We are now on to week #5 of The 6 Week Decluttering Challenge. I hope you guys are hanging in there with me – just one more week to go! This week we will be learning how to declutter the living room and/or family room. This is one of the easier spaces for me – definitely WAY easier than decluttering the kids’ rooms from last week!
If you aren’t familiar with The Six Week Decluttering Challenge, you can find all of the guidelines HERE. You can start at any time – so just make a commitment and get to it! I promise you that all of your hard work will be worth it in the end. All you need to do is print out the sheet below, come up with your goals and stick with it!
If you feel that your family room is really cluttered, I recommend starting with getting everything out of the living room that doesn’t belong there. Sometimes these spaces end up being a bit of a dumping ground, so there may be a lot of stuff in there that really just needs to go elsewhere. Get a couple of bins – one for items to get rid of and one for items that belong elsewhere in your home – and quickly sort through items that are out in plain sight {don’t worry about going through drawers and storage areas at this point}. Look at your shelving and other display areas. Do you really love everything that is displayed or are they so cluttered that you can not really appreciate what you have out? Keep your most loved and meaningful items and donate the rest. Before you go on to any other tasks, put away all of the items that you have collected that belong elsewhere in your home.
Once you have done the surface decluttering, it is time to dig a little deeper! Go through those drawers, cupboards, and other storage areas looking for any items that you don’t love and need. Look for old magazines {you can see how I organize mine HERE}, CDs or DVDs that you will likely not use again {be honest!}, extra television remotes and any other items that are just taking up space. When you are trying to decide what items to keep in your family room and what items to store elsewhere {or donate!}, think of what you do in that space and keep only items that you will frequently use there. Even if your technically have room for something doesn’t mean that you should keep it!
We didn’t have a whole lot of storage in our family room, so I built these wooden storage crates a couple of years ago. They hold a few games that we play regularly, some scrapbooks, and a few extra pillows and blankets. The only other storage in the room is our coffee table which houses our remotes, a few magazines, and some drink coasters. It’s pretty simple but it provides everything we need! 🙂
If you missed the previous weeks of The 6 Week Decluttering Challenge you can find them here…
Week #1 – Decluttering the Kitchen and Dining Room
Week#2 – Decluttering the Bathrooms
Week # 3 – Decluttering the Master Bedroom
Week #4 – Decluttering the Kids’ Bedrooms and Other Spaces
Nice idea, but it’s not the decluttering, it’s making sure it stays that way!
If you truly have a decluttered space, you will find it is actually fairly easy to keep it that way! A lot of times people just try to “organize” way too much stuff and it is impossible to maintain. 😉
Love this post ! I am proud to say my house is 99% of the time always decluttered!
xo Ellen from Ask Away
http://www.askawayblog.com
Good for you! I’m almost there! 😉
Yes, it’s definitely not just about the decluttering but also about making sure you don’t revert back to your old ways
Definitely!
I love your space ! So neat and the white makes it looks even better !!! I love a good decluttering challenge too ! 🙂
Thanks so much!
Love your post on decluttering the living room. I didn’t realize I had so much items that didn’t need to be there! It looks pretty nice now. Thanks.
Glad it helped! 🙂
You did a great job decluttering. I am loving the rug in your living room. Thanks for linking up on #HomeMattersParty and I hope you will come back and link up again soon.
Nice tips. I don’t know how to decorate my living room but now I have some idea. Your room look so attracktive. I think I can do that. Thanks for your helpful article.
Great post! I love your gray and white rug as well. Mind me asking where you purchased it?
I got that online from West Elm. We’ve had it for about a year and a half now and it has held up really well.
Nice post! I will decorate my living room according to your ideas.
Happy decorating!
With my wife getting promoted she’s started to delegate some of the cleaning duties to me and this is really going to help me keep the busier living spaces clean. Love the checklist too!