Both John and I have recently made a real commitment to lessening the amount of unnecessary things we have in our house, to do a complete declutter and keep things as simple as possible. Personally I have always been a believer in less is more but when you have kids you automatically increase the amount of clutter in your home ten fold over night. We are giving ourselves a few months to have a real sort through everything which is also going to help get the home looking ready for when we put it on the market in spring.
I love the simplicity of the flat we stayed in in Earls Court over the summer |
We have a built in hob within our kitchen island which I use daily and I know we would want to replace eventually and want to have something practically, well made and stylish and love the current Amica range which has a choice of indication, gas or ceramic hobs and by replacing or making sure you kitchen appliances are from a long standing quality manufacture you are really investing in the longevity of your kitchen.
Our Kitchen on a rare "clutter-free" day |
I thought I would share some top tips for keeping your kitchen clutter free, simple and stylish
1. Know what style you want to achieve and plan around that. Some styles such as a rustic kitchen miss-matched mugs and crockery work well, exposed shelves and decorative pieces but they still need to have some kind of order. If your going for a minimalist look you need to sort out your storage space first and divide and conquer what you don't need
2. Be practical and realistic - you need to mentally gear yourself up for when you make changes to a room as well as harden your heart if you really want to get rid of the build up that happens in the home and only keep what you actually use, is practical or atheistically pleasing to the eye. Start with the counters first then move on to the cabinets
3. Re-evaluate your furniture - table, chairs, stools etc take up the most space so look at what you have and see if there is a better way to arrange your dinning table or example or perhaps replace two chairs with a bench and don't have more chairs than you need.
4. Invest in well designed white goods that fit your kitchen properly, quality is always more important than quantity and you really don't need every appliance under the sun and if you are one for gadgets than make sure you have some good storage space to store them when not in use. Built-in appliances such as the ones Amica do are always a good option if you want to keep you kitchen space to a maximum.
5. Freshen up with paint - never under estimate how much fresher any room can look with a lick of paint. I always say put down some neutral such as white and then build on top of that if you wish with some cool prints that have pops of colour.
The main thing is to create a fun usable space for all the family, somewhere you can sit down and talk about your day, to me the kitchen is the hub of the home and therefore is a place I feel needs some time spent on it to help make it a little bit extra special.
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I hear you! We're on a similar mission. The problem is, things get worse before they get better! We recently bought some lovely new wooden flooring to lay in our dining / family room but haven't had the time to do it yet, so it's stacked up on the side taking up lots of space. I have a mountain of baby stuff I'm trying to sort through and sell, which inevitably means boxes are piled up in the office too. Fun times!
ReplyDeletegreat tips! I made a point when we moved house of evaluating what we needed/used and getting rid of clutter!
ReplyDeleteI love your kitchen Laura! It looks so very calming x
ReplyDeletehow cute is that last pic of little A? Tom and I feel the same, I love having a big declutter! x
ReplyDeleteWe had a big de-clutter at the weekend but there is still more to go. I'd love to replace our dining table and chairs but until we can, we have repainted them and bought new seat pads for the chairs. A good interim solution!
ReplyDeleteAfter we cleared our kitchen to have the photos taken for the estate agent, we just didn't put any of it back. It feels GOOD!
ReplyDeleteWe were recently going to start an attic conversion so we packed bags of toys and clothes and shipped them of to a friends house for storage. The difference this made was really great and I loved having less toys in the house. Unfortunately the builder cancelled and we have deffered any work to next easter so the toys are back in the house which the kids love of course.
ReplyDeleteI am all for decluttering and simplifying life. Less stress equals a happy life. :-)