We packed the little artificial tree back into its box on Sunday, picked a few stray plastic needles out of the rug, and when I stood up and looked at the living room I had a strange feeling: it looked smaller without the tree than it had with it. The spot by the window where it stood was empty, but the rest of the room was full of everything December had added. A tin of cookies on the bookshelf. Two new throw pillows. Gift bags folded "to reuse." A stack of cards. A box from Sam's parents that we hadn't fully unpacked.
Our whole apartment is 640 square feet, and the living room is the room we live, work and eat in. When it gets crowded, everything feels crowded. So last weekend we did a reset. Here's how it went, in roughly the order we did it.
Step one: take everything seasonal out at once
I used to put holiday things away a few at a time, which meant the room stayed half-decorated until about February. This year, everything seasonal came off the walls and shelves in one sweep and went into the one bin we keep in the top of the hall closet. If it didn't fit in the bin, it was a sign I'd bought too much, and a couple of things went into a donation bag instead.
Gift bags and tissue paper got a strict limit: whatever fit into a single bag. The rest went to recycling.
Step two: clear every surface, then put back less
This is the part that actually made the room feel bigger. We cleared the coffee table, the bookshelf, the windowsill and the top of the TV console completely. Then we only put back things we'd used or looked at in the past month.
- The coffee table now holds one tray: remote, coaster, a candle. That's it.
- The bookshelf lost about a third of its knick-knacks. Books stayed; little objects went into a drawer to rotate later.
- The windowsill is for plants only. Our north windows are the only source of daylight in the room, and blocking them with clutter made everything darker.
Visual clutter takes up space even when it's small. The room didn't gain a single square foot, but it looks noticeably calmer.
Step three: rethink the furniture for winter
Pull things off the walls a little
It sounds backward, but pushing every piece flat against the wall can make a small room feel like a waiting room. We moved the couch about eight inches forward and floated the armchair at an angle. There's now a clear path from the door to the window that doesn't involve squeezing past the coffee table sideways.
Keep the heaters clear
Our baseboard heaters run along the outside walls under the windows. Anything pushed up against them, like the couch was, blocks the heat and makes the room feel colder and stuffier at the same time. The forward shift helped with this too.
Make my desk disappear at night
I work from home, and my desk lives in the living room corner. A cheap folding screen now goes in front of it at the end of the workday. It's a small thing, but the room stops feeling like an office at 6 p.m.
Step four: light and mirrors
January afternoons are short and our windows face north, so the room is dim by four o'clock. We moved a floor lamp into the spot where the tree was, which turned out to be a good place for light. Our large mirror already hangs on the wall across from the window, on one small nail (the lease allows small nail holes) since the adhesive strips gave up on it last August, and with the clutter gone it bounces the daylight further into the room.
I also switched two bulbs from cool white to a warmer tone. That one didn't make the room feel bigger, but it made it feel much more like somewhere you'd want to stay inside in January, which is half the battle.
What I'm leaving alone
The new throw pillows stayed. One of the gifts, a big knit blanket, stayed on the arm of the couch, where Olive immediately claimed it. And the box from Sam's parents finally got unpacked: a set of nice mugs, which replaced four chipped ones that went into the donation bag. One in, four out. That, more than anything, is my plan for the rest of winter.
