Having helped many people make their house a home and having lived in quite a few houses myself, I’ve learned a thing or two about what makes a home a happy one…… a home that just feels good…… where we love being. After contemplating these ideas for years, I concluded that we unnecessarily overcomplicate things. I’m all about getting down to the heart of the matter so over the years, I came up this simple formula to guide my clients (and myself) in creating a happier home:

Declutter. Organize. Elevate.

Simple right? The good news is that it is! The not-so-good news is that that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It will take some work – especially the first two steps – but the reward is more than worth it. Let me go through each step and show you how I implement them. This is a tough love approach so prepare yourself.

Step 1. Declutter.

This one is self-explanatory. By now I think we can all agree that the less physical (and mental) clutter in your life, the better it will be. This makes complete sense. After all, life is short. You have places to go, people to see, and the less time you spend managing your stuff, the more of it you’ll have for much more enjoyable pursuits. Of course, we can just ignore the physical disorder around us but a chaotic environment weighs us down and drains our mental energy even if we don’t realize it. By the same token, a clutter-free home gives us a sense of peace and calm that does wonders for our well-being.

So the first step is to declutter your house as much as possible. The goal isn’t to become a minimalist (unless you want to be one); rather, the goal is to clear your home of anything you don’t absolutely love or need. Here is my version of the KonMari method:

• Go through your house, room by room and take an inventory of everything.
• By inventory, I mean take each and every item and ask yourself if it’s something you either need or love.
• If your answer is “yes,” it stays. If you have 100 books, albums, shoes, whatever and you love them all, keep them.  Just be honest about whether you really love it or not.
• If your answer is “no,” it either gets donated or thrown away. This will be easy for anything worn out, expired, or just random. The harder things to let go are those “just in case” things, duplicates/multiples, “but I spent $$$$ on it” items, and sentimental pieces. Just keep in mind,  none of this matters. If you don’t need it or love it, it goes out the door. Be ruthless.

The process is really that simple but it could take days, weeks, or maybe even months, depending on how much you have and your attachment to things. (Personally, it took me months.) But I promise you it will be pure euphoria when you’re done. In a twisted way, the harder you have to work, the better you’ll feel at the end of it all! And the very best thing about completing a major purge like this is that going forward, you will think twice about bringing anything else into your house ever again so the chances of your house becoming re-cluttered will be very, very low.

Step 2. Organize.

Let’s start with the obvious. Once you’ve decluttered your home, you will have far less stuff to organize. (Even more motivation to declutter!) Now, there are a million articles, classes, and books out there about how to organize your home and they can be very helpful if you need detailed advice. But again, I’m all about keeping it as simple as possible so here are just three rules of thumb I suggest.

• Every item has a home. This means there is a place for every single item in your house and that is where it is kept when not in use.  This is especially helpful for things that are used daily or most frequently such as on-the-go items like keys, sunglasses, bag/purse, etc.; devices and their chargers; coats and hats, pet gear, toiletries, current mail and papers. (More on that below.)
• Store like with like items. I would bet most of us do this anyway but it’s helpful to keep in mind to avoid ending up with….. the dreaded junk drawer or “misc” boxes. You know the ones!  Just repeat the mantra: “Like with like.”
• Process mail and papers weekly. This is the one category that deserves special attention because it’s the thing that trips up most people. The best way I’ve found to handle this is to take just one minute and throw away or recycle anything you don’t need as soon as it enters your house or as humanly possible thereafter. With anything you need to deal with later such as bills, things you want to look into, notes to yourself, etc., put them in one bin or folder in one spot. Then, set aside one time each week to go through whatever is in that receptacle. For most people, I find that 30 minutes is enough to stay on top of things. If you invest this little bit of time each week, you’ll never have to face those mountains of paper ever again.

Step 3. Elevate.

Okay, now for the fun part. This is where we beautify, take our homes to that next level and create la belle vie!

