We all want our living rooms to be comfy, cozy places to relax and visit with guests. But if your living room is feeling cluttered and cramped, you’ve come to the right place! Here are the tips we like to tell clients for organizing their living rooms.
1. When we organize living rooms for our clients, we often see a lot of items that don’t belong in a living room (e.g. mail and paper, clothing, dirty cups and dishes, etc.). So we like to start the session out by sorting through all of the room’s contents and making piles of items that should live in other rooms of the house. Once those items are out of the way, it’s much easier to find homes in the living room for what remains.
2. A tray on a coffee table is a good way to corral the tissue box and the remotes.
3. It’s easy to fill every surface with knick-knacks and decor. But if your decor is looking a little dusty, maybe it’s time to gather it togther and assess whether each piece still holds meaning for you. Does the item still evoke a feeling of delight when you see it? Or has it faded into the background? It might be time to move some to another room, put some into storage or give some away.
4. If your children like to play with toys in the living room, you might want to create storage for the toys. A natural-colored basket with a lid is a smart place to store toys so your living room can stay looking like a living room and less like a playroom.
5. When children have large toys, we like to pull the couch out from the wall about two feet so there’s room to stash riding toys and oversize toys like dollhouses behind the couch when the children are not playing with them.
6. Throw blankets are nice and cozy. But too many can overwhelm your seating areas and make your living room look messy. Perhaps limit the throws to one per chair or couch. The rest can live in a large basket on the floor.
7. Do you store books in your living room? I love to read, so I have a large book collection. Tastes change over the years, so it’s wise to sort through your book collection about every five years to see if you would still re-read all of your books in the future. You can take those books that you would never re-read to an used book store to trade in for new books!
We love to help clients transform their living rooms into comforting refuges. If you need help transforming your living room, please reach out to us for help!
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