As you know, I am moving this summer and I am in major purge mood. Which I do all the time, by the way. I go on a rampage and donate half my stuff and then regret it a month later.
Lately I’ve been really trying to analyze what I really like versus what I have. I did this same thing with my closet a couple of weeks ago and I felt so much better after. I really looked at what I had in there, what I wear and donated everything that didn’t fit into that.
I have a lot of filler. You know, the stuff you buy that fills in the cracks and you don’t love? Most of my home is filled with things we bought to fill in these cracks. The we just moved in together and we have two suitcases and a box of sheets and we need stuff now problem.
When we moved in together (back in the dinosaur ages) we were both out of college/OCS and ended up in condo in the Bahamas and it was furnished. Problem solved. Then we moved to an apartment in Pensacola so he could go to flight school and we rented furniture to fill that place up before we could buy our own. When we finally did buy furniture we went to Room’s to Go and bought an entire house, literally. We still use all of that furniture today, 10 years later. Over time I have slip covered the couches and painted the bedroom set. The styles we chose back then are not what I would choose today.
Since Pinterest is such an amazing place for inspiration (and such a bad place for lusting after what I can’t have…) I find that all the things I like for my home fall into the same theme. I like clean lines, light colors and pops of bright color. I am drawn to some modern touches and some shabby chic things as well. Those Lucite chairs above? Love. There are so many things I want to do with my home and I know I need to do it in steps. As my husband says, If I toss everything I hate, where is he going to sit? Damn him, he’s right. We have the ugliest brown recliner that I would love to drag out to the curb right this minute, but I can’t. I will be slowly editing what we have, though. Here is my plan:
1) I want to edit my dishes. I currently have a set of 12 red plates from when we got married, a set of 6 pale blue ones that I really like and a set of 12 fancy pants china ones that my mom gave me. Not to mention the two thousand random bar glasses/coffee mugs and other useless glassware. I am donating about 75% of this and really want to pair it down to all white stoneware. I love glass mugs, too!
2) I want to get rid of my office furniture that consists of hand me downs and God awful Office Max book shelves. Ideally I would like all modern and white items in there, but until then I plan on hitting up Ikea or garage sales. I am a huge fan of finding things on the side of the road and painting it. Huge. Big. Some of my favorite things are side of the road finds that I have fixed up.
3) In my bedroom I want to replace our Queen sized bed with a King and I love the look of a white iron bed. Tons of pillows, fluffy pillows and light colors. My bedroom right now is a pale, pale blue-ish green and I adore it.
4) I would like to find more creative ways to frame my pictures and my children’s artwork. I have a lot of matchy matchy frames right now and I want to move away from that.
5) Little by little I want to replace pieces that I no longer love (brown recliners?) with those that I do (spare, modern, clean items.) This is not an overnight project. It make take years! My biggest problem is being patient. I look around and feel like I want an entire home makeover, but that takes time. I need to be willing to gradually replace things I don’t love with things that I do.
Tell me, how do you deal with cleaning out your home and figuring out that you love?
