How to Refresh Your Home Without Spending Money

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Around February or March every year, I get the urge to change things up around my house. Maybe it’s due to the long Alaskan winters, when I’ve just spent several months inside. Maybe it’s some ancient instinct for cleaning and tidying in anticipation of spring. Maybe it’s just my fickle nature that likes to see something new once in a while. Whatever the reason, I always seem to find lots of energy to thoroughly clean, tidy, and reorganize our cabin this time of year.

This desire to see something new sometimes makes me want to go out and buy things to make my house look pretty. But this isn’t always the best solution. I like to see what I can do with what I already have, before heading out shopping. You can too, and you might be surprised at what a change you can make to a familiar space just by a few simple fixes.

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1. Clean and Discard

This is usually the first step. Take one room at a time, and one cabinet, shelf, or counter in turn. Take everything out and clean it before putting the items back.

As you put the items back, ask yourself if you really need them. Is there any expired food in your kitchen? Are you keeping clothes that are worn out or you’ve never worn? Have you ever opened this textbook you saved from college? How many blank notebooks does one really need?

Discarding some items always helps with organization later! During your initial cleaning and discarding, you might find yourself with empty boxes or storage containers. Save these! You might find a different area to use them during a later step of the process.

The cleaning step doesn’t have to mean completely turning your house upside down and cleaning every nook and cranny. If you don’t want to combine tidying with spring cleaning, I understand. Spring cleaning is a big enough job on its own! However, I can’t take everything out of a cupboard to organize it and NOT wipe down the cupboard while it’s empty.

So, you have two options: you can either consider this organization spree as getting a head start on some of your spring cleaning (without trying to tackle it all), or don’t think about spring cleaning at all, and just clean messes as you come to them in the course of organizing.

2. Step back and look at each room

Sometimes this step actually has to come first, before you take everything apart to clean. (This is true for areas that are already messy.) Are there problem areas in a room, places that are always messy? How can you reorganize the items in that space to make them fit better, or reimagine the space to make it less of a dumping place?

(Sometimes this can take a while. I’ve sat and stared at an overflowing bookshelf for longer than I care to admit before inspiration struck!)

Here’s where your saved storage containers and boxes come in handy. Even cardboard boxes can be helpful to visualize whether or not a rearrangement idea will work in a particular space. For example, if you’re trying to organize a shelf that’s always messy, some baskets or boxes placed on the shelf can help keep things contained better. But if you don’t have enough pretty baskets or bins lying around, you can use cardboard boxes as a temporary solution.

I know it’s not pretty, but this prevents you from running out and buying more storage containers before you’re finished organizing the whole house. Remember, you might find more storage containers in a different room that could be repurposed! It’s a good idea to wait until the whole house is organized before you buy anything new.

Give each shelf a purpose

Sometimes the answer to a problem area is that you just need to change or define its purpose. If a table or shelf doesn’t have a specific function, it can easily become a place where random objects get set down and forgotten.

I had a shelf in my kitchen that didn’t have a specific purpose, and it was always messy. Papers piled up there, objects that needed to be put away, things that didn’t have a home… it was always an eyesore! I decided that since I obviously didn’t need that shelf for storing kitchen things, I would turn it into a decorative shelf. Now it’s the prettiest place in my kitchen, and (almost) never messy.

Think about whether or not any of your problem areas need a real purpose. This can be a great opportunity to find decorative spaces you didn’t even know you had! You can even use prominent tables or shelves for extra storage, if you need it. Find pretty baskets or boxes to arrange neatly, and you’ve created an appealing space that also serves a useful purpose.

3. Try different furniture arrangements

Even if there are no specific problem areas, you may want to look around the room and imagine some different furniture arrangements. If the furniture isn’t too heavy, you might enjoy moving it around to different places, just to see what looks nice.

You could discover that different furniture arrangements make more sense in the spring and summer, as the light changes and the trees eventually get their leaves. Perhaps you could move your favorite chair closer to a sunny window, which might have been too chilly in the winter.

You might think this step is a waste of time, because you’ve found the ideal placement for all the furniture in a room. I know the feeling, but I’ve been surprised when we suddenly gained more space by adding another piece of furniture, which forced us to rearrange the pieces that were already there! Since then, I have tried to keep an open mind about different ideas, and embraced the opportunity to occasionally change furniture arrangements!

