Detox your home

We all have our New Year resolutions one of which is normally about changing our lifestyle into a more healthy way of living – be that eating or drinking less, taking up exercise, giving up alcohol, cigarettes or caffeine. However, we seem to forget about our closest environment: our home.

A healthy environment allows for a healthy mind which will keep up with the determination to have a healthy body. So why not detox your home? It’s quite a simple procedure – just clear out the junk, reorganise your space and refresh the décor..

It sound easier said than done, I know. But instead of vegetating on your couch during the long, gloomy evenings and weekends, just allocate some time to go over your stuff – room-by room. Get rid of anything that you haven’t used for more than a year, give them to friends, charities or sell them on eBay. Be ruthless, don’t keep those unwanted gifts just for the sake of it! Anything that is precious, but not particularly useful or beautiful, put in a storage box.

Reorganise your spaces according to their function – for example don’t have an office in your bedroom. The bedroom should be used for relaxation, sleeping & dreaming – i.e. escaping from the hassles of modern life. So don’t take your work into there! Create storage zones in every room, where you can hide the things you want to keep. Organise everything into boxes and/or folders. Try not to have many open shelves or cabinets – they just collect dust and the busyness of objects creates a fuzzy mind.  Have only a couple of beautiful ornaments on display – other knick-knacks and ornaments should be sold, stored away or kept in cabinets (behind doors).

When you’ve done this you’ll feel amazing – a sense of relief as well as achievement. Also your space will appear bigger, brighter and clearer. This new order and clarity will help your mind to clear itself from its own dust and disorder, and will give you some peace and a clearer vision as to how you want live. 

Now you are ready to refresh your home. Take notes as to what you’d like to change, what needs to be repaired or remodelled and start thinking about these as projects to be tackled one week at a time. You might only need a quick refresh – e.g. the introduction of a few trendy ornaments, or just a new rug, perhaps a couple of new cushions… Even if some of your space needs a complete refurbishment, just a buy a couple of items that speak to your senses – your new decorating theme could be based on these! You could enjoy them until you revamp the room and they will keep your creative juices running.

In next week’s article we’ll tell you what trends you should follow this year – what’s in and what’s out, what are the new colors, the new must-have items for your home.
Till then Good Luck with the clearing out!