Post-Holiday Detox for the Home

It’s the beginning of the year, so everyone’s talking about resolutions, goals, objectives, intentions…whatever you choose to call them. I’ve really never been great at New Year’s resolutions. Plus, they’re always the same… be healthier, save more money, have more “me” time…blah, blah, blah. Truth is, I do the best I can with that throughout the year, so why do I need a specific day to tell me when I need to get serious?

However, I understand that sometimes it can be very useful to set a date, a specific starting point to flip over a new leaf, leave our mistakes behind and start fresh … so naturally, what better day to do that than the first day/week/month of the new year? Psycologically, I think there is power in that. So I thought again about my goals. The most important one is healthiness. A quick internet search of something new I could do to better my health in 2013 returned a lot of results on post-holiday detox and cleanses. But the more I read about that, the less of a good idea it seemed. Like new year’s resolutions, I get the point behind a health detox, but most of them seemed just too intense for me. Then a light builb moment. Why not detox my home?! I couldn’t think of a better activity to aknowledge the new year.

I didn’t want this excercise to turn into spring cleaning though. I wanted it to be more about reorganizing and going under the surface to set the foundation straight, so that home life activites could be performed efficiently and easily.  I visualized my action plan as a checklist so you could all use it too if you wish.

image snippet sources: 1, 2, 3, 4(source unknown, please share if you do), 5

I attacked everything behind the scenes, more specifically, my closets, pantry, fridge and cellar. Each area was done on a specific day so it took 5 days.  First, I took everything out of each area for two reasons. One, so I could clean properly and two, so that as I put everything back, I would be forced to make decisions about where things should go or if I even needed them at all. I prepared three bags and labelled them ”give away” for funtional items that I no longer had use for, “discard” for items not worth giving away but that I didn’t need anymore, and “elsewhere” for items that would do better in another location.

The result was extremely gratifying. Not only does my home feel like it is back on track again, but my mind feels clearer too. Funny how that happens, huh? But since I am such a strong believer in how space design affects our mood, I shouldn’t be so surprised.

Here are a few links you may find useful that I referedto for my Post-holiday Detox for the Home:
Domestic CEO

Sarah’s House

i heart organizing

The Domestic Life Stylist

I’m An Organizing Junkie

A Slob Comes Clean

Simple Home Organization

Well friends, hope you liked my home detox plan. Now I feel totally ready for when spring cleaning comes around. This way there will be more focus on the cleaning and less on the organizing.

Any ideas or tricks of your own you’d like to share?

❤  Holly

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