Your Decorating Hotline

Your home says alot about who you are. You want it to reflect your style and your view of the world. Guests can come into your home and know you’ve created a place of vibrant creativity and activity because you’ve used bold colors in bold ways. Or they can sense that your home is your retreat – it’s got muted, soothing colors that cocoon you from the outside world. Even if your home is a work in progress (as most of them are), it will still speak volumes about you.

Does clutter overshadow any other statement your home might make about you? Is your entry table full of mail and keys and shoes strewn about? Entering the living room, are you stepping over backpacks or stacks of magazines and books? Is this morning’s coffee cup still sitting on the coffee table? Are the breakfast dishes (or, heaven forbid, the dinner dishes) still in the sink? Laundry on the floor? Bills to be paid cluttering the desk? Toys scattered all over the house?

Clutter can overwhelm

Your home or room reflects who you are: bold & sassy, quiet and reflective, calm and serene, creative and busy. But your room also affects who you are: if you come home from a stressful day to a serene room, you’re able to relax. If you come home to a bright, inviting room, you may be inspired to be creative. If you come home to a cluttered room, you will not feel serene, calm or creative, no matter what the color scheme or furnishings. Cluttered space = cluttered thinking or anxious space. You will find your eye jumps from pile to pile of papers or clothes or whatever and your brain follows with “I should…. I need to …. That should be put away ….. I don’t feel like …..” consequently it’s hard to be productive or creative – your energy is sucked away before you begin.

DECLUTTER YOUR ROOM, DECLUTTER YOUR LIFE

Sometimes clutter has such a firm hold on a room that you can’t figure out where to start to fix it…….here are a few ideas to get you going.

Make the commitment. Commit to work on reducing clutter and restoring your home to it’s intended beautiful state.
Break the job into manageable bites. Tackle your closet one day, the bathroom another day and the entry hall yet another. It doesn’t have to be done all at once. Slow and steady will win the race.
Schedule time to declutter. If you make that appointment with yourself and set specific project parameters, you’ll be more successful.
Throw stuff away. There’s a great urge to just shuffle things into boxes or bins or under the bed. If you don’t use it regularly, toss it. Be ruthless. If it doesn’t fit or is out of style, donate it. If it’s broken and you KNOW you won’t fix it, get rid of it. Once you reduce the volume of stuff, it’ll be much easier to organize.
A place for everything and everything in it’s place is an old saying that still holds true. If you have hooks for your jewelry, you’ll be more likely to hang it up; if you have a bin for your makeup (only the stuff you actually wear), you’re going to drop it in the bin; if you have a hamper that’s big enough, you’ll drop your laundry in every night. There are attractive bins, baskets, bowls, shelves in every style and shape – find one that fulfills your needs and then use it.
Rewards are so much fun. When you’ve successfully decluttered an area, give yourself a little reward – and when the house is done, you deserve something really great.
Then comes the hardest part…..maintenance. Once you have achieved organization perfection, it will take only a tiny bit of effort to keep your rooms looking gorgeous and inviting. Why only a little bit of effort? Because you’ve thrown out all that stuff that you don’t use or need, you’ve created a convenient place for everything and you regularly monitor anything that starts to stack up and deal with it before it gets out of hand.

Now that your room is clear and tidy you’ll find you can enjoy being in the space. Your thoughts are calm and organized and there’s room to be creative or productive. The environment is conducive to relaxation, to reading, to playing with the kids, to hanging with friends. Your home is now your haven.

What are some of your favorite declutter techniques? Do you have a great storage solution or a system you’ve developed to help you stay organized? How do you feel when your home gets too cluttered? I’d love to hear your solutions.