Clearing The Decks

Hello Everyone and Happy New Year!

Don’t know about you but I have just waved my beloved Christmas guests goodbye, got my children back in school and am now looking around an empty and disheveled house…to say the least..

Flowers…wilting to dead

Dust coverage…impressive

Pine needles on floor…four thousand and three

Christmas decorations…sagging

Yep…this house needs the once over…

It was only a moment a go that I eagerly put up the tree and happily hung up the christmas lights.    Now I am just itching to clear the decks and pack it all away and start afresh.  Fickle, eh?

But what with all those new years resolutions, you just want to get on…know what I mean?

So, first stop, the sitting room.

Off with all the Christmas cards…

Craftily wedged between my books..

Down with the fairly lights around the mantel piece…

And open up all the doors…

and windows and let in a little fresh air…

There is something so satisfying about clearing up and starting afresh.  Seeing things in a new way, changing rooms around a bit, slapping on a fresh coat of paint.  Some of my favorite jobs come in January when people, still clutching their new years resolutions list, ask me to help them give their house a new look.

And the beauty of it is that it very rarely involves buying anything new.  Usually the opposite … the biggest impact often comes with getting rid of those extraneous piles of ‘stuff’.

When I knew that we were moving from England to California, we had one container at our disposal to fill with the things the four of us needed/wanted to take on to our new life in the U. S. of A.  It was the best exercise in purging I have ever been through…

I highly recommend that you mentally place yourself in an imaginary world where a large movers truck will be arriving at your house in two weeks time and you can only load the things that you really need and like.

The truth is that there is so much left over.

In our case, the movers truck came and took everything four weeks before we actually left the country and in that month we lived in an entirely empty house with just a few borrowed mattresses, plates and pans…nothing else.

It was heaven.  I felt light as a feather.

So remember…only what you like and need.

Nothing else.

Start with one cupboard…one shelf…one tiny corner of your office…

Your kitchen…

Your child’s noticeboard…

And as you go, purge, chuck,  give away and donate.

Remember…light as a feather you will feel.

And finally finally, thanks for you all your emails asking for more before and afters – I promise…next blog…not so much rambling on…

Meanwhile, happy new year to you all.  I’m off to clean the house.

Bye for now,

Ros