Have you ever wondered how people maintain such beautiful homes? Well, you’re in the right place. Read on! A beautiful home is achievable for anyone with the will to declutter and maintain a lovely welcoming home.
Recently, I went to stay at my friend’s immaculate home and it got me thinking about how much stuff we had. I’m always designing holiday homes and as such every year I like to go through my own home and I say “ What if I wanted to Airbnb this house?” what would I keep? or what would I need to throw out? This generally helped me really get rid of stuff until the lockdown.
Yes, I blame the pandemic! With the kid’s toys, painting, arts, crafts and all the new toys I bought to keep them off their iPads and occupy them instead, the house had built up a lot of clutter. This coupled with my love for Homesense certainly had not helped, as it led me down the rabbit hole of having way too much stuff.
So, after returning back home, over the next 3 weeks, I went on a full declutter-fest, and lo and behold, I started to see the beauty in my home peering out….slowly.
PHASE 1
I hired a cleaner who came and gave the house a complete post COVID deep clean. Now, because she had to do a thorough in-depth clean, I had to declutter lots of areas because you can’t actually clean a cluttered house.
PHASE 2
I got a CARPET cleaner and that took the decluttering process to the NEXT level, as we had to literally up-end every room for him to get to every nook and cranny which meant the house was completely and utterly cleared out! This was a real game changer! Honestly, it made a massive difference.
PHASE 3
I slowly CREATED a system and through that process, I had to justify why I had anything, and if I could not, I had to pack them away to give away or throw away. I also created a more regimented SCHEDULE for a cleaner to come which means we had to prep the house ready for her to clean. This isn’t necessarily something I meant to maintain, but I found it got us into the habit of preparing for her.
These 3 steps got me closer to achieving my goal but then in researching, I discovered that people that maintain the ever stunning, clean and inviting beautiful “show” homes do these things consistently.
The 3 things people with “showhome” houses always do:
1. They maintain lots of deliberate “white space” which means you’ll actually see things and everywhere is not just packed with stuff. They are militant with making sure things are neatly packed away, thrown away and they do not keep unnecessary items littered around their homes. So, if you walk into your house and can just see lots of stuff everywhere, it’s time to get to work. I had to get really organized and create a place for specific things, and I needed to justify why I was still holding on to unnecessary items such as old hair creams, shampoos, and body creams from 2 years ago! Bin, please!
2. They always maintain coordination in their furniture, they swap things around the house to make sure there is cohesion with the colours and scheme. Even if it’s not a brand new home, you can still ensure you have a clean and consistent look with the type of furniture you have. Everything that doesn’t match, feel free to give to the salvation army, throw out or just give away.
3. They have an actual realistic system and schedule everyone can follow. They think through their family activities and how that flows throughout the house and identify where the pinch points are that cause clutter. They then create a space, storage or system people MUST follow to ensure they maintain a clean and clear environment.
I had to take our family life into consideration, so being realistic with the places and processes I created to keep items was vital. For instance, since our hallway was always cluttered with shoes, the optimistic (unlikely to ever happen) approach would be for everyone to take their shoes up to their rooms (good luck!). In reality, I bought a lovely tall grey rattan “laundry” basket that became our temporary storage for shoes and kept them nicely tucked out of our way in our open understair closet. Other people have a shoe closet which also works well, but we didn’t want any furniture in our hallway, so this alternative worked as a great solution to suit our family’s needs.
People with young kids know that toys are an issue, so we created a system where each type of toy or thing has its own cute little box. Legos go into the Lego box, pens, colours go in a pen box, wooden toys into the wooden toys box, all papers, sentimental drawings, artistic pieces and crafts go into a closed drawer (out of sight) which we can then go through every now and again and throw away once the sentiment has waned.
We also have lots of “treat” induced competitions to get the kids to quickly pack up their toys into the relevant boxes and they now know and follow “the system”. Obviously, my kids don’t try since they are 3 and 5 and helping mummy tidy up is never their priority, so we came up “cleaning day” which they now love and it’s become a thing in our house with lots of soapy water everywhere while they attempt to clean up. Initially, it was chaos but now we have a system that sort of works, so thankfully I can teach them to clean in a “fun” way.
I have loved going through this POST COVID decluttering phase, and how much peace and harmony it has brought to my life, now I “almost” know where everything is. It’s worth every second it took to get here!
I have to admit it is definitely still a work in progress as I know there’s still lots we can definitely get rid of, but I’ve at least started the journey and loving every bit of it.
Would love to hear your own Declutter stories! Any tips are greatly welcome….
