"Are you tired of feeling like your home is always cluttered? At our home organizing company, we help you transform your home, office or any space into an organized and functional space. Ready to get started? Contact us today!"
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Maybe you haven’t had much occasion to think about it but for quite some time the terms interior design and interior decoration were thought to be interchangeable. While interior decor is an important part of the overall design, interior design is the study of the effective use of a space through functional design for the user’s well-being. For instance, a kitchen can seem beautiful to the eye, with elegant wood cabinets and marble counter tops but if the cabinets are too high or there isn’t sufficient storage space, cooking can soon feel like chore because the design isn’t effective and will soon negate the beauty of the materials. Decoration is perhaps the most fun part and what most of us think of when first planning any home improvement project. This is where you can let your creative juices flow in selecting paint colors, materials, textures, etc. It is the decoration that will set the tone or atmosphere for a room, whether you’re looking for cool and elegant or warm and cozy but without effective design and layout it becomes difficult for the space to fulfill its intended purpose and therefore the user may find it more difficult to fully enjoy the space.
Smart technology for your home is one of those topics that divides many homeowners. While it delights the techies amongst us it can intimidate the less tech savvy amongst us to a degree that the issue is avoided altogether. The good news is that there all levels of technology that can be easily adapted and customized to the comfort level of each individual home. On the high end you can network a home to control everything from lighting, window treatments, climate control, door locks and audio/visual equipment, to name a few, from a single app on a phone or tablet. However, if you’re not quite ready to dive into the deep end of the technology pool or aren’t ready to cede that much control over your home, you can always ease into things by converting a single lamp or outlet or even a robotic vacuum for starters. Take Amazon’s Alexa for instance, (officially a digital voice assistant), it can be used to set reminders or timers, play music, listen to the news or even ask for word spellings or internet searches. But in addition to these helpful tasks, it can also be used as a home network hub to control individual electronic items in your home. You can add smart plugs, light bulbs or control your smart tv or even make a “dumb” tv smart through an Amazon Fire tv device, (Roku is another system that performs similarly for your TV). All of these items can be kept and run separately or networked into groups, such as turning on all the lights in a room or playing music throughout the house. You can also set up routines that can turn those lights on and off at certain times or when certain conditions are met. Amazon makes a lot of its own smart devices but it also works with most third party devices and almost all of it can be controlled through voice commands, once the device(s) have been set up. It’s really up to you how much you want to add and control. I used Amazon Alexa as the example for this article but very similar digital assistants are available such as Google’s Hub or the Apple HomePod so it may depend on your personal preference or which company’s environment you are most invested in.
Most of us have dreamed of having a perfectly organized home. You pick up a Container Store catalog or Martha Stewart’s magazine and it seems so easy and perfect. The truth is that for the vast majority of us that’s never really the case, real life gets in the way, kids, projects and of course the perennial lack of time. At times it feels as though it’s an unattainable goal. But there is hope and it doesn’t have to be an insurmountable task, with a bit of planning and properly set expectations you might be surprised at how attainable it is to reach your goal. And we haven’t even discussed the benefits, less time wasted and it will even help with reducing your stress levels. First, setting expectations; let’s be realistic, how many times have we started a project, any project, only to abandon it half way through because it becomes too onerous a task and the satisfaction we seek is no where in sight. This is where the planning and setting of those expectations comes in handy. Of course, we want our whole house organized but if you have messes everywhere it’s going to take more than an afternoon to get through it all; but with a bit of patience you will get there. Start with the area causing you the most stress, whether that be a bedroom, garage, basement, etc. and acknowledge what the issue is, too much clutter, things not easily accessible or things of that ilk. Take a messy bedroom for instance, there might be piles in a corner, things stashed under the bed or disorganized dressers, closets or night stands. Divide all that up into separate tasks and tackle each one separately so as not to cause additional clutter or overwhelm yourself. There are guides online or you can always hire a professional home organizer if your circumstances warrant it. Remember to keep an open mind when deciding what to keep or hopefully get rid of, if you haven’t used it in a year or didn’t remember you had it, do you really need it? The benefits of attaining your goal are more tangible than just feeling better about yourself, which is huge. Studies have proved the increased productivity, time saved and reduced stress that come with being properly organized.