You have decided to sell your home, which means it is time to start packing to reduce your clutter and stage your home. As you prepare to pack those extra items one piece to think about what it is you want from your life, your new home and how you can best use design and your décor to make to achieve your ideal life through your new home.
Too often, our homes get in the way of what we want to do and make it harder for us to be effective and productive. In fact, our homes should be enablers and facilitators that make our achievements easier to obtain. So where does this discrepancy come from? Why do so many of us fail to have harmony between what we want to achieve and the layout of our homes? The answer is simple: too many of us just don’t know what we want; not just from our décor but also from life in general.
I believe that marketing and media in general are largely responsible for this, as we are constantly being shown different ideals and different ways of living as we are shown what they want to sell us as the best way for us to enjoy our own lives. We end up being pulled in a multitude of directions by hundreds of different marketing messages and a hundred different desires. As we consume these messages never feel quite satisfied with anything because we are constantly being told that the next best thing will be the key to our happiness.
We have all heard the quote: “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything!” so how do we create our ideal life and not fall victim to the consumer trap?
Instead of seeing and simply wanting, take time to think about what it is you really want to achieve in life and how you want to get there. If you can do this, then you’ll come away with a life mission statement and you can then go about designing your home which will coordinate with your life ideal. This will help you keep and pack only the things that truly make you happy and help you accomplish your life mission statement. The idea is to know who you are, what’s important to you and how you’re going to serve that goal.
Turning Your Future Home Into a Means to an End
For example, let’s say that after a lot of thought, you realize that the things that really matter to you are your family and your love of music. This makes for a very simple and straightforward future home. You will probably want to create a space where you and your family can spend time together – perhaps a media room where you can all chill out on a big sofa and watch TV or perhaps a big dining room where you can enjoy big meals together. And you might also make a music room. Or just decorate your room with things that speak to your love of music and family.
Now, when making buying decisions or thinking about how to design your room, you should always stop and ask yourself if it will really help you to enjoy those things more, or if it will just get in the way of them. Will it really bring you happiness? Will it make more work for you, so you actually spend less time doing the things you love? Will it distract from what you already have, or diminish from it? With this mentality, you’ll no longer be swayed by “should I keep this or not”. You’ll have your own vision of what your home should be and now nothing should be able to move you away from that.
How to Fight the Urge to Keep It All and Finally Clear the Clutter
Run through these questions while you’re cleaning and packing. Think about how it is going to fit into your lifestyle on a daily basis. Where will it go? How will it fit into your lifestyle? In particular, always make sure that you take some time out to think before you pack it. Chances are, if you have not used it or touched it in over a year, you don’t need it.
The vast majority of purchases are made based on an emotional impulse and this is what can cause us to become impulsive with a basement full of unused “stuff”. If you go away and think logically about what you need and what you don’t, you’ll often find you are a lot smarter with what you keep and what you get rid of.
A List of Things to Do
A powerful weapon is to make a list of things that you want – and having a strong feeling for what you want to get rid of. The Monopoly game without the hotels and ParkPlace? This might sound like something you shouldn’t need… Surely you already know the things you want to do! But the reality is, we just want to pack and get it done.
We simply don’t think we have to move, un-pack it all, THEN throw it out!
Most of us have lots of books on our bookshelf that we have yet to read, games we never finished playing and even films that we haven’t watched! And these days, you can download books for free, play games for free and more. Why are you saving them all?
And yet, when you get a free hour you forget all these things and end up just lying in front of the TV. At least, that’s what I do! Having a list of ideas for your evening’s entertainment can really change this. The next time you’re bored, you can simply check your list for ideas of things to do. The next time you are tempted to buy something new, check the list and realize that you have plenty to be excited about without spending more money or cluttering your home, and your life.
Stay focused and create a home before you move in that helps you achieve your mission!
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