Autumn & Winter Home Décor 2019 ~Cleaning and Decorating Inspiration.

 

Gathering in the Leaves:

This morning, the sun is shining, and there is a chill in the air. I was woken by the sound of machinery outside, and as I peeped out of the window I saw that someone was operating an industrial leaf collecting machine – I’m sure that there is a technical term for such a contraption, but I don’t know what it is!

This is a sure sign of autumn! The heavy leaf fall is a sign that summer has passed and we are approaching winter. Perhaps wherever you live in the world, your seasons differ. You might have a more intense autumn with vibrant, ever changing colours as the leaves transform and then fall. Or maybe you have subtler transitions into the latter part of the year. Nonetheless, we are in mid-October which means the year is drawing gently to a close, and leaves are being gathered, and pushed aside as more continue to fall.

An Autumnal Shift:

Within the home, many people are beginning to make a shift as well. I like to modify my home décor to reflect the changing of the seasons as many other people also do. In recent years, there have been trends to embrace the Danish concept of hygge, in terms of lifestyle as well as in the home. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, hygge can be described as follows:

“Hygge (pronounced hue-guh not hoo-gah) is a Danish word used when acknowledging a feeling or moment, whether alone or with friends, at home or out, ordinary or extraordinary as cosy, charming or special”.

Think of the feelings of cosiness sipping a hot drink on a cold evening, while curled up on the sofa in a cosy blanket while wearing your ‘toastiest’ socks. Or the wonderment of looking at the fairy lights in a beautiful Christmas market, and enjoying the scents of cinnamon, of hot chocolate, and bonfires. Think of a relaxed evening in with friends and family, playing board games and enjoying life together. Think of a reading a good book in your favourite ‘cosy corner’, of that warm glow of fully living in those special yet simple moments of a life appreciated for its gracious simplicity and well lived. Think of warm lighting, starlight, candlelight and soft music, or a hearty home cooked meal – the ultimate ‘comfort food’. And the possibilities go on as far as your warm heart and imagination can reach….

Photo by Mark McCammon on Pexels.com

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

We move from the vibrancy of spring to the muted tones of autumn and the cosiness of winter time.

Homeliness, Hospitality and Reaching out to those in Need:

Although the sun is streaming through the blinds on this crisp, cold, autumnal day, days like this are becoming fewer and further between. Yesterday was a day for warm coats, and the day previously we saw lashing rain, incessantly beating down upon us, as we huddled indoors or under grey skies. It is a time when, if we are blessed to have a home of our own, a roof over our heads, we can make time and space to allow our winter seasons to be more cosy, homely and inviting.

Not only can we create a warm and pleasant environment for ourselves, but it opens up opportunities to be hospitable to others, and when we are relaxed and things are in order, then we can also invest our time, efforts and energy into reaching out and helping the poor and others less fortunate that ourselves materially. We can create a quiet space to pray for those in need, including the homeless, we can gather our friends together and begin preparing toys, gifts, hampers and wellbeing packages to distribute perhaps at Christmas. We can make crafts and home-baking to sell to raise money for charity, and we can invest our time in creating a little more community spirit, and of going out to meet people who may be lonely with no one to talk to. Once more, the possibilities only end where your imagination does…

When the leaves are piled high all around you!

However, while we sit together and dream of such inviting days, you like me may find that you have a whole heap of leaves to rustle through first, and tidy up, if you’ll pardon the pun. We need to shed spring’s skin and allow things to change as we transition from one season to the next.

The reality of the mess:

Personally, in order to get to this dreamy autumnal and winter home scene, there’s a lot of tidying up to do! However, for inspiration I have been looking through some of my old blog posts in my ‘home and lifestyle’ section. I have lists of encouraging tips and suggestions in various posts, but the one that encouraged me not to be overwhelmed or distracted by the mess, is to begin with a vision of what I want each part of my little home / apartment to look like. Once my heart is engaged, my mind can set about prompting me to action in the more practical tasks.

