You Can “Reset” Your Living Room — Here’s How to Do It

The thing with things is that they multiply. You move into a home and set your rooms up just so, with all the perfect functional and decorative touches each one requires. Then you live in it for a while… and one scented candle has turned into three, your book piles have gotten twice as high, and the coffee table tray has become a magnet for any object smaller than a matchbox.

That’s about the time you want to try a room reset. It’s like moving into the space for the first time: You (temporarily) strip the room down to just the bare minimum, then slowly bring back the objects that you want and need.

You can do this anytime, at any pace. But we’ll visit this concept twice during the Cure: Today, we’ll strip the room down. And later in the month, we’ll invite things back in.

Let’s go!

Give your living room a reset by removing a few things for a while. We want to see what this room looks and feels like when we’re starting fresh. (If you don’t have or use a living room, you can choose any other room where you spend the most time.)

Grab a big bag or box (this should be separate from your outbox), and walk around the room, clearing off decorations and other objects from your surfaces and placing them inside. Take away things like like coffee table books, magazines, candles, picture frames, and other decorative objects. And streamline things like throw blankets and pillows to only what’s essential. (If you’re a maximalist and this feels overwhelming, you don’t have to remove everything from the space, but try to adhere to the goal of giving yourself a bit of a blank slate to live with for a little while.)

Take that living room reset box and move it to a temporary storage spot where you can easily retrieve your things later, after giving them a break.

We’ll live like this until near the end of the month, when I’ll give you a cue to put the room back together. For now, just live with your newly naked space.

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