Your guests will feel it, but more importantly, so will you. When we tidy up for guests, we reawaken our consciousness of all the little things that we can do to make our home inviting and comfortable, details that often get lost in the chaos of our daily lives. Invite guests a least once a month. 10.
Appreciate the changes, and appreciate yourself for making them. Whether it's a little change or a major renovation, try to focus, not on the chores involved, but on the vision you have and the progress you are making toward it. Approach the design and decoration of your home with joy. 9.
Sit in you personal space at least 10 minutes every day. Make it a place you can use for your most relaxing activities and the best spot you can imagine for just sitting and doing nothing at all. Surround your space in your favorite colors and textures. It can be as simple as a chair in which you can escape with a good book or an entire room. Create a space just for you.
8. Make adjustments in each room as needed so that the experience is always pleasant and inviting, and appropriate for the room and its function. How does it make you feel? What can you touch?
What do you see, hear, smell? Walk through your home room by room and consciously gauge its impact on your senses by isolating various aspects of the experience. 7. Should you have retired that home office when you retired?

Are your college-aged kids really going to miss the playroom? s its formality no longer appropriate for your lifestyle? It may be great to look at, but if it isn't serving any function, you can do better. Rethink the least used room or area in your home.
6. Replace them with light floor cloths or leave the floors bare for a cooling sensation underfoot. Now is the time to send them out for cleaning. Pick up those heavy rugs.
Do what your grandmother did - use lighter slipcovers on upholstery and seasonal accessories such as bowls of fresh summer fruit and vases of fresh flowers. Change or reduce the number of layers in your window treatment to let more of the outside in. Make at least four changes in your home to freshen it up for the spring and summer. 5. Replace large artwork with a grouping that will add motion to the room.
Layer in accessories, some interesting coordinated fabrics in the form of throws and pillows, and some new textures. Try introducing higher contrast or bolder colors. Conversely, pick one room or area in your home that feels bland and the most uninteresting and do three things to elevate the tempo and energize the room. 4. Get those bookcases in shape, with all books flush to the front of the shelves in size order, and create some empty wall and tabletop space where the eye can rest.
Try simplifying the lines in the room and paring down accessories. For example, think about replacing high contrast colors with a monochromatic scheme or toning down the color with a more muted version. Pick the room or area in your home in which you find it hard to relax and do three things to make the room quieter. The room has been repainted a few times over the years, but always with what I call "my happy mistake." 3. As I was awaiting his return visit for a repainting, I discovered that every time I walked into the room it made me smile.
The room which makes me smile in my home is one in which the painter made a mistake and used a color that I never would have chosen for myself. If you are really hesitant, put the color inside a closet door - somewhere where you can see and react to it. Be bold, do something unexpected or something you've always wanted to try. Try at least one new color in your home to break your "color habits".
2. You'll have a much easier time with everything in one spot when you do decide to sort it all out and, in the interim, at least you will know where to find everything you can't find. If you have a designated area, it will contain the clutter and keep you from feeling overwhelmed by it. Trust me, if you have no area for clutter you will spontaneously make one, and another, and another. Give yourself permission to toss anything you don't want to deal with immediately into your clutter area without even thinking about organizing, filing or putting it away later.

Choose a spot that's not visible from the public areas of your home and designate a surface, chest or cabinet of some sort for the paper and other things that usually end up in piles all over your home. I do, however, believe that it's possible to control the impact of clutter in your home - and it's simple. While it's true most people would put getting rid of clutter at the top of their lists, I've been in enough homes to understand that if clutter is part of your lifestyle, it will just keep coming back. Surprised? Designate a space for clutter and resolve to keep it cluttered.
1. So here's my top 10 take on the design resolutions that I believe can make a real difference in your home. It seems only fitting that we should add some design resolutions to our yearly ritual. Your home is a big part of your life and a comfortable, inviting space can really make a difference in how you feel every day. It's that time of the year again, when we resolve to make changes that will improve our lives.