Have you ever looked at pictures of “decluttered” spaces in books which look very spare and thought “Who would ever want to live in a sterile space like that!”
But an organized home doesn’t have to be boring. Home organization isn’t about form, it’s about function. Decluttering your home means getting rid of all the stuff which you don’t need, don’t want and don’t like. You keep the things you love, use and need. Organizing your home means being able to quickly and easily find the objects you’ve decided to keep any time you want them. Neither requires a specific decorating look – so you can make your decluttered and organized house look just as decorated as you want.
Storage doesn’t need to be behind closed doors, although probably you’ll want at least some of it to be so. It’s a good idea to mix open and closed shelving so that you can contrast a visually calm area of closed doors (hiding the necessary but not terribly pretty objects) with a more exciting visual feast of open shelving.
If you’re someone who likes to see everything “out”, that’s fine too. Just pay attention to how things look when you acquire them, even very mundane objects like food packets. If you can choose, buy things which are beautiful and even color-coordinated as well as functional.
Even the most random mix of ordinary stuff can look intentional if you create order by the way you store them. Matching open wall units which cover a large area, especially if the shelving itself is unusual in color or design, can impose an ordered grid on the contents. The closer together the shelving grid, the more ordered it will look. Repeating the shelving style within the same space, or throughout the home, gives a more designed look.
One important factor is to include display space for things you love to look at. These can be displayed in collections, or individually with space around them so that each individual object stands out as something important. Rotating objects on display makes each one more special, too: you never get so used to seeing it that you become blind to it.
While we enjoy seeing the possessions we like, there are other objects we don’t want to see and which often make a space look messy. Some of the worst problems here are power and data cords, in their many variations. If you’re redesigning a space completely, try to design in concealment from the start – for example, you could use hollow baseboard systems which act as wiring conduits all around the room, along with many other methods which will work. If you’re just rearranging an existing space, take every opportunity to hide cords behind furniture and use cable organizers to corral the spaghetti of cables around many media systems. It’s a good idea to keep power and data cables apart, as the fields around power cables can cause interference with data.
A great way of checking how you’re getting on is to take photos of the space. Our eyes and brains are very good at “editing out” things we don’t want to see, but a photo shows all the details of how things really look. Keep rearranging and checking with pictures until your house looks how you want it to – then grab a well-earned rest and relax in your organized AND decorated space!
Robin Gray facilitates local organizing workshops in coastal BC, Canada and scribbles on decluttering and organization at Declutter First the decluttering and home organization site.
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