our Healthy Prize Home delivers a huge tick in this department, especially considering it is fully-furnished with designer furniture as well. Heck, even the huge kitchen island is enough to spark joy in the hardest of hearts.

5. Opportunities to get active

Obviously, gearing up your place so that you can get active without even leaving home is great way to encourage healthy habits that stick. Diving into a swimming pool is a fun way to stay active or a cool reward after a workout. And having an inviting outdoor space where you can roll out your gym mat.

6. A clean environment

Now we’re not talking about scrubbing your home till it sparkles. While, yes, it’s definitely important to avoid things like dust and mould, what we’re talking about in this instance is creating a ‘clean, green environment’ that’s as free of chemicals and toxins as possible. Carefully considering the sort of paint to use in your home, and the kinds of building materials and finishes to use in the construction or renovation of your home, all lead toward having a cleaner, greener place to live.

7. Pure water

Sometimes it’s the things you can’t see that have the biggest impact on your health. In the case of our Healthy Prize Home, an out-of-sight, whole house water filter has been installed to remove dirt and chemicals from the water used throughout the home. And that means, no matter which tap you turn on, from the shower to the kitchen, you’ll get beautifully-filtered, clean water. You don’t have to go this far though to have cleaner drinking water at your place. You could look into getting a benchtop water purifier system to have in the kitchen, or even just a filter jug for your fridge.

8. Spaces to relax

Often overlooked, relaxation isn’t just a luxury, it’s vital for your wellness and longevity. Taking the time to relax can help to slow your heart rate and breathing rate (kind of obvious when you think about it isn’t it?), and also lower blood pressure, reduce muscle tension and stress and even improve digestion.

Having a place that you love in your home where you can happily kick back and unwind is worth its weight in gold. If you’re the future winner of our Healthy Prize Home, the stunning deck area overlooking the pool is the perfect place to pull up a pool lounge, grab a good book and start working on your health, pronto.

But there’s one other spot in our Healthy Prize Home that takes relaxation to a whole other level.

The sauna.

Now it’s fair to say that saunas are not a common luxury in Aussie homes. Maybe because our climate is already hot, we tend not to look forward to intentionally getting even sweatier? Our added luxuries are more often about cooling down (think swimming pools and air-con) rather than steaming things up, so to speak. But the health benefits of saunas are extensive and proven.

Read on to find out why having a sauna at your place is like winning the lottery.

What’s so good about saunas?

Unless you’ve had the opportunity to experience using a sauna (more than that one time at the resort you stayed in on the Gold Coast), it’s hard to comprehend how amazing the benefits actually are.

While few Aussies have experienced the sweaty wonders of a sauna, in Scandinavia, it’s a whole different story. You’ll find saunas popping up anywhere and everywhere from gyms and yoga studios to swimming pools and ski resorts. In fact, did you know that Finland has more saunas than cars? Incredibly, Finland has approximately 1 sauna for every 2.5 people – that’s a lot of saunas for a country of around 5.5 million.)

So, what do the Fins know that we don’t know? Well, they are aware that regular stints in a sauna can help the body to expel toxins through sweat, not to mention increase circulation, help with weight loss, reduce stress and even reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

And did you know that the increase in temperature encourages your body to release endorphins, those happy hormones that you release when you go for a jog or do a workout?

Could that be the secret to health and happiness?

Experience our ‘healthy’ Prize Home in person

Your first step toward a greater sense of well-being has to be visiting this beautiful home in Buderim. Just 15 minutes from the beach and 90 minutes from Brisbane, this home is the perfect place to imagine a new life of health and happiness. You can find opening times and details here.