Dreams and visions:

One of the things I suggest is to have some sort of ‘vision board’, whether electronically, or jotting down ideas and scrapbooking pictures, it depends on what works for you. I think a nice way I’d like to do it is by ‘cataloguing’ some of my ideas in subsequent blog posts so that I can share this journey with you.

A starting point:

For now, however, in case it is an encouragement to you that I too have a bit of work to do, here is where I am starting from, at least with my kitchen…I hope to follow up with sharing a vision board in subsequent posts and to do this for each room as I move through my home.

So for now friends, happy cosy autumnal living, I hope you have a safe and blessed season ahead. x

Where I am starting from as I say farewell to this year’s spring and summer: 

Looking through the archives for some home and lifestyle inspiration.

It’s 11.10pm on Saturday evening, and this Saturday has definitely been a ‘reset’ type of day. By that I mean my flat / apartment was pretty messy after a busy week at work and also with a couple of evenings out meeting friends, which meant I just didn’t have what it took to keep on top of things at home. I miraculously (not being much of a morning person) awoke early and as it was a rare sunny morning, with a gentle light breeze and the streets almost empty of people, I went for a morning walk in the sunshine by the riverside before 8am. Usually  I would probably still be tucked up in bed on a Saturday morning, catching up on sleep, but it really was a lovely and quiet time of day to be outside, and a nice change. 

The rest of the day has involved intermittently cleaning and tidying as well as just doing some relaxing things at home. My kitchen and living room which are open plan were so messy, but are pretty cosy now apart from some papers and miscellaneous items needing sorted. So at least I can relax here. My bedroom, however, is in a very sorry, messy state, and it’s getting me down a bit. So is my spare room which needs a fresh decluttering and tidy up after last year’s big decluttering project. Not to mention my bathrooms needing a good, clean going over. My moods are affected by my surroundings, and I am aware of choosing not to get stressed or upset by mess, as I said in a previous post advising to ‘enjoy your mess, enjoy your tidy’, for in our mess we can see our abundance and so much to be thankful for. But still, I’m human, and living alone I have no one to clear up after me during a tiring or busy week, and I don’t have any special ‘Mary Poppins’ formula whereby things miraculously tidy themselves away with just a click of the fingers, and a ‘spoon full of sugar’.

Basically, I need some inspiration, and a fresh reminder that I have had things on track before, so I can do it again. And hopefully this will be a bit of an inspiration for you too, so I’m reposting a bedroom spring décor post I wrote last year. One last note for you and for me: don’t let any clutter around you clutter up your mind! Let’s have gratitude and a positive attitude in the mess as well as the tidy. xx

via Satisfying your changing colour cravings…without a single drop of paint!

Calm amid Clutter: How to keep calm when decluttering and clearing out the messiest areas of your home!

 

With spring just around the corner, many of us will be turning our thoughts towards spring cleaning, re-evaluating our homes, and seeking ways to get rid of the old as we welcome in the new, and how to make the most of our living spaces. 

I hope you’ve already joined me in my new Home & Lifestyle series based upon my theme and goals for February to declutter and ‘clean up my act’ at home 🙂 If not, you might find some inspiration from my last few posts, and may have some of your own inspiration to share with me. 

As yet, apart from the before and after pictures of one room that I have worked on, I haven’t got into the ‘nitty gritty’ of my process so far. However, I have spent a lot of today sorting, recycling, discarding and making a dent in the seemingly grand task before me. 

And I doubt that I’m the only one who has ever been in the midst of the process of decluttering and reorganising, who has felt those moments of ‘despair’ at the task taken on, especially when tackling the “stuff” that has built up over the years, stuff that we don’t even really know how it got or stayed in our homes, and yet stuff that seems to be clogging up our lives and living spaces in some way.

