This Week’s Tip Sheet: A Tidy Living Room

Hello beautiful friends and welcome to Week 16 of the Simplified and Organized Home Challenge.

This week we’re working to declutter, organize and refresh the living room.

If the kitchen is the heart of the home, the living room is where we relax after a long day and connect with family, friends, and guests.

It’s a space that must be multifunctional given its role as a welcome center, a library, an entertainment room, a celebration zone, a relaxation area, or a snuggle hub can be different on any given day.

So, as you walk into your living room this week think about what you want it to look like, feel like, smell like and sound like.

Your answers might be as involved as changing a paint color and ordering a new piece of furniture or as simple as changing out the pillow covers, adding a new record to your collection or lighting a candle.

Either way, now is a great time to make it perfectly you.

Now on to this week’s Tip Sheet!

This Week’s Tip Sheet…

Quote of the Week:

“A dead end is just a good place to turn around.” ~ Naomi Judd

This Week’s Big To-Do’s:

• Declutter, organize and refresh the living room
• Prepare for Easter services and celebrations
• Shop for supplies
• Find a signature scent or try a new perfume

This Week’s Tidy Tip:

The Living Room can be one of the messiest spaces in our homes if we’re not careful.

Here are a few ways we combat clutter and keep things tidy:

• Contain décor by using trays. 
• Use baskets and bins to hide things like toys, magazines, books, blankets, board games and gaming system accessories or to keep them organized in a media cabinet with closed storage options.
• Use furniture to clearly define the space.
• Simplify the pillows in your living room with a cohesive color palette.
• Choose a rug that is family and pet friendly so it can be easily cleaned.
• When styling your coffee table, keep things simple by varying the height of your items, stacking similar items together and avoiding lots of small knick-knacks.
• Changing coffee table items out seasonally can help the living room feel festive without having to decorate the entire space.
• Use trays to help make clean up from teatime, movie and game nights, impromptu carpet picnics, or from hobbies a breeze.
• Stash a small trash can under an end table. You’ll barely notice it and it will be there when you need it.
• Create ambient lighting with lamps. Two regular table lamps and a floor lamp can help keep things cozy depending on the size of your space.
• Before you go to bed each night, reset the living room by taking a few moments to tidy up. That way, you’re waking up to a calm and relaxing space. We use a 15-minute clutter catcher, and it makes a big difference.

Wellness Tip:

I used to see rest as the amount of sleep I got each night, as a tool to address burnout, or something I needed when I had a cold or flu.

But reading Dr. Saundra Dalton Smith’s book, Sacred Rest, changed the way I thought about rest completely.  

In her book, she outlines 7 types of rest our mind and body needs to help combat chronic fatigue and rest deficits.

While physical, mental and sensory rest were the types of rest I was the most familiar with, we also need emotional rest, social rest, creative rest, and spiritual rest.

So, the next time you feel tired, out of sorts, or overwhelmed, reexamine these 7 areas of your life and begin infusing your day with small pockets of rest.

Each type serves a unique purpose and allows us to replenish our mind, body and energy from the pressures of daily life.

You can find more about resting well with Dr. Saundra Dalton Smith here.

As always, I hope this week’s Tip Sheet has helped.

Cheering you on as you learn to rest, relax and replenish your day in a way that suits you best,

CoCo

PS: You can find last week’s Tip Sheet here if you missed it.