The idea here is to make the everyday just a little better. Think of necessary objects as an opportunity to introduce a pretty element to a room. Treat everyday meals as occasions to savor something delicious and healthy. Create a lovely atmosphere for your daily activities so they become something to enjoy and not just get through. Here are just some ideas……

• When it comes to buying anything, I have one guiding principle: Less stuff, better stuff. Always buy the best quality you can afford. Gourmet coffees and teas, luxury candles, and natural beauty products are some of my must-haves.
• Create a cozy corner for reading and listening to music. Toss a soft blanket and pretty pillow on a comfy chair, stack books and favorite magazines on a side table, and add a good reading lamp.
• Use a mix of overhead and accent lights throughout your home. Good lighting is so important to how a space feels plus with all of the beautiful fixtures and lamps out there, it is another chance to take the design of a room up a notch.
• Choose original art and crafts to decorate. Original art is all around us at all price points at galleries, local markets, Etsy, Ebay, etc. and there are handmade crafts from around the world readily available everywhere these days at really reasonable prices. So there is no need to fill our homes with mass produced faux art. Support artists and makers and make your home unique and personal at the same time.
• Splurge on making your bed as luxurious as possible. We spend a third of our lives there, after all. From the mattress to the pillows to the linens, go for quality.
• Treat yourself to weekly flowers on the coffee table, nightstands, and/or bathroom vanity. Whether they are simple grocery store flowers or designer bouquets, fresh flowers make everything better.
• Set a pretty table, use the good china, glassware, and napkins frequently, even for a simple meal.
• Pile seasonal fruit in a beautiful ceramic or wooden bowl for an easy decorative touch (and for easy, healthy snacking).
• Opt for hand-milled or natural soaps in a pretty soap dish or glass dispenser. Luxurious hand lotion is nice to have next to it, too.
• Serve your morning coffee or afternoon tea in a pretty set and water in a pretty pitcher.
• Place plants anywhere and everywhere they will thrive to not only beautify a room but to naturally purify the air.
• Don’t overlook wastebaskets. Choose something that you enjoy seeing.
• Same for umbrella stands. Fill them with beautiful umbrellas too while you’re at it.
• Use beautiful, thick stationary and nice pens for notes.

I could go on and on but I think you get the idea. We tend to go all out for special occasions but most of our lives are made up of small, everyday moments so they deserve to be just as, if not more, beautiful and enjoyable.

So there you have it. My three steps to a happier home. I hope this approach will take some of the overwhelm out of home organization and motivate and inspire you on your journey to a happier home. If you have any questions or ideas to share, come chat with me on Twitter or Instagram!

Food, glorious food! Eating well is a huge part of la belle vie and I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about, planning, and seeking out good food. Whether it’s a simple one pot dish at home or a Michelin-starred tasting menu, I live by the credo that it should delicious, healthy, and occasionally decadent. Obviously this is easy enough when eating out but when it comes to cooking for ourselves, it’s a different story.

Historically, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with cooking. Sometimes, I found it to be a fun creative outlet and other times, it just felt like a chore. But I’ve finally reached a point where I don’t dread having to cook. I put on some music or a podcast, pour myself a glass of wine or sparking water with a twist, and enjoy the process of putting a meal together. I found that the key, like with most things in life, was to simplify the whole process. Let me share with you how I did that and how you can too.

The first thing to do is to develop a cooking repertoire of meals that you can make easily and quickly. This may sound intimidating but if you make a list of things you can make readily (it can be as basic as pasta with jarred sauce) I bet you’ll have at least a week’s worth of meals, if not more. Just rotate what you have to start out and if you need additional recipes, strive for a feasible goal like adding one new one every month or season. Having a list like this takes the stress out of figuring out what’s for dinner and that is half the battle! Mine consists of about 18 dishes and I basically rotate those every three weeks or so. They are mostly pastas, grain bowls, and something grilled in the summer.

