9 Tips to Simplify Your Home and Life

For my birthday month, I decided to simplify my home, and my life for my next year. I canvased experts and amassed a guide. I thought MY list might help you in YOUR house as well.

1. Project Garage or Junk Room

If I have a “project garage” or a “Junk Room” to clean out, I set aside a long weekend. Every morning I decide on the top three priories “out there” and stick to those ONLY. Research shows that people who tackle the toughest job FIRST in the morning are more productive. I take breaks after completing each of the three main tasks. I pride myself on being a multitasker, but I read in Psychology Today that I might experience a forty percent drop in productivity when multitasking…so I won’t do anything but stick to the task at hand.

2. Home Office

Now that I work in a HOME OFFICE, I file things away every other day. I answer snail-mail and bills at night, and limit email time during the day. The longer I spend on email the more I stress out that I’m not doing what I SHOULD do. For two hours a day in my office I turn OFF my phone ringer.

3. Donation Pile

I keep procrastinating about a pile of stuff to donate. So I plan to take a nice photo of it all and get it DONE. Photos help my clients say goodbye…why not try it myself?

4. Make Space for Plants

I plan to invest in some nice green houseplants. To make space I’ll box up the contents of a display shelf unit with a bunch of objects I don’t need to see in my home office.

5. Re-Framing

I’m going to re-frame some of my art. To do so, I’m going to use pictureframes.com for the easy pieces. I tried this online site with great results.

6. Pillowcases

I hand wash all my decorative pillowcases. I bet you’re saying WAIT, WHAT? My dog loves to lounge on them and I never noticed how CRUMMY they looked before!

7. Make an Inventory

I’ll make a video of myself talking about the top twenty objects in my home and send it to my son.

8. Season Change for Art

For the next year each month I plan to CHANGE one work of art on my walls for one in storage. Heck, the Japanese aesthetic requires a seasonal CHANGE of art. I want to try that for a small change.

9. My Library

Finally, I will build bookshelves in the spare utility room and turn that into MY library, presently in storage, whisked out of my former office back in March of 2020, when we were forced to leave for health reasons. I find I DO miss my books!