A friend of mine has been patiently waiting for me to come and assist her with organizing. She moved into a condo 3 weeks ago, and was very excited when I was able to come yesterday. We spent 9 hours organizing, moving furniture, unpacking boxes, and decorating. The results are amazing.

I've decided that this post is going to be about the placement of furniture. That seemed to make the biggest differences out of all our efforts.

When we move, we often place furniture in the same or similar spot as what we have done before. Sometimes this works. More often, it causes problems because of a difference in size, shape, and function of the rooms. Having a fresh pair of eyes to give you ideas in the placement of furniture in a new space can aid in the overall organization of your rooms. Allow me to be your eyes, and give you some new ways to think about placing furniture.

1 - When you put all of your furniture up against the walls, it gives the illusion that you have less space

Our eyes take in the empty spaces of a room just as well as the filled. When there is only 1 open area, it seems as if there is no other available space. For this instance, we'll use the home owner's daughter's room.

Like any little girl, she had lots of toys and accessories. With her bed pushed up to the back wall, and her play kitchen taking up the rest of the space, the only open area was the middle of the floor. When you walk into her door, your eye gets drawn to her bed and the back wall. It seems as if the open area is the actual size of the room. The furniture has become an extension of the walls.

We decided to move her bed perpendicular to its present position. This now created 2 play areas on either side. The homeowner told me she was considering removing the closet doors and asked my opinion. Since I have taken down all the sliding doors in my house, I agreed. This gave her daughter yet another space to play. So now, just by moving the biggest piece of furniture in the room, she went from 1 space to 3.

before

after

2 - Factor in the size, shape, and assets of a room.

I'm just odd enough to notice odd things. I once noticed that if a room was longer than it is wider, and you vacuumed perpendicular to the length, it seems to shorten the room. But if you vacuum with the length, it draws attention to the extra size of the room. The same is true with mowing lawns. I use this seemingly useless knowledge to help me in the placing of furniture so as to emphasize the assets of a room and not hide them.
The home owner's dining room had not yet been set up. She had a table, but had not yet moved it away from the wall. Typically in this sort of room, you put the table parallel with the back wall. I pointed out to her, that if we made it perpendicular to the back wall, it gave the room more depth. What I hadn't really noticed at the time, is that it almost mirrors the effect of a wall. Because her dining area is open to her living room and office, this little trick makes the dining room seem like a completely separate area. That gave her the semblance of having an additional room of the house.

before

after

3 - Think outside of the box.

This has lots of different meanings, but I'll explain mine.

In the home owner's bedroom, she had a TV/VCR combo. The VHS cases tended to become strewn about the room. I suggested that she use the drawers of a bench to house the tapes. I'm not implying that this will inspire her daughter to put the cases and movies away....but, when she comes into her room after her daughter, she will be able to put the cases back in their drawer and eliminate the mess. She didn't need to buy another piece of organizing equipment for her problem because we were able to rethink an item she already owned.

4 - Sometimes the biggest problems can have the best solutions.

We worked so well together, that we got TONS accomplished, and rarely disagreed. It was so fun to work with someone who had the same kind of vision and was not afraid to experiment. BUT, during the course of the day we did have one headache.
The homeowner had recently lived in a bigger space. While we were making great headway placing items around her new place, it still seemed as if she owned too much furniture. Like most of us, all of the misplaced furniture had found its home in her room, crowding her out. We found a little red coffee table in her master closet that worked beautifully in her already decorated living room. We had found places for an end table, bookshelf, and a quilt rack.
Towards the end of our day, we had accomplished so much. Just at that peak moment, when you can maybe see the light at the end of the tunnel....we hit a WALL. The wall was called: sewing table. It was a beautiful sewing table, but there was just no room for it in the bedroom. Her room was turning out gorgeous, but it still felt crowded with the sewing table in it. We had already organized and decorated the kitchen, but we tried to fit it in there anyway. No go.
So then, I thought maybe we could use it as an extension to her desk....but that would have made her feel trapped, and it would've been the first thing anyone saw as they entered her condo. It seemed helpless. We were stuck. She plugged along, and I sat and thought, and thought, and thought. I brought out a measuring tape hoping to find some wonderful spot for it, but it just wouldn't fit. Then...after much pondering, I had an idea. I asked my friend if we could use her sewing table as a sofa table.
We tried it, and Hallelujah!! it fit. We started to decorate it, and it turned out to be a wonderful spot for all of her treasured pictures of her family. It really is a gorgeous focal piece to the room.
She also hated the fact that there was no mantel, and the clock seemed to be hung too high, but we found a cute "imagine" sculpture that fit perfectly over the fireplace and took up the room between the fireplace and the clock.

