Here’s how to refresh your home’s styling without spending a shilling

No matter how much time, money, heart and soul you put into your home’s styling, you will always get to a point where you hear a voice inside you saying, ‘I’m bored of this house.’

It’s not that your styling choices are boring – it is that the human spirit craves change as frequently as the seasons come and go. It desires light and darkness just as the sun sets and the moon rises.

As the resident home stylist, you need to address this feeling of boredom as soon as you can.

Notice that I said ‘feeling’. You are feeling bored, feelings are transient. Temporary. They come and go, here today gone next week: it will make no sense for you to put more time, money, heart and soul into your transient feelings of boredom.
Instead, get creative and find fun simple ways to refresh your home without spending a single shilling. You will spend some time, and a little bit of heart and soul, yes, but your money will not leave your pocket.

Here are five ways you can do it:

1. Declutter your home: 

Decluttering is the first pit stop when looking to refresh your home’s styling. It’s a cock-sure way of addressing that feeling of boredom.

Decluttering means that you completely get rid of the pieces that no longer spark joy in your heart. It could also be that these pieces’ energy robs your heart of joy.

Decluttering your home demands an audit of your home, not just with furniture and accessories but with just about everything you have ever bought for your home’s styling: You will walk from space to space, hold the pieces in your hands and take note of how they make you feel.

‘Does this piece spark joy?’ ‘Does it rob my heart of joy?’ Your response here is an absolute ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.

You can either donate these decluttered pieces to someone else or discard them altogether.

Get into the habit of decluttering your home at least every quarter. Make the exercise count by discarding or donating the pieces – if not, your hoarding will put you in a state of constant boredom with your home’s styling.

2. Clean your home

Tied to the decluttering exercise is the exercise of cleaning your home. Not cleaning with a professional cleaner, mind you, but cleaning it by laundering curtains and sheers, seat and cushion covers, vacuuming your rugs and wiping your windows and shelves, all surfaces.

Dust – and dirt – upset the energy in your home and bring with it a dissatisfaction that settles in your heart as boredom.
Professionally deep clean your home at least once a year.

3. Rearrange your furniture 

Another ready-at-hand way to refresh your home’s styling is to address the big-ticket pieces, thus your furniture. Furniture takes up the most room in any space.

To refresh your home’s styling, rearrange your furniture. Move your main couch in the living room from that wall over there to that window over here, or an accent chair from that corner of to this one, move your dining table so it lies horizontally rather than vertically….

The possibilities are as many as the physical space allows vis-à-vis the size and number of your furniture.

Aim for flow and functionality as you rearrange your furniture, otherwise, you will find yourself falling too quickly and too hard back to the old layout that had bored you.

For example, it will make no sense to rearrange your bed if it ends up blocking the bedroom or wardrobe door from swinging all the way open.

4. Rotate your décor accessories

You can also refresh your home’s styling by moving your décor accessories from one space to another.
Accessories that are displayed on a floating shelf in your dining room can be swapped with those on the mantle in your living room.

Those on the entryway console can be swapped with those in the bathroom. A faux potted plant can move from the corner of your bedroom to the entryway. Photos on a gallery wall can be rotated about on the same wall. As long as there is a cohesive styling theme running through your entire home, then it will be quite easy for you to rotate your décor accessories from room to room.

Décor accessories are really about decoration, so the question of flow and functionality doesn’t feature here. Just be careful not to end up cluttering a particular space after the rotation.

5. Put away some accessories

Instead of rotating your décor accessories, you can also refresh your styling by getting some off your display shelves and wrapping them away to put in storage.

Sometimes it’s the overwhelm of seeing too many accessories, too frequently in one place that can drive you to boredom.
So, once again, go around your home auditing your accessories and select a few to put away.

You will get them out and back up after a couple of months when you are rotating them with the ones on display now.

Remember this: when putting accessories away, ensure that you wrap them up properly for storage.

Use bubble wrap and secure it with tape. You can also use layers of newspaper or even pieces of old cloth, this is especially good for framed pictures and photographs.

Store the wrapped pieces in a place where they are safe from breakage, denting or deformation, preferably in a heavy-duty plastic container that you can seal and stash away.

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