The other thing to do is to cook freestyle whenever possible. By that I mean cook without a recipe, using basic ingredients that you always have on hand or even better, leftovers. If you’ve never tried freestyling in the kitchen, don’t be scared. It does involve some basic kitchen skills but the more you cook this way, the better you’ll become. To help you get started, here are the six non-recipes I use the most. Give them a whirl and I bet they will spark ideas for your own non-recipes. (I’m pescatarian but I cook almost exclusively vegetarian so these are all vegetarian recipes.)

Pasta with dark, leafy greens

I always have kale, broccoli rabe, spinach, broccolini, etc. in the house and I just sauté it with some garlic and olive oil, then toss in some type of cooked pasta, and top off with grated parmesan. Eggplant works too. Nothing could be easier or more delicious.

Fried grain

With any leftover protein or vegetable, you can always make a fried rice/grain. Sauté chopped garlic in a vegetable oil then add the cooked grain and heat through. Toss in the leftovers (chopped), add soy sauce (about a teaspoon per cup of grain), and drizzle in a little sesame oil at the end. Scramble in an egg or two in the pan with the grain for added protein. Done and done.

Toasts, tartines & open-faced sandwiches

Whatever you call it, the formula is simple: toasted bread, a spread, and a topping. There are endless combinations but my standbys are: avocado with a poached egg; smashed peas with sautéed mushrooms; and ricotta with tomato and basil tossed in olive oil and balsamic.

Clean-out-the-fridge salads and grain bowls

I usually make some version of this before we go away on a trip and we have produce that needs to be used. But it can also be used when you have a lot of random ingredients that you don’t know what to do with. The answer? Throw it all together in a salad with a simple vinaigrette. (I use 1 part red wine vinegar, 3 parts olive oil, 1/2 part dijon, S&P.) You can add cheese, sliced almonds or other chopped nuts, and dried fruit like cranberries or cherries, as well as a grain like quinoa or couscous for more bulk.

Roasted vegetables over anything

Toss chopped broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, broccoli rabe, or any root vegetable in a little olive oil and S&P and roast in the oven. From there, you can do almost anything with them, including the fried grain and salad mentioned above but my favorite is to serve them with pasta tossed with olive oil and grated parmesan. Again.   For an Asian version, toss them with cold soba noodles and a dressing of 1 part soy sauce, 2 parts mirin (or any vinegar), a drizzle of sesame oil, and minced garlic. Add a pinch of sugar if you prefer things on the sweeter side. This dressing is also good just about any meat, fish, or vegetable and served over rice.

Flatbread pizzas

The easiest non-recipe of all. Pizza dough can be a daunting proposition but flatbread is something we can all pick up on a regular grocery run. Even pita can work in a pinch. As with the toasts, there are endless combinations but my favorite is a white pizza which calls for a drizzle of olive oil, then cheese (mozzarella, pecorino, parmesan, and/or burrata are good choices) and a sprinkling of herbs (oregano, thyme, parsley or herbes de Provence). Bake until the cheese has melted (5-10 minutes). Top with arugula dressed in olive oil and balsamic for a fresh element. For a red version, add tomato sauce as the first layer. You can top them with just about any vegetable or meat as well.

It goes without saying that everything should be seasoned to taste with salt and pepper and a sprinkling of fresh herbs is great on everything.

So my overarching guiding principle when it comes to everyday cooking is that it has to be easy. When I lived in Paris, a couple of girlfriends and I took a cooking class at the Ecole de Cuisine Alain Ducasse. We made these beautiful scallops, with roasted tomatoes, fried basil leaves, some sort of purée I believe and about 10 other components that I can’t remember. To this day, I’ve never made that dish at home.   I may still attempt it one day for a dinner party but for everyday cooking, simplicity is the key! I hope some of these ideas help you simplify everyday cooking and make meal prep less stressful. I’ll share my thoughts about dinner parties, gatherings, and foodie travels in a future post.

