The 5 Cs to Refreshing Your Home- Without Buying Stuff You Don't Need!

The change of seasons always seems to have the same effect on us. Life is bursting outside with newness, growth, change, and we too, want that feeling at home. Sometimes we think all that needs to be done is acquiring something new. New will do the trick! But if we don't carefully curate our homes, we end up on overload. Not appreciating anything we have because there isn't the space to treasure it. To feel it's impact. To give something that is important to us, it's importance in our home.

We might overload our tables with lots of little plants trying to capture the feeling of outdoors. Or fill our walls with lots of small prints like stamps in a stamp collection, filling up every single spot. Buying more decorative accessories and piling them on top of the last haul, till the tables and shelves and mantles can barely contain them. But all those "littles" become a whole lot... of visual clutter.

What spaces need when you crave a reboot or when things get out of hand are the 5 Cs.

Curate: If it is important enough to occupy a space in your home and heart, treat it that way. Give it space and importance by not crowding it. If you have fallen out of love with an object in your home, let it go. It isn't the person who gave it to you, it isn't the money you spent on it, it isn't the memory attached to it. It is just a thing. You create the meaning attached to it, and it served it's purpose. Let it serve someone else now so you can make space for something that is right for you, right now.

Consolidate what you love into groupings. This means instead of your collections sprinkled around the home like confetti, gather like items into one larger scene and allow breathing room around the grouping.

Love collecting photos from places you have been but they are all smaller than 20"? Hang them all together so they create one large overall image. Some things are just better together.

Have a collection of statues or stones? Great. Mix them into one or two bookshelves with other items of varying size. But if you have so many it looks like a store... revisit step 1.

Comfort is creating spaces your body loves being in. An often used phrase in design is "form follows function" and that is absolutely true! But I believe that falls short. Function follows your body. That means how your body feels in a space, is the first indication of what you need there.

Do you want to feel energized and excited in your home office because you are starting a new company? Then surround yourself with positive examples of that for you. Colors and images that evoke your power, determination and skill. Not boxes of last year's tax returns and memorabilia from a another career or time in your life, when your goals and vision were different. When you were different.

If you want a harmonious home, select images, objects, furnishings and colors that evoke that for you. Notice how your body wants to feel, and create the spaces that will comfortably allow you to step into that. Remember the saying "dress for the position you wish to have, not the one you do have." The same holds true for what you surround yourself with.

It isn't just about what is on the floor. Your walls need to balance out the fullness of the floor for a comfortable space. And because walls are at eye level, what you look at most, tends to influence you the most. Especially if you have taken the time to curate wall art that speaks to a deep part of you, it pulls you toward what you want to create in your life.

Cohesiveness & Continuity is what pulls a home together. It is what makes the transition from one room to the next, comfortable and seamless. This is where consolidate and curate come in clutch! You have done your homework to create a space of intention. Now it's easier to create cohesiveness and flow because what you allow to occupy your home, is what you really, truly, love!

If you love the ocean you can create one room that says it loud, with a big bold print of the beach, treasures you have gathered in a bowl, family snapshots from beach vacations, textiles in varying shades of blue, aqua and sand, and then let that essence trickle in subtle ways through the home. The trick is finding an element, like woven sisal and various shades of blue, to pull through all the spaces in different ways and different intensities. This is what makes a home look planned out. And no, you didn't actually need to think of it all in advance to make it look like you did!

Often my favorite part of art consulting is placing one of Latitudes Gallery images on a client's wall in our virtual preview session and watching all the pieces lock into place. It makes me just giddy to see a room come together like that. And it's so easy! Artwork is the ultimate shortcut to a cohesive space. Shhh. Don't let my secret out.

All 5 Cs are important and at different times in your life one might be more vital to your home success than another. But checking each of them as you go about refreshing your home, makes sure you have a clean slate that is true to you.

If you find after curate that you now have a big blank wall to fill, or if you get to "cohesive" and you need wall art to pull the room together, reach out. The team at Latitudes Gallery is here to help you enrich your life with artwork that fills your soul and creates a home you love living in.