So for those of you who are in the same boat as me who also feel that they are close to drowning in that sea of “stuff”, and beginning to lose sight of how we’ll ever get out of this mess, here are a few words of encouragement from someone who is in that boat right now! 🙂

1. Firstly, have a vision of what you want and desire your home to be like. I have created a ‘wish list’ on Amazon that I add to with ideas of what I want my dream room (as I am working on a specific room that has become the ‘junk room’ just now, having already tackled and more or less succeeded with my main bedroom) to look like and contain. I don’t really have any real intention of purchasing any of these beautiful items at the moment, especially considering they wouldn’t be able to go anywhere until I have cleared out the space, but it is inspiring nonetheless to dream a little amid the reality of semi-chaos.  You might store inspiring pictures on your phone, or have a scrapbook or sketch book of ideas, or even blog about your home / living space dreams and goals here on Word Press for a sense of community and accountability. Or maybe you like a good old ‘vision board’ to kick start your imagination. Whatever it is, have something to aspire to in making the changes to save you from doing what I too often do by way of simply tidying up a bit, moving the mess about, or covering it up somehow!

2. Be sure to take ‘progress’ pictures, including before and after shots. I have already found this to be an encouragement as I mentioned in an earlier post when tackling a new area that seems ‘impossible’ and deflating to deal with to look back upon areas in which I have already made some progress. It really helps to think ‘well, I’ve done it before, so I can (and will) do it again’ – even if the how of getting there isn’t all too clear to you in the moment. 

3. Strategize.  Everyone has different ways of organising, and you’ll find what works best for you. However, I have found that starting with a particular room or area, getting everything out in the open so that I can’t escape it, and then categorising things into ‘like for like’ (for example bags with bags, shoes with shoes, books with books, etc) and create one particular named space to store and / or display the items of like kind that you have decided to keep (letting go is also part of the process if you have accumulated more stuff that you need or can handle, and letting someone else benefit from those items). You might like to create labels for those areas, and a storage solution or system so that they don’t just get heaped up and piled chaotically, but so that there is a place for everything and everything in its place. This really helps mentally if you are tidying a new area and see an item of a particular category and then can think ‘ Hey, I know where that goes, there’s a place for that!’, and then immediately put the item where it now belongs. I have sorted out my bedroom and created a system for it, and having done so, I have written in the back of my planner what each area of my bedroom contains so that having identified and named a system and locations of items by type, I can hopefully maintain things by knowing where there are and where they should go. 

4. This point is the one that I have been leading to, as it is so important to your sense of calm and motivation throughout the whole process. Have, create and maintain an area of your home where you are happy in your surroundings. Perhaps this could be your bedroom or living room, or if not an entire room, a ‘cosy corner’ or small space where things are ‘just so’ and where you feel calm, happy and inspired. Strive to keep this area just as you like it and clutter free, even if in all other areas of your home there is chaos. This is so important, as I am learning, due to the fact that if you are tackling large volumes of ‘stuff’, mess or items accumulated over the years, and especially if you have ‘hoarding tendencies’ (in which case, you might like to ask someone for additional support, guidance and accountability), this can be quite a daunting task and you might find yourself feeling overwhelmed, discouraged and / or self-critical. 

When you do find your motivation beginning to drain, and negative thoughts and emotions surfacing, go to your cosy and calm spot, whether that is a chair or a room, whatever you have been able to manage to carve out for yourself, and take some time out. Maybe you could make yourself a hot drink, watch your favourite programme, read a book, and feel just as you would desire to feel in that ‘dream home’ that you have in mind. Remind yourself of your vision, look at those inspiring visuals, encourage yourself with those before and after pictures if you have got that far and feel good about how far you have already come. Think about the strategies you have put in place and are learning about, and maybe note them down. Read articles or watch videos of other people’s ‘decluttering journeys’ and be inspired to know that there are so many tips and tools and hints to help you along the way. And take time just to breathe, relax, enjoy just being, pondering, praying and doing something entirely different that brings you enjoyment ~ for as the poem Desiderata wisely instructs us, we should enjoy our achievements as well as our plans. So amid all your hard work, remember to take a break, and find some real calm amid the chaos. You can do it!! 🙂 xx