It took me some time to realize it and then to admit it, but I think I have a lot of tendencies of an emotional hoarder: I am reluctant to get rid of objects because of the memories or feelings they hold. This has made the already limited space I have to work with even harder to organize properly and include important things into. Just a few days before the new year, I finally resolved to go through these old mementos and get rid of impractical and unnecessary items because I desperately needed the space, which needed a cleaning and update, something to reflect the changes and maturation I had gone through, now that I had saved up enough to purchase a few affordable new pieces.
I believe home décor has the ability to affect our moods, especially as the home is a place we tend to spend most of our downtime outside of educational, professional, and other societal obligations. Because of this, we should decorate it in a way that gives us strength but will also provide comfort. Whenever I would come home from a rough day and be confronted with the clutter of the past, I would get a sense of hopelessness or feel overwhelmed. It wasn’t until recently that I began to plan how I wanted to revitalize and organize the space – and all of the stuff I had accumulated through the years – to combat these negative feelings. I also saw the importance of having space reflect who I am today rather than who I was in the past. The space as it is now is just impractical for the lifestyle I am currently living.
Drawing inspiration from pictures, videos, and television shows, I found my preferred design to include clean lines and simplicity. I think after dealing with clutter for so long, I just became drawn to neutral tones and minimalism and the potential it has to make the space feel large and open, minimizing a packed and crowded feeling. I plan to purchase home décor and decorative pieces that I find aesthetically pleasing, but will also have some type of function, such as doubling as storage so that I can take advantage of as much space as needed.
With a simple color palette and simple pieces, I won’t have to worry about the visual clutter I had become so accustomed to and how it affected and added to the mental clutter I was already dealing with. Neutral décor works with a lot of other designs and is also timeless, meaning I will not have to update my space every so often and even if I were in the mood for an update, it would be fairly easy since the neutral design is easy to incorporate with others. I am still in the process of cleaning the items in my space, some of which have been easier to part with than others, but with this new vision of how I want the space to look, I feel better. It’s like a mental weight has been lifted and now I do not have to use up so much energy worrying and nitpicking over it anymore.