Throughout my life, travel has been my greatest teacher, greatest passion, and greatest source of inspiration. It has had a profound effect on my worldview and has shaped me into the person I am today. More than ever I think connecting with other cultures is so important and if we’re fortunate enough to be able to travel to do that, even better. Because others have spoken much more eloquently than I ever could, here is a collection of quotes that, to me, capture why travel matters. Please enjoy……

“We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm, and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.” – Jawaharial Nehru

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – Saint Augustine of Hippo

“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.” – Gustav Flaubert

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.” – Mark Twain

“At its best, travel should challenge our preconceptions and most cherished views, cause us to rethink our assumptions, shake us a bit, make us broader minded and more understanding.” –Arthur Frommer

“Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.” – Seneca

“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” ― Robert Louis Stevenson

“To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.” -Aldous Huxley

“I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” – Mary Anne Radmacher

“Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.” – Anita Desai

“Every one of a hundred thousand cities around the world had its own special sunset and it was worth going there, just once, if only to see the sun go down.” – Ryu Murakami

“To move, to breathe, to fly, to float,
To gain all while you give,
To roam the roads of lands remote,
To travel is to live.” – Hans Christian Andersen

*A note for fellow avid travelers: Beginning January 2020, I will begin posting Travel Notes From the Right Bank  with photos and tips for some of my favorite trips I have taken. If you’d like to be notified a few times a year when new Travel Notes are published as well as other fun bits of news, please join my mailing list. Thank you!

Personal style is complicated. It could easily be dismissed as shallow and inconsequential. And sure, it’s not going to save the world but that doesn’t mean it’s not important.

Above all, it’s one of the key ways we tell the world who we are. Whether intentionally or not, we are communicating something about ourselves through how we look. It’s also a fact that when we look better, we feel better. So knowing our personal style and having confidence in it enhance our overall self-confidence which in turn, impacts how we move through life.

This inevitably leads to the question how do we find our personal style? If you’re just starting down this path, it’s helpful to first soak in as much as inspiration as you can and discern your likes and dislikes. Luckily, we live in an era where there’s no shortage of sources. Then, in order to hone in our true personal style, we have to take it a step further and look inward at who we are, our values, and even our aspirations.*

At this point, I want to note that one potentially troubling aspect of a personal style quest is that it can lead to mindless consumption. For most of us (particularly those of us who love fashion), our styles are always evolving and we want to regularly update our looks. But as we get more clear on our personal style, it becomes more fine tuning rather than big, dramatic changes so it’s not about having an entirely new wardrobe year after year. To help keep myself in check, I developed this shopping strategy over the years and it has really served me well.

1. Invest in key pieces: bags, shoes, jackets, and coats.
2. Add a few updating or trend pieces per season.
3. Comfort is the number one criteria with any item.
4. Everything must be suitable for my height, weight, and shape.
5. Consider when, where, and how often a piece will get worn.
6. Declutter regularly.
7. Support companies that employ sustainable practices as much as possible.

Finally, expressing ourselves through style is a wonderful creative outlet. It can even be a tool to help us better understand ourselves. (This is a fascinating topic I want to explore more in a future post.) So I dare say presenting ourselves to the world in our true, authentic style can be transformative, cathartic, and even illuminating. And that can make la vie that much more belle.

*If you need help or guidance on finding your personal style, updating your closet, packing for a trip, etc., I am available for one-on-one consultations. Please see get in touch for more information.

The arts enrich our lives in immeasurable ways and are a huge part of  la belle vie. And while I regularly attend art exhibits, concerts, and the theater I’m not reading as much as I would like and I know I’m not alone. Wanting to read more is one of the top new year’s resolutions year after year.

As with many goals like this, I think it helps to have a list. Maybe you want to read books by a certain author, on a particular subject matter, or of a particular era, etc. As for me, I have always wanted to read what are considered the most important literary works of all time for no other reason than I feel like there are gaps in my literary knowledge and I want to fill them. So after looking for the most definitive list, I chose this one from The Greatest Books as it seems to have been compiled using the most diverse lists from around the world and more sources than other lists. There are actually 2,560 books on the list(!) but these are the top 100. I would say I’ve read about half of this list in the past but if it’s been more than 10 years, I’m going to treat them as unread.

