#housecare

03: Know your house!

After figuring out the basics of general witchery, most people end up leaning towards the path or paths that call out to them. For some, including myself, the path that draws us in is that of the hearth.

Let’s start by answering a simple question: what is hearth witchery?

A hearth witch focuses on the protective, healing, and warming magicks of the home and hearth. Many times, this also includes practices from other branches such as kitchen craft, folk magick, and even green witchery should the home in question have a garden! To create a proper protected and positive home, a witch must be capable of understanding and working with the energies of the house, handling and cooperating with spirits residing within the house, and caring for both the home and its residents, be they animals, people, or plants.

Because this path in the craft isn’t always as widely discussed as some of the other more mainstream ones, it can sometimes be difficult to figure out where to begin. If you look back at the history of the craft, it’s actually rather surprising that this path isn’t more well-known! Most witches understood how valuable utilizing their personal sanctuary was, since the rest of the world was so dead-set on making things dangerous. Luckily, more and more books are coming out about this in the modern day, but most are just filled with what to do after you already know the basics. (I do, however, highly recommend the book “House Magic” by Aurora Kane. There's a lot of good information within its pages!)

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With that introduction out of the way, let’s hop into today’s Hearth Witch Tips!

The first thing to learn within this path, hands-down, has got to be getting to know your home. I don’t just mean the part you can see, either!

Each and every house is alive. The various energies from the place it sits upon, the materials its made out of, the people who have lived there both past and present, and even the weather patterns and historical events that its lived through all play a role in what your house is and has grown into.

Of course, that also means that we, as the current residents of the home, can also influence the house! But before we can know what direction to steer the energy, we first have to know where the home is currently at, as well as where its been.

I suggest by beginning with the initial, simple tasks of observing your house’s physical state first. Walk from room to room and write down a list of what you see. What color are the walls right now? What condition are the floors in? Is the insulation up to par? How about the doors and windows, what are they like? Are there any natural creaks and groans coming from the house?

Let it speak to you! Many of these signs will begin to open the door to learning its unique story!

To learn the rest of any history you can scrounge up, try doing some research. Most local libraries no longer have records on local homes and histories, but the information can still be found by calling the city and requesting it. If anything particularly interesting has occurred in the house, it’ll most likely be documented!

Once the current physical state and the history have been discovered, it’s time to delve into the more spiritual side of the house! Spend some time meditating in each house. Take the time to tap into those physical aspects that you found earlier on and let the house tell you its tale from there. Feel the energy of the home and how it plays with your own. Let the two energies influence one another, see what happens when you go with the flow!

The biggest part of hearth witchery isn’t just knowing the house, but trusting it! There have been many times since I’ve moved here where I’ll know something is wrong before it even goes wrong in the first place because my home will tell me. As a bonus, when you’ve properly established your relationship with your house, the home will be much more open to your influence and far more accepting of the energy you feed it as well. It’s a win-win!

04: Your kitchen eats with you!

Just like with the rest of the house, what you put into the kitchen also heavily affects its energy. When you treat the hearth in certain ways, it reacts in certain ways. Your relationship with any room in the house is give-and-take. That means that if you don’t give back occasionally, the room will grow cold and stop appreciating your presence. But there are plenty of ways to mend your relationship! And the first step is to identify the problem!

From my experience, there are three main reasons why the kitchen stops being a warm and inviting place: 1) You are filling the cupboards with too much toxic, processed foods; 2) You aren’t spending enough time in that room; 3) Or you aren’t keeping the room clean enough.

When there’s a problem in the hearth, it’s always either one of these things or some combination of them. We’ll start with number three since it’s the easiest to explain. The kitchen should be anyone’s top priority to keep clean. It’s where all of your food, the nutrition and fuel of your physical and spiritual bodies, comes from! What you eat is your first defense against illness, injury, and your mental health. If the kitchen is filthy, then the food you take into your body will also begin to develop the same properties.

To keep the kitchen clean, I always start my day by washing last night’s dishes and give the counters a quick wipe. Once a month, I take stock of what’s in the fridge and freezer and scrub them out to prevent bacteria build-up. Sweeping the kitchen floors happens once a week and takes me all of three minutes to complete, tops. Once per season, normally at the beginning, I scrub the floors with soap and water, descale the coffee maker, wipe down the other appliances, and clean out the cupboards. So the only true “cleaning days” for the kitchen is four days out of the entire year. The rest of the time, the chores only take me about 30 minutes. As a quick tip, rinsing your dishes before setting them in the sink speeds up the dish washing process a ton! I’ve personally never trusted dishwashers since they don’t clean stuff well enough and it’s easier, faster, and far more cost effective to do it by hand.

The next problem the kitchen’s energy might be suffering from is how much time you’re spending there. First, spending a lot of time in the kitchen is a great thing! It absorbs the energy you feed to it, so when you don’t go in the kitchen very often or just don’t spend much time in there to begin with, the kitchen grows darker and colder. It loses the warmth and emotion and love that would’ve been sinking into it when you aren’t there.

The way to fix this problem is actually really easy! Cooking your own meals ensures that you are in there for a good amount of time each day because of the prep work and meal planning, etc. Plus, you get healthier, tastier food that way too! If you can’t cook all that well yet, don’t worry! Just like any skill, there’s no talent involved in learning something. It just depends on how much effort you apply to it. Another way to boost the hearth’s energy is to just hang out in that room. Invite some friends over, set out a snack tray, and just chill in the kitchen. Of course, since it’s pandemic right now, it’s best to wait until that’s over with to try this approach. But you, yourself, can still hang out in the kitchen!