I'll leave you with one last tip:
When you make the house look this good, there is one more thing you MUST do.
Go out to eat and reward yourself. :)

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One of the hardest parts about organizing is maintenance. We all get lazy sometimes. Even with a place for everything, sometimes you just don't feel like putting things where they go.

This is one of the biggest reasons that I make a distinction between dirty and cluttered. A lot of us have clean albeit cluttered homes. My kids' rooms have the opposite problem.....they are fully organized, but they just won't stay clean.

After helping my friend organize and rearrange her daughter's room, I decided that one way get my kids to clean their room was to redecorate. We usually rearrange the rooms every January. We like to try new furniture placement, and reevaluate whether our systems are working or not, and sometimes even change the function of a room. But being out of school for summer, and getting ready to go back, we really needed good motivation to clean the rooms. And when you involve a little kid in the rearrangement of their room, they feel so empowered and creative (and will actually help).

The view from the doorway before. This is one of the reasons I decided it was time to redecorate. How would you like to walk by this everyday?

The view from the doorway after. The bow organizer got moved from the pink wall. This is one of those placement reevaluations. I thought the bow organizer would make a very cute design element on the wall. In reality, the kids kept knocking it off the wall. They never put the bows back on it so there was always a pile of bows on the floor in front of it. Solution: off the wall and on the floor.

The view of the side of the bed before. When I bought and refinished this side table, I made my daughter promise to keep it nice. It usually gets cleaned off, but this small walkway usually gets trashed. I figured it was because there was no reason to keep the bed made or beside the bed clean. I had never bought my kids a comforter when I moved them to a queen size bed (used to be a guest room bed), they were just using an old quilt.

Side of the bed after. Solution: I bought a new comforter and made a big deal about it. We went to several stores searching for the cutest (and cheapest) one. Then I made a small change of switching the way the bed faced. Now it takes up less room so there's more room to play on the floor. Also it looks like a giant day bed. With the pillows at the top, I can fold back the comforter instead of trying to shove it between the bed and wall. The girls thought this made their bed look really cool. I also put one of their buckets beside the bed for all their blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals that they like to keep on their bed.

(side note: my oldest girl picked out the saying on the wall. She had vinyl on her wall before but it was white and didn't really show up. This is sparkly black and I thought her saying was very cute and creative.)

Corner view before. One problem I noticed was that the girls' room was "visually cluttered". I use this terminology all the time when I'm organizing for others.....and all I'm really trying to explain is that when there is too much for the eye to look at all at once, it gives the area a feel of being cluttered even if it is not.

Corner view after. Even though I was the one to paint all the crazy murals before, I still had to talk the girls into letting me paint over them. We left some on the opposite wall, and moved a picture from the opposite wall to fill the blank space. My oldest daughter loves busy, bright, brash things....but even she agreed that this just looked better.

Hopefully, seeing that the plumber's toilet gets clogged too (so to speak) will help motivate you to tackle your own spaces. And if you want to involve your kids, or just give yourself extra incentive, remember that the cleaning and organizing is secondary to the fun of redecorating.

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Yesterday I got to help a friend "gut out" (her words) her daughter's room.

View from the doorway before

View from the doorway after

I think we all assume that at a certain age, our children are capable of cleaning their own room. We ask, bribe, threaten, what-have-you to get them to straighten their rooms and keep them in some semblance of clean. Then when we can take it no more, we decide to clean it ourselves. This friend called me because she was overwhelmed just stepping in the room. After we cleaned it you could actually feel that it was lighter.

We started in the closet, and just went through everything. The whole room only took 3 hours because this friend was not being sentimental and made decisions very quickly. It was great!! She had actually set aside different drawers for certain items, so once we had the closet cleared everything went a lot faster since it had a place to go to.

Closet before

Closet After

2 lessons I took from this room are:

1. Don't underestimate children when it comes to "stashing". Check every corner, under the bed, in the closet, behind the door, etc. These kids are creative, so get creative when you check their rooms.

Dresser Before

Under the Bed Before

(I actually had to pick the bed frame up to move it since the little girl had stuffed it to the gills)

2. When your child runs out of socks, don't buy her more. Make her clean her room instead. My friend and I must have found at least 20 pairs of socks in her child's room. She had just bought her all new socks because her daughter couldn't find any to wear.

Left side of the room Before

Left side of the room (and dresser) After

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