With each New Year we all aim to “do better” in many aspects of our lives. We vow to eat better, to take care of ourselves, and to exercise and spend more time with family. At the heart of this resolution making is the environment in which we live. If our homes are cluttered, messy and overflowing with “stuff,” it takes time away from the important relationships that we have with family and friends. It also takes time away from our daily operational lives that we could utilize for exercising, cooking healthy or simply relaxing.
These Seven Resolution Solutions for your home will ensure a better New Year:
#1 Downsize the Stuff - If you haven’t used something in the last 2 years, chances are you are probably not going to use it at all ….ever. Vow to go through those boxes in the basement or garage and donate, throw away or give away the stuff that you don’t need to store anymore.
#2 Label, Label, Label – Everything that is stored in boxes needs a label and date so that you know what is in the box. Don’t forget the pantry, the extra boxes in your closet and the garage shelves.
#3 Schedule Your Organization – Have specific days of the week for certain tasks or certain cleaning or organizing chores. Monday is laundry day. Tuesday deep clean kitchen day (which includes cleaning out the fridge, pantry and wiping down cabinets). Wednesday is bathroom tidy up day…..you get the picture. Whatever works for you to be able to break it down into manageable chunks of one hour bits of time during the week.
#4 Re-Arrange the Furniture – There is nothing like realizing that you don’t really need the 20 side tables and little accessories that you have accumulated in your living room. Take a hard look at the rooms in your house and think about how or what you can do to make each room more functional. Sometimes we get in a rut and we are so used to walking around that side table, we don’t even realize it is really in a traffic pattern. Feng Shui your spaces, which is the Chinese philosophical term for harmonizing the space with the people that live in it.
#5 One Room at a Time – Start with one of your most used rooms and freshen it up. Clean out drawers, clean windows, rearrange, put new throw pillows out, whatever it needs to spruce it up. It sometimes helps to enlist the fresh eye of a neighbor or trusted friend to get their opinion on what they would do differently in the room. Once you get the room tidied up, notice how fast the family will want to inhabit that room….it feels GOOD to have a fresh space!
#6 Find Unique Storage – With the tiny house phenomenon, we can learn some lessons from how efficiently those tiny house dwellers utilize storage. A quick trip around Pinterest can show you how many places there are to store things that you use every day out of the way. Behind doors, in baskets, under the stairs, in boxes, ottomans and under the bed are all places that you can hide away things that you use and need to have, but don’t need to see every day.
#7 Free Flat Surfaces - Take a hard look around at all of the flat horizontal surfaces in each living space. What can you do to free those spaces so you can appreciate the open, clutter free ambiance of the space? Do you have area rugs that are mismatched or need removed? Do you have a coffee table littered with magazines and papers? Do you have a kitchen counter that is covered with small appliances you don’t use? Think about giving freedom to those flat spaces and see how much more enjoyable your view will be when it is unencumbered by stuff!
Once you have paved the way, then WE can come in and do the deep clean! It is such a wonderful feeling, and you will appreciate the time you put into making your home an inviting, livable, clean, and uncluttered space. We hope the Seven Resolution Solution will help you get some order in your life this 2016!