Decluttering your lounge

The lounge is where you want to go to relax. You want a calm tidy space where you can unwind with family. It is where you entertain guests. It is the last place in your home that you want to be messy. But often the living room isn’t quite so clearly defined, with it serving other purposes as well, such as a playroom, a combined dining room, a home office, all incorporated into one space. Because of this it can often end rather up rather cluttered.

Creating a less cluttered space has a number of great benefits over and above the obvious tidy space. To name just a few:

• Save time – With less stuff lying around it means there’s less to clean, and less to organize, which ultimately saves you time in the long run.
• Reduce stress – Having untidy spaces is actually quite stressful. Looking around at clutters
• Improves concentration - Clutter can be very distracting

Let’s take a look at how you can easily make your living room the calm comfortable sanctuary it deserves to be.

Set small goals

When decluttering your living room, your initial goal should be to clear surface clutter, and easy excess items. Surface clutter consists of items that are out in the open and are not where they belong. Easy excess items are ones you can easily identify as trash, things that belong somewhere else, or things you want to get rid of.

Keep as few items as possible out in the main area. Use storage space in existing furniture wisely. Use or create hidden storage areas for everyday items.

Create zones

Time to plan your decluttering session. Sorting the room into zones make it less overwhelming to declutter. You get to see it as multiple small decluttering tasks rather than one enormous one.

• Seating area
• Coffee and side tables
• Bookshelves and storage units
• Shelves and boxes
• Entertainment unit

Have a plan for your items

• Keep it
• Sell it
• Donate it
• Trash it
• Store it

Get started

Pick one zone at a time, and be ruthless. Check every single item and decide what your plan is for it. If it hasn’t been used in over a year, it’s probably not going to be used again and isn’t worth the space.

If something is damaged, or not working and it’s just sitting there waiting to be fixed. It probably won’t be and needs to go as well.

Consider your storage

Is the storage you currently use working for the space, or are there better options? Perhaps it’s the case that you simply don’t have any storage in the space. This can easily be a cause of extra clutter.

Think about what storage solutions will work best for the items you are keeping in your lounge and if they complement your aesthetic of the room.
A common source of living room clutter. Throw out outdated magazines. Donate any books that are no longer being used. Arrange the books you decide to keep according to color and size for a stylish and organized look. Consider adding floating shelves to display books and place books in the same color family together.

If there are items you really want to keep, but there is no space around the house. Do consider a small self storage unit. They are cost effective and a convenient way to keep items that are precious, but not regularly used. Our small self storage units in Auckland or Wellington are and ideal cost effective method to declutter spaces like your living room.