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Want to Love Your Living Space? Try This Room Reset

Taryn Williford
Taryn Williford
Taryn is a writer, editor, content strategist, and homebody from Atlanta. I might have helped you declutter your apartment through the magic of a well-paced email newsletter. Or maybe you know me from The Pickle Factory Loft on Instagram.
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published Jan 16, 2018
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The January Cure is about sprucing up your home—but it’s also a lesson in perspective. Through these daily assignments, we want you to begin to see your home through new eyes. Today’s task is a shortcut to making that happen.

The idea is to start with the room you spend the most time in and strip it down, so you’re able to reassess and refine the space’s decor. When the area is lighter on “stuff,” you’ll begin to pick up on things that you simply just don’t notice anymore in day to day life. By the end of the day, you’ll feel as if you’re seeing this room for the first time.

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(Image credit: Pippa Drummond)

Today’s Assignment:

Give your living room (or family room — wherever you spend the bulk of your time) a reset by removing a few things.

Grab a box (or a big IKEA bag) and walk around the living room, removing some of the decorative accessories from the surfaces — things like coffee table books, candles and other objects you keep around for style. The idea is to streamline the space and lose some of the extraneous stuff that might have started to clutter up the surfaces in the room. Perhaps you aren’t even noticing it any more. Depending on your affinity for maximalism, aim to remove 3 to 15 things from the space.

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

We’re not just talking about clearing actual clutter — this exercise is also about temporarily cycling out some perfectly good decorative objects. Cut back on the framed photos or leaning art, pack up the magazines, clear out the bar cart and pull a few throw pillows from the space to see how it feels. The idea here is to strip your design down to a cleaner, less cluttered version.

It’s OK (good, even!) if it feels a bit bare to you right now — it doesn’t have to stay this way for long. For now, just live with your newly naked space and let yourself truly see the room in this simplified iteration.

But before you go, tell us: What did you get rid of? And what’s your first impression of your new, lighter living room?

More Info:

  • The January Cure 2018 Main Page
  • Download the printable PDF calendar: January Cure 2018
  • Share your progress on Instagram: #thejanuarycure