Tip One – Invest in three rubber containers with lids and place them in your “junk room”. Bins like these come in various sizes with lids. Select the size that works best for your clutter challenge. Label one box “Keep”, one box “Donate”, and one box “Throwaway”. Carve out 30 minutes or an hour each week and slowly but consistently make your way through your pile and separate the stuff into one of the three categories.                         

Tip Two – Tell yourself the truth about it! I find that I often held on to things because it seemed shameful or callous to toss it aside. I figured out that I felt that way about my daughter’s artwork and old costume jewelry. For my daughters preschool art, I picked the best one each week and saved just one and placed them in the keep box. At the end of a few months, I picked one or two that I wanted to keep and I threw out the rest. The truth is she nor I needed to keep every finger paint picture for the rest of her life! For accessories, my rule of thumb is if I have not worn it in a year, then I should bless someone in need with it! That went for clothes too. My recommendation for you is to find the things that you may have an irrational reason to hold on to and then come up with a method to manage them. The method should honor that connection by keeping one or two items without hoarding.

Tip Three – Donate and or Toss Immediately! Once you have spent a few weeks sorting your things and you will feel that you’ve gained ground, take your items to be thrown away to the curb immediately and call a local nonprofit to pick-up the donations. Getting the items out of your space immediately lessens the probability that they will just be relocated to the garage for two years. Most non-profits have a pickup service and depending on your location you may even be able to leave it on your porch on the day of pick-up.

Tip Four – Find an accountability partner! Your accountability partner should be the person who can call you out on your pile. That friend who will say “really, you are keeping that!” take a second pass over your remaining items with your accountability partner to identify additional items that you can part with.

Tip Five – Find a permanent home for your stuff! If you have followed the steps above, then the remaining items should be things that you need to keep permanently. Once you find a permanent home for your stuff, it will save you and your family time and you will develop the habit of putting things in their place. It will ensure that tidbits no longer grow into mountains without a permanent home.

3 questions that will unlock the mystery of selecting the right palette for your home

Over the years, I’ve found that an active part of my design business has been simply providing consultation to homeowners who are overwhelmed at the prospect of picking a design direction for their home. I also find that although my consultation work may not land me on the cover of Elle Décor Magazine, I really enjoy helping people find their design direction. One of the biggest dilemmas homeowners have is selecting an overall color palette for their home.

Many a client has been in knots about making the wrong color choice or fighting with their significant other about color. So I’m here once again to share some common sense tips about how to make this decision. I don’t subscribe to most theories or rules about color and where it has to go, the only guiding principal for me is that I want the spaces I design to be coordinating or complementary to each other.  It is important that I don’t feel the shock of going from bright red to blue to purple in the same house.  Your home should feel like different bars of the same song, not like different artists on a compilation album!  For my fellow mommies out there I make a limited exception of kids’ rooms, (how many colors are in that frozen bed set…. Ok fine! I let it go)

When my clients come to me totally blocked on color I ask them three questions:

1. Tell me what colors you dislike? – While I don’t like starting the conversation with a negative, asking this first helps me to eliminate a lot of options and allows me to gain some insight into their personality.
2. When you close your eyes what does your home feel like? –  Clients usually respond to this with adjectives that they understand like warm, clam, earthy, spa like, or glamorous. This helps me to visualize a family of colors that I can put together for their consideration.
3. When I say bold color, what comes to mind?- This helps me to understand what intensity and color finishes within the color families described above would be desired in the space .

Armed with that information I put together several color palettes each consisting of about four coordinating colors for my client to review.  Then I start the conversation with, context! This is not life or death stuff! Worst-case scenario we repainted the wall so have fun with it!   Once the client narrows down the palettes to their top two choices, I paint them on the wall of their home in large squares for them to live with it for a day or so before making the final selection.

I always recommend starting with the color palette first then build the furnishings off of that. Your walls make the greatest impact on any interior. The color of a room can impact your mood, so I believe this should be the starting point of your design direction. So take a few days, use the questions above to help you zero in on your options, and if you’re not working with a designer, take your answers and go online and search for colors that are evocative of the adjectives you use to describe your home. Create one or two color palettes consisting of 3-4 colors in each grouping and take it to the paint store and ask them to match it.  You can also download apps from many of the paint retailers that allow you to snap pictures of anything that expresses your color inspiration and the app will tell you the exact color match.

I would invest in a purchasing a small sample of each color and paint them in large squares on a wall in your home. It is important to see how the colors work in YOUR space. Then sleep on it, pass by it for a day or so. It will all become clear to you. Just keep in mind; it’s not that serious! Have fun with it! There is no right or wrong when it’s right for you!

We were able to see past the outdated white ceramic tiles and popcorn ceiling, to identify that this home had great bones. Notice the interesting fireplace, open floor plan, the change in elevation of the living room, and the sliding doors into the sunporch which gives this home interest. The client indicated that they wanted a livable space that was elegant but not formal. They wanted a natural feel to the home, but did not want it so “designed” that there was no room for family art and cherished photographs. They wanted us to update but also work to incorporate and repurpose some of their cherished pieces.

We were able to see past the outdated white ceramic tiles and popcorn ceiling, to identify that this home had great bones.

In the final design we removed the popcorn ceiling, installed new wood look tile flooring, updated the lighting, installed a distressed wood mantel to break up the stark white brickwork on the fireplace, and used a warm latte colored paint on the wall to tie the space together. We used celadon colored wingback chairs, with a rich cream colored modern shag carpet to create the informal living room space that would become the heart of the home.

We made the fireplace the focal point of this room and accessorized it with rustic decorative accents that plays up the natural elegance of this space. We were able to repurpose several pieces of art that the client already owned, this helped up to stay in budget, and ensure that our client felt at home in the space. This beautiful bungalow went from Miami Vice to Elegant with some spice, thanks to Elegant Concept Interiors.