The Interior DIYer
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Spring decluttering round up – my top tips

The past couple of weeks I’ve had an overwhelming urge to [further] cull the clutter and get rid of the unnecessarily extra stuff in our apartment. I’ve decluttered our apartment by various degrees over the years and I feel this last time our home will be at my comfortable minimum [KNOCK ON WOOD]. This past weekend I started on our kitchen and so far I tackled half of it.

Time and time again I’ve used the same tips and tricks to declutter aspects of our apartment, so I thought there was no better time to share a little roundup of my favourite tips … 

THE BASICS – my original spring decluttering blog post from 2014 is the best place to start. I write about my core 5 tips for staying motivated while decluttering and following through with your plans. 

THE BASICS 2.0 – the following year in 2015 I wrote 5 more tips on decluttering to give you an extra boost if you’re feeling overwhelmed, as well as touching on the mental health benefits of decluttering.

THE EARLY BIRD – since writing about it in 2014, I’ve done my 10 minute morning tidy routine every day since. You may prefer to do it at night before you go to sleep [that’s what she said], but either way, 10 minutes of tidying a day will keep you on top of things and in the long run will save you time and energy.
DAY-TO-DAY – my two tips for staying organised on a day-to-day basis and it’s something I strongly think everyone should practice; using an agenda and organising your inbox.
EXTRA READING – I interviewed Sarah Reynolds of Organised Chaos for Image Interiors & Living and we geeked out over so much. You can check out the full article here – Cut the Clutter: six steps to a calmer, cleaner, happier home.

Happy decluttering! 

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Living room lighting plans

I feel that lonely light fixture’s life story should be narrated by ze frank.
The more improvements and updates I make to our rental, the more ideas I get to make slightly more daring changes. Slightly. We don’t own our apartment, but we’ve been living here for 7 years now so I’m getting a bit cheekier about making changes. Changes I will say, that can be undone with a bit of filler and paint. Like hanging our mahogany mirror, painting our bedroom and the spare bedroom [both white], re-caulk the bathroom and do something about the lighting in the living room are a few things on my list. 

Here’s what I’ve had in mind to add to our living room ceiling to make things a bit fancier, while sticking as much as I can to some of my environmental resolutions …

1. I’d love to add a ceiling rose to our sitting room. It’s a big room, so adding a bit of interest might make the ceiling feel less vast. I’ve seen some second hand for fairly cheap, but a) I’m terrified of not installing it properly and a giant piece of plaster moments away from landing on our heads, and b) I don’t know how easily it would be to remove.
2. At the moment the light is positioned in the centre of the room. When we sit at our couch, the light is slightly behind us, therefore anything we’re holding or looking at is in shadow. It’s incredibly annoying. So adding a swag is the most obvious option. I’m hoping to acquire some wire much like our upcycled bedside lamp to keep cost [and waste] down.
3. Should we securely fix a ceiling rose to the ceiling, I’d like to also add a pretty hook for the swag. 
4. I bought a couple IKEA ledare bulbs when I was updating our hallway, and have already added one to our living room. They’re brilliant and light an entire room [unfortunately, IKEA don’t seem to be stocking them anymore. Welp].
5. Said IKEA bulbs are lovely, but there are times when it’s a bit too much. It’s either all or nothing at the moment in our living room. I’d like to hook the light up to a dimmer switch so there can be a happy medium. While I’m at it, I might as well get a pretteh one. I was thinking of getting a G O L D dimmer, but then that would make all our other switches jealous. We’ll see. The jury is still out. I’ve not had much luck finding one second hand, so this may have to be a new buy.

I’m still not sure on whether or not I’ll get an actual light fixture as I get very indecisive about them and more times than not end up returning them. I have bare-bulb syndrome. But having a bare bulb in our living room [like we do in our hallway] isn’t particularly obvious, so I’m fine with it. For now! 
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#MyBlogLife in Stellar magazine

Around this time last month the lovely Genevieve from Stellar asked if they could feature me as part of their #MyBlogLife series. I was excited and pretty humbled that they’d even ask, so I answered all the questions as best as I could, submitted my answers and a few photos. Everything was submitted before the Christmas holidays, so I kinda forgot about the feature [not entirely though – I’m not that bad! I was expecting it would be out next week]. So first thing this morning when I got into work my excited co-worker told me all about spying me in the current issue. Monday morning made! o/
I shared my thoughts on decluttering, hygge, upcycling, DIY and design in general. You can check meowt on the last page of the February issue of Stellar magazine, on shelves in all main news agents now! And thank you again Genevieve for thinking of featuring me x