Meryl Streep, The Basics Of Decluttering Your Visalia CA Home And Combining Form With Function

Lisa Walker • Mar 30, 2015

Meryl Streep has been quoted as saying, “The interesting thing about being a mother is that everyone wants pets, but no one but me cleans the kitty litter.” This quote brings home a few different things. First of all, as any mother will tell you, bringing up kids is a difficult but rewarding job. Secondly, if you want your new home in Visalia CA home to be neat and tidy, you pretty much have to do everything yourself.


You can hire a cleaning lady and they’ll clean up all your surfaces, leaving your home sparkling. However, they’re not necessarily going to know what to do with your paperwork and your important documents. They may not realize which clothes have to be hand-washed and which can go in the washer. They may hang up things in the closet which you would prefer to keep in a chest of drawers. So if you want to get organized and avoid clutter in your new home, here are a few tips:


The Basics


Everyone knows the basics about having a clutter-free home. You need to throw away the things that you don’t use and reorganize the things that you do use in an attractive, useful way. Here’s a great video from Real Simple magazine’s Stephanie Sisco, also featured on the Today Show, that tells you how to go about organizing your entire home.


She suggests going room by room and focusing on one area at a time. For example, if you’re organizing a bookshelf one day, then just stick to that. If you’re doing your closet, then focus on that. Throw out the things you haven’t used in two years. If you aren’t sure about something, then put it in a box outside your room. If you go back for it, that means it is useful and you should keep it. Once you’ve decided what to keep and what to throw, try to organize things by function and also color-code them for attractiveness.


Buying New Things


You may be able to organize and declutter your home once in a year. However, it’s not going to stay that way unless you also cut down on the things you buy. We live in a consumerist culture and there are opportunities for us to buy new things around every corner. They may be useful things such as that spatula you really needed for the kitchen or frivolous purchases like yet another summer dress that you can only wear for a couple of months in the year. So pause before you buy anything new and ask yourself exactly how useful you think it’s going to be.

WebMD has a great article about the things you can do to avoid compulsive shopping. You may not yet be a compulsive shopper (only 5.8% of Americans fall under this category) but you can still make use of these tips which include taking deep breaths before buying something or distracting yourself with other games/activities.


Combine Form with Function


When you buy furniture or other items for your home, try to combine form with function. What this means is that the thing should be aesthetically attractive as well as useful. For example, an antique coffee table with drawers underneath will look great in your living room and give you a space to store your magazines, remote controls etc. A jewelry tree will look pretty on your dressing table and give you a place to put your necklaces.

When you buy boring organizational tools, you’re not tempted to use them. So buy the ones that look pretty and you’ll feel proud of your creativity in doing up your home in an organized manner. This article from Huffington Post has some great ideas for using pretty things in unique ways. You can use an old lampshade to hang jewelry, get wall-mounted storage in the kitchen and install crates on the wall to store your shoes.

Contact us for more great ways to organize and declutter your home.


Lisa Walker

 


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