What simple rhythms can help create a peaceful home in the retirement years?
Home doesn’t magically become peaceful, even in retirement. It’s shaped by the small things we choose to do every day, including peaceful habits and joyful home rhythms. This week, Sheli (a retired great-grandma!) shares the simple rhythms that bring calm, joy, and connection into her home. Her wisdom is gentle, grounded, and so inspiring. Read her story and discover rhythms that bring peace in any season of life.
Welcome to Rhythms of a Happy Home, a 7-part series exploring the intentional routines that help us create peace, order, and belonging inside our walls, no matter who lives there or what season of life we’re in. I recruited guest posts from family and friends: women from a wide range of life stages, including a retired great-grandma, a part-time working grandma, part-time and full-time working moms, stay-at-home moms, single working women, and a married working woman. Each post offers practical wisdom and personal stories about the daily, monthly, and seasonal habits that make home feel grounded and joyful. Together, these posts will help you reflect on your own rhythms and inspire you to craft routines that tailor joy into your everyday life.
Highlights: This week, Sheli (a retired great-grandma!) shares the simple rhythms that bring calm, joy, and connection into her home. Her wisdom is gentle, grounded, and so inspiring. Read her story and discover rhythms that bring peace in any season of life.
Rhythms of a Happy Home: Part 1 Peaceful Habits
After years of raising our girls, there are definitely some joyful home rhythms and peaceful habits we incorporate to keep our family connected and our home peaceful in our retirement years, especially at the holidays.
Thanksgiving is our favorite holiday. Our home is full of family, food, and fun. Everyone cooks because my husband Ted loves to cook, and my three girls are amazing cooks. We do a traditional Thanksgiving meal, and my heart stays full all weekend. To hear the things our grands are thankful for as we sit around our table with full bellies is one of my best parts of the day!
One of our traditions after dinner is to target shoot. That is a tradition that you have to be 8 years old to be a part of, so turning 8 is always a big deal when Thanksgiving is drawing near.
Our adult grandchildren who live close, married or single, come with their families once a month for dinner at our house. It is a wonderful opportunity for us to catch up and better know how to pray for them during the next month. They know that we pray for them, so if they need extra prayer during the month, sometimes they will let us know.
We do a family vacation every year. Sometimes we rent a house at the lake, some years it is the beach, and some years it’s just at PGP (Pappy n Grammys Place). We take turns doing dinner meals. Breakfast and lunch are whatever you can find that you would like to eat that day. There is always a 1000-piece puzzle, walks, outdoor games, and sand castles if we are at the beach.
Christmas gift giving, we do it individually with each family, so we can see the joy on each one’s face as they open their gifts. It’s less chaotic because we have lots of grands and some great grands too! 😉 Gift giving doesn’t begin until Pappy has read the Christmas Story from the book of Luke.
Two times a week, I FaceTime with 3 of my granddaughters who live 4 1/2 hours away and read to them.
Grands who live at college get a care package once a month. Sometimes it’s just a gift card to a local coffee shop. 😉
I do a Christmas card with a family picture every year, so at Thanksgiving, we take a family group picture for me to send out as a Christmas greeting to family and friends.
Family is very important to us all, and every opportunity we get to be together, we do what we can to make it happen. These are our rhythms of a happy home.
Written by Sheli and Ted, retired great grandparents
Table Talk: What rhythms of a happy home do you remember from your great-grandparents’ lives? What holiday rhythms can you incorporate this year to add more peaceful daily habits or joyful home rhythms?
Read more thankful posts: https://tailorjoy.com/thankful/