Ever had the urge to sell every single thing in your house and start over? Me too.
Luckily, it’s pretty easy to trick yourself into feeling like you have this great, fresh space without buying a single thing. Here are three things I’ve done around my house lately that have made a big difference:
1. Hang stuff at the right height
Proper “gallery height” is to center pieces at 57″ above the ground. I tend to hang things too high because I’m tall, but even though it’s at my eye level, it looks weird. So I re-hung everything (except above tall furniture) at gallery height and it looks great!
I’m lucky to have tall ceilings, but hanging the curtains high makes my apartment bedroom a little grander. If your curtains are hanging right above the window box, get up this minute and hang them higher (mine are 3-4″ below the ceiling). You’ll love it!
2. Audit furniture
I had this console behind my sofa. It was supposed to be a place to collect keys and mail, but no keys or mail ever made it all the way into the living room. And it blocked the traffic pattern a little bit. It wasn’t performing its intended function AND it was in my way. So I moved it to the entry (duh) and it’s working much better.
Think about how you use your rooms, and whether your current furniture/layouts are optimal. If you think it could be better, move things around. Try a new arrangement, swap pieces room to room, or take things out altogether.
3. Take out the accessories and start over
I’ve decorated my bedroom a little bit, but it still felt very unfinished. I decided to take the rug and curtains from my living room and move them to my bedroom. I thing the rug looks awesome (that’s now 4 animal prints in one room, whoops) and doubling the number of curtain panels made a huge difference.
Here’s before:
And after:
Still a work in progress, but much better!
Take inventory of your stuff: decide what works best for each room and divide up the pieces. Switch things around, experiment with different vignettes, and edit–by leaving a few pieces out of rotation for a while, they’ll seem like new when you pull them out again.