I have no idea how long this is going to take but my goal is to read one book from this list per month which means this list will take about 8 years to finish!  I’m trying to be realistic about the pace since I will still be reading current books at the same time. So, who would like to join me in this challenge?  If you’re game, come find me at Day Zero Project where we can track our progress together. Or, if you just want to check in on how I’m doing, I will strike through the titles here as I finish them.

1 In Search of Lost Time – Marcel Proust
2 Ulysses – James Joyce
3 Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
4 The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
5 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
6 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
7 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
8 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
9 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
10 The Odyssey – Homer
11 The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
12 The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
13 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
14 The Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger
15 The Divine Comedy – Dante Alighieri
16 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
17 Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
18 Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
19 To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
20 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
21 The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
22 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
23 The Iliad – Homer
24 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
25 Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
26 1984 – George Orwell
27 Middlemarch – George Eliot
28 Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
29 Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
30 The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
31 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
32 Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
33 The Trial – Franz Kafka
34 One Thousand and One Nights
35 The Red and the Black – Stendhal
36 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
37 Beloved – Toni Morrison
38 Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
39 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
40 The Stories of Anton Chekhov – Anton Chekhov
41 The Stranger – Albert Camus
42 The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
43 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
44 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
45 Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
46 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
47 Candide – Voltaire
48 The Aeneid – Virgil
49 Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman
50 Collected Fiction – Jorge Luis Borges
51 The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka – Franz Kafka
52 Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
53 The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
54 The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
55 The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
56 A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
57 Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
58 The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
59 As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner
60 The Lord of the Rings – J. R. R. Tolkien
61 Emma – Jane Austen
62 Oedipus the King –  Sophocles
63 The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
64 Dead Souls – Nikolai Gogol
65 Animal Farm – George Orwell
66 The Canterbury Tales – Geoffrey Chaucer
67 The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe – Edgar Allan Poe
68 For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
69 Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
70 Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
71 The Castle – Franz Kafka
72 A Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
73 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
74 Gargantua and Pantagruel – Francois Rabelais
75 Journey to the End of The Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
76 A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
77 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
78 The Possessed – Fyodor Dostoevsky
79 The Waste Land – T. S. Eliot
80 Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
81 Paradise Lost – John Milton
82 Antigone – Sophocles
83 On the Road – Jack Kerouac
84 The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
85 The Flowers of Evil – Charles Baudelaire
86 Slaughterhouse-Five – Kurt Vonnegut
87 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
88 The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka
89 Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
90 Faust – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
91 Frankenstein – Mary Shelley
92 The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
93 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
94 Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
95 Oresteia – Aeschylus
96 Father Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
97 The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
98 Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence
99 Tess of the d’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
100 The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov

P.S.  You’re also kindly invited to join me in the companion 200 Films Challenge!

How many times do we find ourselves saying we can’t believe it’s almost the end of a year or a season or some other marker of time? My mother says as you get older, the years seem to go by faster and faster and now that I’m a woman of a certain age (ahem) I have to agree. And the years are made up primarily of small moments; monumental events are few and far in between. So while milestone birthdays, weddings, births, graduations, and such deserve special attention, the everyday should also be celebrated in small ways. The main way I do that is by observing the seasons. Here are some ideas for little things to indulge in and do each season to mark every day as occasions. This is at the heart of living la belle vie.

FALL

leaf viewing

new arts and culture season

apple everything: cider, butter, sauce, and of course pie/galette/tart/crumble/crisp  (visit an orchard to pick your own if you’re into that sort of thing )

a walk in the woods or a national park

homemade soups

crackling fire in the fireplace

warm baths

new fall fashions

pies baked from scratch

harvest festivals

a hot cup of chai or herbal tea in the afternoon

movie nights with all the snacks

WINTER

holiday lights, trees, and other displays

real hot chocolate

tree shopping at a Christmas tree farm

sledding

roasted chestnuts

a Feu de Bois candle (or your favorite wintry scent)

