Declutter Homes by Minimizing Accessories & Maximizing Color

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Related Articles: 4 Tips for Clearing the Clutter | 7 Ways to Leave Your Clutter

Declutter Homes by Minimizing Accessories & Maximizing Color
by Emma Martin

Often in an attempt to decorate a house, someone will end up bringing in a lot of furniture, knick knacks, lamps, sculptures, paintings and whatnot. There is nothing per se wrong with using objects to create a feel or an esthetic theme in a room.

The potential problem is that a lot of objects can begin to make a room look and feel cluttered. A new trend is to focus more on color than on furnishings and objects such as those mentioned above. The following are some things to keep in mind when attempting to declutter your house and work more with color:

Let’s first take a look at what the cluttered look is, so we know what we are moving away from. A room with a lot of objects, regardless of how classy or beautiful they are, begins to feel a bit more like something for looking at than for living in. Shelf space gets taken up by clocks, sculptural representations, photographs, and so forth. Tables and desks become homes for paper weights, pen holders, piles of paper, and staplers. Lamps stand like sentinels at every corner, and you don’t want to lean against most areas of the wall because there are framed pictures on them. The room looks great, but you quickly realize how cluttered it is when it becomes messy or when you want to engage in some involved work and have to move a lot of objects out of the way just to get some work space.

Consider how color can be used as an alternative. Take down some of those pictures and paint the wall a brilliant eye catching color instead. You could even use several colors in some innovative design. You would get some delectable visual appeal at the same time as freeing up some space. You could lean against these walls without any problem, and the room gains a spaciousness that it didn’t have before. Now reduce a few of the other objects in the room – desks, tables, knick knacks on surfaces. The impression of spaciousness gets even more noticeable. There is plenty of interest provided by the colorful walls, and the decorations that remain are brought into greater relief and a complimentary quality.

It is well known that colors greatly affect mood. This is the same sort of principle as Feng Shui, which uses images, art, and furniture to set up certain spiritual feelings and symbolic significances in rooms. This can be done on a color level by trying out various colors and seeing how they make you feel. Reds, yellows, and oranges are hot colors and will give a room bright, stimulating sort of feeling. Cool colors like blues and greens often create a more reflective and restful quality. Pastels are light colors of both the hot and cold variety that give a room a relaxed and light aura. You can experiment with combining hot colors, cool colors, and pastels to create various effects.

Look around you at a variety of types of scenes in order to get inspiration. A good place to start is out in nature. Try looking at flowers and trees to get ideas for colors and the way they affect your mood. Looking at the way the colors of flowers and the sky interact can spark ideas as to the way different colors used in a room interact. Nature is also very spacious while being colorful, so it deals with the uncluttered theme as well.

You may be surprised by how much more comfortable you feel in a room when it is decluttered and painted some really interesting colors. Start by clearing out the room and getting a sense of what colors you would like to see. Then prime (if necessary) and paint away! After the painting is done add objects slowly with an eye to a balance between the objects, complimenting the wall colors, and a feeling of openness and livability. You should sense when you have found the right balance of these elements.

Emma Martin is an avid garage sale fan, regularly scouring her city for unique finds and great deals. Weirdest thing she ever bought at a yard sale: a dinner plate with George W. Bush's picture covering it. She is a content contributor for YardSaleSearch.com.

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