2011 RESOLUTION: PUT YOUR HOME ON A DIET!

2011 RESOLUTION: PUT YOUR HOME ON A DIET!

This is the time of the year when I wish all of you a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year while planning to start my annual diet. Don’t we all start dieting and eating better this time of year? Well I have a diet for you that will not deprive nor starve you. The work will be done by you but not to you! Make sense yet? We are going to put your home on a “diet”. This is a really good resolution for 2011.
One of the things that I notice about my home and that of many of my clients is that there is too much stuff in each room. Book collections, doll collections, and jars full of seashells are just some of the things that take over and clog up our decors. Many of us are collectors and savers of beautiful and unique treasures that we love to put on display for all to see. That in and of itself is great. Then we all know what happens next, our families and friends get wind of what we like and shower us with more of them on our birthdays and Christmases until we cry uncle! But we love all of them and try to show the whole collection off to the world that passes through our door. There is a problem with that. I will explain it by relating a little story about one of my clients. She had 2 china hutches in her dining room and lots of pretty dish sets and pewter/silver pieces. When I started moving them around for her, I discovered she had this lovely 3 piece silver tea service right in front of me that I had not seen due to the large amount of items in the cabinet. It was so beautiful but could be appreciated among all the other things. Hmm, sounds like the perfect example of the saying “less is more”.
So here is how your home diet works. Look at your stuff and collections as “calories”. Your job is to reduce the number of household “calories”. This will let you feature some of your treasures but not all of them at once. The pieces you leave out will stand out and probably garner some compliments from people who say they had never seen those pieces before! They were hidden by the excess stuff. The ones you put away for now can be rotated out at a later date and have their chance in the spotlight. There are added bonuses too- less for you to have to dust and the streamlined look in your rooms can be very soothing to the soul.
So once you are on a roll, keep it going in your closets and drawers. Your favorite charity would appreciate donations of stuff that result from this special household diet. The results are seen immediately in your rooms. Too bad our own personal diets don’t work so well and so quick!