

If you do not have a particularly green thumb, it can be tempting to go artificial when decorating with plants – they always look good after all, right? A great spot would be in home office storage or a safe or strongbox in your bedroom or under the stairs.
#Declutter room professional
‘It can be easy to simply drop mail off in the living room as you open it or pass by, but you should aim to create a designated drop zone or filing system for important documents, mail, and papers, so they don't take over the coffee table,’ suggests Andrea Brame, professional declutter and founder of This Modern Mess. That home, however, should not be the living room. In the digital age, it may be rare that you have to organize paperwork, however odd bits of mail and important documents should always have someplace to call home just in case. ‘If you can’t part with it but it doesn't have a home in the living room, it is key to find a meaningful place for it so it isn't cluttered anymore.’ 9. ‘If the item isn't useful or beautiful, it is a candidate for donation,’ says designer Sarah Walker of Nuance Interior Design. So, it should go without saying that anything that you do not believe reaches this goal needs to go. We should all strive to make a living room beautiful, no matter its shape or size. ‘This elevates the room aesthetically and cuts down on clutter significantly.’

‘Of course, accessories beautify the space,’ continues interior designer Sarah Walker, ‘but large-scale, high-quality pieces are much better than large quantities of cheap ones,’ she says.

‘Now, this doesn't mean don't be a collector, but it does mean it's best to find a way to display that collection in a contained space that makes the collection appear as a single unit, not a random gathering of many items all over the living room.’ ‘When every square inch of shelf or surface space is covered in a collection, it not only makes dusting harder (and takes longer to clean in general), but the visual clutter index is off the charts,’ she says. As a result, these small objects are seen as the number one thing professional declutterer Andrea Brame, founder of This Modern Mess, gets rid of from living rooms. When styling a shelf it is easy to layer on trinkets and knick-knacks to fill in spaces, however, this adds to clutter and makes it impossible to clean a living room thoroughly.
