The Clutter Fairy Weekly #284
A Matter of Taste: Declutter Decor to Fit Your Evolving Style
Some of us collect art and decor for our homes as if we’re curating a museum, never discarding any precious object that ever caught our fancy for a moment. But decorative items that are out of step with our current taste and style easily turn to clutter. In episode #284 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, identifies behaviors that lead to decor clutter and suggests strategies to streamline the stuff that gives your space its one-of-a-kind look.
Content in this episode is based on the results of audience surveys.
Some content in this episode is based on results of a survey of our audience.
The next selection for The Clutter Fairy Book Club will be New Order: A Decluttering Handbook for Creative Folks (and Everyone Else) by Fay Wolf. Shop for the paperback or ebook at Bookshop.org.
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The Weekly Tittle is an exercise designed to focus your attention on a specific space, aspect, or challenge of decluttering and organizing your home. We assign a new tittle in each webcast/podcast, then check on your progress the following week.
Your Decorating Statement of Principles
This week’s assignment is to craft a decluttering algorithm slash personal manifesto to fit your style and decorating aesthetic.
- Reflect on the features that you consider important elements of the decorative style of your home. What colors, materials, textures, collections, and types of items would you like to include or have you tended to incorporate in the past?
- Write a few statements that encapsulate key components of your home’s existing style, decorating principles that you’d like to embrace, and practical limits that you plan to observe. For example:
- “Everything decorative in my space should make me smile when I look at it.”
- “I like natural materials, water-color paintings, and handmade ceramics.”
- “Any horizontal surface should contain no more than five—and ideally no more than three—decorative items.”
- “I prefer handmade or one-of-a-kind decorative objects to mass-produced items.”
- “My motif is a cool-color palette of blues, greens, and neutral shades.”
- “The decor in my home should include only beautiful, useful, or sentimentally rich objects.”
- Now evaluate the contents of one room in terms of the statements you wrote. Are there items that don’t meet the set of standards you wrote? Think about situations in which you’ll allow exceptions—for example, “This lamp is ugly, but it’s the only memento I have of Aunt Mary.”
- Take your design statement of principles with you as you shop for new decor. Examine each prospective purchase to make sure that it meets the style standards you’ve established.
- Revise your statements as needed if you find that they’re either too lax or too restrictive.
For the full discussion of this week’s tittle, watch the Weekly Tittle segment on YouTube.
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