4. Ask yourself if there is anything that particularly bothers you about each room

Are the curtains hung wrong? Maybe it’s time to set them straight. Do some colors or patterns clash? See if moving the offending object across the room or to a different room helps.

Is there some piece of furniture or artwork that you just don’t like? Aside from getting rid of the object entirely, you could try covering a piece of furniture with a pretty cloth or slipcover.

If you have a fabric stash in your house, you can work magic without heading to the store. New curtains, or even new trimmings on old curtains, can add interest to your windows. Fresh pillow covers can hide stained or worn ones. A pretty blanket thrown over an ugly chair can completely cover that pattern you don’t like.

In the case of smaller objects or artwork, it might not bother you as much if it was moved to a different location, or grouped with a set of other objects so it is not the sole focus of attention. Or consider putting it away in a closet for a month or two. If you forget about it, you probably don’t really need or want it. Feel free to send it on to a new home!

Finding Time to Organize

If all this sounds great to you, but you can’t just drop all of your other responsibilities to tidy and rearrange your house for a few days, try these tips for making time to organize:

Set aside an hour or two each day

It’s okay to take a little bit at a time, and work through your house slowly. Unless you can come up with a totally free weekend, you will probably need at least a week of smaller increments to finish the job.

Find a time when you’re in a positive mood and not too tired

After supper is probably not the best time, unless you’re a night owl! And if you get to the scheduled time but you’re feeling frazzled or worn out, don’t even start organizing. You will only get more frustrated with yourself. It’s much better to skip a day or two if you’re really too busy, than to try and force yourself to accomplish too much. We want this to be a pleasant task, remember?

Start with an area that’s not too big, but really bothers you

The satisfaction from tidying and organizing a perpetual eyesore will help to motivate you to keep going. However, trying to tackle a big area first can be overwhelming, so don’t pick the biggest mess in the house to start with!

I like to start with something I know I can finish in an afternoon, like one dresser. Maybe even just the top of the dresser, if it’s really messy. If I start with something that I’ve been meaning to organize, that gives me energy to plow through the rest of the house!

Other tips for organizing

Deciding what to keep

Keep things because you like them, not because you think they might come in handy some day or because you think you ought to. Sure, you just might find a use for that metal fitting some day. But 37 plastic containers? A broken bicycle? That vase (or sweater, or picture) which you don’t even like, but it’s from a relative?

Some things are precious because they are family heirlooms, and hold special memories. Some things are objectively useful (like storage containers), but having too many of them makes them just one more thing to store.

The more stuff you have in your house, the more time and energy you must spend in cleaning and organizing it. You must decide yourself which things to keep, but I know for myself, I would rather live with less stuff in a space that is neat and uncluttered, than with a lot of stuff I might need someday.

A Note on Paper

Papers can be some of the most time-consuming things to sort through and organize. One piece of paper takes up barely any space, but when you’re going through them, you have to look at each one individually. This takes both time and energy–and you don’t always see a huge improvement when you’re done, even if you throw out a lot of paper!

For this reason, I always save papers for last, or close to last. If I come across a file or binder of papers while I’m organizing, I move it to my desk until I have leisure to sit down and decide which ones I really need to keep.

Methods of Organization

Some people like to organize room by room, while others advise organizing by each type of item: clothes, kitchen utensils, books, etc. I have done both, and found both to be helpful.

I did read Marie Kondo’s book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” and tidied my house using her method about a year ago. It was very thorough, and I think everyone could benefit from tidying that way… once. It’s not a process that needs to be repeated every month, or year. (Hopefully!)

However, her method of tidying doesn’t keep your house perfect forever. You still have to put things away where they belong, of course. And if anything new comes into your house, you will need to find a home for it. That is why I still do an organizing or tidying spree once a year: because during the past year, things came into my house, so now I need to rethink the storage spaces that worked earlier.

This time around, tidying went much faster, and I barely had to touch some areas. (I didn’t gain any new kitchen utensils, so they’re still organized from last year.) But in the end, I still gained the same sense of satisfaction in surveying a clean, tidy home.

Tidying and organizing makes me happy to live in my home. I hope it has the same effects for you!

Happy Homemaking!

~Kimberly