Holiday Decorating Secrets

I will go ahead and admit that I don't have any groundbreaking, earth-moving secrets to divulge here. However, I have picked up a few new strategies over the years, and one in particular this year as I was "staging" our apartment for the Walk-Through video. 


Staging? I STAGED our apartment? As in, the same thing they do to houses when they're getting ready to be sold? Stuffing things in closets, hiding everything in storage units?


Reality check my friends, and the great secret to all Home Decor magazines. Most houses are NEVER clean all at the same time. They get close, but when being prepped for the camera, I can guarantee you that there are massive piles of crap in the bedrooms not in view. 


Exhibit A: See how clean our house was?? (Crowded, yes, because I'm a clutter-bug and because we live in a tinnny apartment. But clean nonetheless.)


Exhibit B: The disaster zone, while I was filming the majority of the apartment.

Our hallway, during video-taping.

It pains me a bit to share this dark secret with you, but we're friends right? And truth needs to be told.


Everyone has miscellaneous stuff that accumulates in corners, on the floor, and little annoying piles here and there. And ours has been OUT of control lately (as you can probably see). 


So my theory was...just walk through, gather it ALL, and deposit it somewhere else, to be dealt with later.


And what I learned was that I particularly enjoyed this method of search-and-destroy cleaning. Since all the random, homeless objects that had been accumulating around had been gathered in one location, it made it a lot easier to find each object a home afterwards. In fact, it probably didn't take me more than 20 minutes to put all that stuff away. 


Because if you're anything like me, you wander around the house with the intent of gathering all the miscellaneous junk, but instead get side-tracked by about twelve different projects, each with good intentions. 


Since all my junk was piled in the main entryway of our home, and Scott and his best friend were headed home in about an hour, I was forced to deal with it. All of it. 


And I was able to, without distraction. And miraculously, most of it found a home, which means our apartment WAS STILL CLEAN afterwards. I should probably emphasize miracle here. Some of it did pile up by my desk again, since it's the Christmas season and if I put certain things away, I'd forget I even bought them or had a crafty plan for them. 


I'm fairly certain that this cleaning strategy should be featured in major magazines, but it probably hasn't since no one is brave enough to show the world their junk.


So. Decorating Secret #1: Your house will look 10x more festive if the little things are put away, and it's CLEAN. Clean not meaning dust. Clean meaning the clutter has been removed.

I don't have any intention of giving all my secrets away in one entry. So stay tuned. Laugh a little longer at my huge hallway mess, then get yourself a large glass of wine and tackle your own mess in the same fashion. It will make a world of difference!