Home decorating: Tips for Reducing clutter

When you look around the rooms of your home, do you find that every surface is covered with decorative accents? Are walls dotted with artwork? Are your collectibles displayed improperly? If you don't appreciate the cluttered look, it's time to bring new freshness into your decor. You can use your favorite items to make your rooms appealing. Just follow these simple steps to avoid a cluttered decor.

Step 1. If you have so many decorative items that you don't know how to display them all, don't. Whether you've indulged at too many craft fairs, collected too many irresistibles, or inherited fine heirlooms, you need to decide which items should be displayed, when, and where. To make your decision, remove every non-functioning item from every surface of your rooms. If you have items in boxes, take them out for this review. Put every item on a large table or floor space where you can see it.

Step 2. Throw out, give away or recycle any item you don't like. You are not obligated to hang pictures received as gifts, or to keep dried flower arrangements when they're covered in dust. You may detest an heirloom figurine that could be sold profitably.

Step 3. Look for similarities between items. Ask yourself how items relate to each other. By theme? Material or texture? Color? Purpose? Formal or casual style? You will begin to see groups of items you didn't realize you had. Perhaps you've got an abundance of pottery or a series of little boxes.

You may think that none of your items fit into categories. Even if you've got a heavy pottery vase, fine glass candlesticks, a dried apple wreath, and an antique toy, you've got the beginnings of seasonal categories. For example, the wreath and the pottery vase can come out in autumn or be displayed in a casual styled room. The glass candlesticks, topped with pastel candles, will be cheery in spring or may be just the touch for the formal dining room. And the antique toy can be incorporated into a tablescape at holiday season.

Step 4. Once you've developed categories of items you love, decide on a time to display them. Unless you have a very large home, you cannot display everything without creating a cluttered look. The easiest way to pare down furnishings is to take your cue from the seasons. Put everything that is not in season into storage.

For example, summer heat and bright sun call for light and airy decorating. Clear glass and simple accents in cool colors work best; items such as extra throw pillows and heavy table linens can be stowed away in favor of cool, bare surfaces. When autumn chill rolls in, look to falling leaves for inspiration. This season is a time for warmer colors and natural textures to make their way out of the closet. Incorporate pottery, dried wreaths, table linens and even attractive books back into the scene to help warm up your home.

Winter brings holiday decorating challenges that are rich in both religious and ethnic traditions. Exchange hanging pictures for tapestries and wreaths-don't just hang holiday decorations in addition to what's already there. If you're putting a Christmas tree before a wall that has a picture display, take down the pictures so the tree can be fully appreciated (and the room doesn't appear cluttered). The cold months call for lots of candles arranged in groups, deep colors, quilts, antique toys and anything that brings a sense of spirit and pleasure to your family. Spring ushers in bursts of soft color-floral throw pillows, lighter table linens, pastel painted figurines, and so on. Heavy furnishings from the cool months can be stored in favor of lightening up.

Step 5. As you rotate furnishings in and out of storage, decide where you're going to put them. The easiest way to choose rooms is to match the style of an item with the feeling you want to evoke in a room. Formal accents such as fine china and figurines usually work well in formal dining rooms, living rooms and even bedrooms. Handcrafted or more natural items usually blend easily in family rooms and kitchens. But these are just guidelines-experiment with them to see what works in your home.

Arrange items on shelves or table tops, and be sure they have differing heights. To avoid a cluttered table surface, limit the number of items to three to five. For example, a lamp table might include a lamp, a small framed photograph, and a vase of flowers for a total of three items.

Step 6. Always display a collection as a unit. No matter what item you collect (books, figurines, bird houses, antique models), they will always be more impressive and appear less like clutter when displayed as a group rather than spread throughout your home. For example, suppose you collect items made of blue glass. If you place all your blue glass items on a shelf, in a china cabinet, or even a console table, then the human eye will view these items as one whole. It will appreciate the various shapes of the blue glass, but it will view the group as one element. If you put a blue glass vase in your living room, a blue glass plate in your kitchen, blue glass candlesticks in your dining room, and a blue glass bowl in the guest bathroom, then the impact of your collection is never realized. In fact, everywhere the eye looks it sees another piece of blue glass, and this effect translates to clutter.

Step 7. Hang small and medium-sized pictures, framed photographs and mirrors in groups. You should have already identified similarities in framed works of art: similar themes, similar frames, or similar feelings they evoke make the foundation for a good grouping. But even the fact that you like a series of dissimilar works can be enough to carry the technique with success. When you move your artwork into groups instead of spacing them around your walls, you create "white space" that gives the human eye a chance to rest as it regards a room. As with collections, if the eye sees a separate item everywhere it falls, the effect can be overwhelming or cluttered. Use floor space to perfect a picture grouping before committing it to a wall. The easiest groupings to create are those that fit in an overall square or rectangular area. You can also hang a series of pictures effecting leading up a stairway or down a hall.

Step 8. Don't forget the refrigerator. Is it plastered with your child's artwork? You can encourage your youngster's budding creativity by giving it a legitimate, but neat, showcase instead. Purchase an inexpensive 8 1/2" x 11" plastic frame from a discount department store. They are available in standup form for tabletops or with magnetic strips for display on surfaces such as refrigerators or filing cabinets. Slip the week's favorite drawing in the frame, then exchange it with the next favorite creation. Preserve previously displayed artwork in a scrapbook, which could range in size from that of a photo album to those of artist portfolios. Scrapbooks can even be used as coffee table books, so your child feels encouraged, yet the artwork isn't displayed messily.