The last problem, and a very, very common one in this day and age, is the influence of toxic food. Just like how your house absorbs energy from the land its on and what its built with, the kitchen also absorbs energy from the ingredients you keep within it. Toxic foods include anything processed or with a bunch of added sugars, and even GMO ingredients to some extent due to the trace chemicals that are still on the crops. These kinds of foods, if that’s the only thing in your house, will rot the energy. Not to mention, easy to grab snacks also end up causing you to spend a lot less time in the kitchen if that’s all you eat. Needless to say, no one eats healthy all the time. I don’t either! But having only toxic food in your kitchen isn’t great for you or the hearth.

Once again, cooking comes to the rescue! Even if you’re bad at it, it’s the thought that counts and little by little, as your skills grow and improve, the kitchen will learn to help guide you. There have been many times where I’d be stuck on how to fix something and a bottle of spice would fall of the shelf right next to me. If you listen to the kitchen, it will listen to you, too! Even if you don’t have time to cook, snacks like apples, berries, seeds, nuts, and dried meats are all healthy alternatives! I usually keep kale chips in the house for some yummy, salty crunchiness!

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If you are worried about cost with this approach (believe me, due to my own situation it’s been a struggle at times), I’ve found out several tips and tricks to significantly lower the grocery bill. Anymore, my bill would actually be bigger if I bought crap food instead! Here’s my advice:

☀  Plan your week ahead! I always plan four meals a week that I’ll cook, and three days that I’ll scavenge for snacks and leftovers. I also stick to the rule of “one simple, one chicken, one meatless, one freebie” to remain more cost effective! The “simple” meal is just something I can make quickly if I know I’ll be short on time. The reason for have one of the meals be chicken is because it’s a much less expensive meat than beef or pork, and it’s a little better for the environment. The meatless meal is for the same reasoning. Meat is expensive and commercial brands are horrible for both the environment and the animals themselves. When I do buy meat, I make sure to buy local, grass-fed, organic meat as often as I can afford to. Keep in mind that every time you purchase anything, you are casting your vote for what is acceptable for society to continue. The “freebie” meal is just whatever I’ve been craving. If I want some kind of beef, I wait until this day.

☀  Learn to bake your own bread! For those of us with the time, this is a great way to save money and to stay healthy! Basic, white bread is actually pretty easy to make and only uses a couple ingredients. Those ingredients also go a long way. It costs me about 24¢ to make one loaf of bread because things like flour, sugar, salt, butter, honey, and yeast are all things that you buy once and can use for several loaves before you have to buy them again! It’s also not as time consuming as you’d think. Yes, it takes about 2 hours, but most of that time is proofing so you can easily be running around doing other things in between.

☀  Grow a garden! Even if it’s just a small, window herb garden, it can take the edge off of your overall food cost. Portobello mushrooms are also super easy to grow inside with minimal effort and equipment. If you have outdoor space, planting a small garden with the ingredients you use the most can help immensely!

☀  Only buy what you need! I know those sales look crazy tempting, but most of them are actually bogus and don’t actually save you any money. Think about what you are actually going to use before it goes bad and stick to your list. The bottom shelves at the store, aka the ones not in your direct line of sight, are usually where the grocery stores hide the better priced goods. At the back of most stores that have bakeries, there’s also usually a spot to get baked goods left over from the previous day for a slightly cheaper price. Day-old baked novelties like bread, cookies, and cakes are still perfectly good, and much easier to enjoy where you don’t have to spend as much!

☀  Check what’s already in your fridge before making your list! This is a huge one, since it prevents food waste, which in turn prevents money waste! What can you make during this week that can use up some of the ingredients leftover from last week? You’ll be impressed how quickly your food cost drops when you aren’t throwing things away. Waste not, want not! This trick also applies in another way, as well. When making your weekly meal plans, what types of foods use similar ingredients? If one meal calls for a slightly pricier ingredient, what other food can you cook with that ingredient to make the cost worth it? This also ensures that you get full use of things without wasting them. For example, this week I bought some fresh mozzarella cheese. Because this item is a little more expensive, I’m using it to make both the tomato mozzarella sandwiches and the beef wellingtons I’m making this week!

☀  Buy mostly produce! One of the best ways to lower your bill while still eating healthy is to simply add more fruits and veggies into your diet! There are so many tasty recipes that call for these babies that you’ll never run out of options, and there’s several things out there for everyone! Because I deal with sensory issues, I had to experiment a lot with what textures and tastes I could handle, especially on the bad days, but even still I found an over-abundance of things I love to eat. Fresh produce is way less expensive than meat, and much less expensive than many of the more mainstream snacks like chips or other processed foods.

01:  How you start the day, sets the overall vibe!

One of the best things you can do for both your home and yourself is to start the day by setting the mood right from the get go. This practice is different for everyone, but the goal should be that— either before you leave your bed, immediately after leaving your bed, or a bit of both— you do two or three acts that make you smile and leave you in a positive mind frame.

As I’m sure you can imagine, this practice is also great for your mental health! But the main reason this is also good for the home is that your energy is also absorbed and replicated by your home! Your personal Good Morning Vibe-Setter checklist can be as simple or as complicated as you need. I suggest starting simple and experimenting to see what works best for you!

My personal morning checklist is:

BEFORE MY FEET HIT THE FLOOR! ▢  Put on some upbeat indie music and scroll through my more aesthetic boards on Pinterest. This helps me wake up gently and aids my sensory issues! ▢  Allow myself to daydream for a bit about my future ideals and where I’m striving to go. This brings me into a productive mental state!

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