Be honest, how lived in is your home?

I really want to achieve the hotel feel but with personal touches, such as pictures. But we have too much crap. It's not messy. Just has...stuff.

Re: Be honest, how lived in is your home?

I am striving to achieve what you stated but I have a sinking feeling that it's like chasing a carrot on a stick - no matter how much I chase it, it continues to elude me. I am always reorganizing things, moving things, grouping things, sorting things... I do have 3 small kids but I can't completely blame them for my perpetual state of disarray. I long for an anal retentive person to come live here for a few months and whip me into shape.

I wish they had Home Organization Boot Camp.

Re: Be honest, how lived in is your home?

i was just thinking this yesterday!!!!

i was cleaning up and i said this place is too cluttered!!!! i wish it looked like a hotel!!!

i've come to the realization.... unless i have a bigger with a basement.... this house will always looked filled with crap!!!

Re: Be honest, how lived in is your home?

Before I moved into this house which is three times the size of my townhouse I was ultra organized. For some unknown reason we moved here & I lost control. In the last 6 months I have made a serious effort to regain it & its been working. We've had big yard sales, I donate & freecycle regularly & I rarely shop for fun anymore.
There are a few areas that are still huge peeves of mine but they are related to my DH having ZERO organizational skills-
Newspapers, his workshop, his tools that are forever ending up in the house & dirty clothes-the man refuses to follow a simple hamper system.

Other than those things I went back to an old school system of dedicating a few hours on the weekend of solid housekeeping or organizing time.
I found that I was cleaning in spurts & I never had the whole house clean or should I say clutter free at the same time. Now I will not go to bed Sunday night until everything is in its place & all laundry is done.
Starting the week with clutter messes up my chi
Then I'm off on Wednesdays from my main job so I try to spend time freshening everything up, then Sat or Sun I do the big clean again.
I was a major pack rat, I'm totally over that now. If we don't need it, love it or use it-its gone.

Re: Be honest, how lived in is your home?

We're de-cluttering our belongings and apartment before we move into our house. Once all that is spread out into double the space that we have now, I don't think you could consider that clutter.

What happens after that, I don't know. I really dislike sparse areas or decorating. I want our house to be airy but not too formal.

We're going to strive for comfort.

Re: Be honest, how lived in is your home?

my house is a HUGE mess most of the time, but it doesn't bother me. I tidy on the weekends and when my son has gone to bed. But we have too much stuff and we have no storage space at all. We recently purchased some Pax wardrobes for our bedroom, they are 8 feet tall and about 12 feet wide. We are in the midst of filling them up. Having a tidy house is not a priority of mine, although it is clean all of the time...

Re: Be honest, how lived in is your home?

I can honestly say our house is not clutter unless you are in my DH's home office. I like to keep things in order & my house is always clean. You could drop by at a moment's notice & I would not mind. I don't want to spend my weekends cleaning up the house since that is my only time to do errands & what not with DH. I clean up a little each night.

With that said, I think our house is lived in though. We utilize every room in our house & truly do enjoy it.

Re: Be honest, how lived in is your home?

our house is neat, but lived in.... i'm not super into decorating, so the whole house is just very casual and comfortable. theres a few things laying around ( cups, magazines, books, etc) but it always looks organized and neat.
except the office... thats the one room i've given up on. we ( mostly DH) just have so much paperwork to do all the time, that it just all ends up piled up on the desk in there.
we have a big group of friends, and we never know when one of them will be stopping by to borrow something or just to hang out, so i try to clean a little bit every night, just to keep up with it. i refuse to spend a whole day on a weekend cleaning, so i would rather spend a little extra time every night after work straightening up or cleaning so i don't have os much to do at once.

Re: Be honest, how lived in is your home?

Re: Be honest, how lived in is your home?

DH said when we are in a house we are going to be minimalists...we have far too much $hit in our apartment now and it drives us both crazy!

Re: Be honest, how lived in is your home?

Our home was pristine and not cluttered for a long time, but we don't have kids yet.

As soon as we got our dog, things changed. He tore up some things, chewed some things, etc. I have so much of his stuff around...the house started to appear more congested.

I imagine when we have kids things will get more "lived in".

Re: Be honest, how lived in is your home?

Right now, it looks like a small bomb went off (it was a large bomb but, I straightened up a lot this weekend).

I am thinking the problem will be resolved somewhat once we get a better storage system in place. Currently, DH is ripping our basement apart so we don't have the availability for storage. Also, we are getting new dressers next month which will help our storage situation as well (most of DHs clothes currently reside in a Rubbermaid bin - our closets in our old apartment were huge and the closets in our house are tiny).

I also need to show DH what a clutter free home looks like. He's a great cleaner - kitchens/bathrooms/vacuuming but,he doesn't really have good clutter management skills (and he seems to think that most of the clutter belongs to me when in fact, it's mostly his).

Re: Be honest, how lived in is your home?

I tend to feel VERY anxious if I'm in a space that's too cluttered, so I've tried to find a comfortable line between being too minimalist (which is also uncomfortable) and that cluttered feeling. I love the hotel look too, so I've tried to be very selective in what I display and I "edit" things a lot - either donating/throwing out/storing things. I also use lots of hidden storage so the things I need are conveniently located but not out in the open.