hot cider or mulled wine by a fire

a cookie baking party

heavy knit blankets on beds and sofas

a splash of eggnog in your morning coffee

Christmas music and movies

hosting a holiday or new year’s eve dinner party

SPRING

bouquets of tulips, peonies, and ranunculus,

long walks through your neighborhood or city

cherry blossom trees in bloom

gardening

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons

farmers’ markets

wild flowers

new season of paperbacks

hosting a spring brunch

cooking with fresh asparagus, peas, and ramps

porch sitting and listening to the rain

spring cleaning*

SUMMER

al fresco meals

road trips

ice cream cones

swimming/rafting/tubing/boating/snorkeling

a fresh citrus scented candle

s’mores over a bonfire

outdoor concerts

aperol spritzes at sunset

picnics

star gazing

barbecues

beach reads

This list goes hand in hand with my suggestions for elevating your home into one you love. If you missed it, check out that post for more ideas.

*Turn on some music, throw open the windows, and celebrate your clean house after the fact.  If you need some help, here is my Super simplified Seasonal Cleaning Checklist.

Hello, friends! Welcome to FROM THE RIGHT BANK 2.0!

I wanted to share this quote because it is the perfect encapsulation of la belle vie and it’s my mission to help you live it. I hope the new site gives you plenty of food for thought and ideas for a life well-lived and well-traveled, all with style.

[Art: Tea in the Garden, Henri Matisse, 1919]

Okay, now for the fun part of my three steps to a home you love. This is where we beautify, take our homes to that next level and create la belle vie! If you missed parts 1 or 2, I highly recommend taking those steps first. They are: Declutter and Organize.

Step 3. Elevate.

The idea here is to make the everyday just a little better. Think of necessary objects as an opportunity to introduce a pretty element to a room. Treat everyday meals as occasions to savor something delicious and healthy. Create a lovely atmosphere for your daily activities so they become something to enjoy and not just get through. Here are just some ideas……

• When it comes to buying anything, I have one guiding principle: Less stuff, better stuff. Always buy the best quality you can afford. Gourmet coffees and teas, luxury candles, and natural beauty products are some of my must-haves.
• Create a cozy corner for reading and listening to music. Toss a soft blanket and pretty pillow on a comfy chair, stack books and favorite magazines on a side table, and add a good reading lamp.
• Use a mix of overhead and accent lights throughout your home. Good lighting is so important to how a space feels plus with all of the beautiful fixtures and lamps out there, it is another chance to take the design of a room up a notch.
• Choose original art and crafts to decorate. Original art is all around us at all price points at galleries, local markets, Etsy, Ebay, etc. and there are handmade crafts from around the world readily available everywhere these days at really reasonable prices. So there is no need to fill our homes with mass produced faux art. Support artists and makers and make your home unique and personal at the same time.
• Splurge on making your bed as luxurious as possible. We spend a third of our lives there, after all. From the mattress to the pillows to the linens, go for quality.
• Treat yourself to weekly flowers on the coffee table, nightstands, and/or bathroom vanity. Whether they are simple grocery store flowers or designer bouquets, fresh flowers make everything better.
• Set a pretty table, use the good china, glassware, and napkins frequently, even for a simple meal.
• Pile seasonal fruit in a beautiful ceramic or wooden bowl for an easy decorative touch (and for easy, healthy snacking).
• Opt for hand-milled or natural soaps in a pretty soap dish or glass dispenser. Luxurious hand lotion is nice to have next to it, too.
• Serve your morning coffee or afternoon tea in a pretty set and water in a pretty pitcher.
• Place plants anywhere and everywhere they will thrive to not only beautify a room but to naturally purify the air.
• Don’t overlook wastebaskets. Choose something that you enjoy seeing.
• Same for umbrella stands. Fill them with beautiful umbrellas too while you’re at it.
• Use beautiful, thick stationary and nice pens for notes.

I could go on and on but I think you get the idea. We tend to go all out for special occasions but most of our lives are made up of small, everyday moments so they deserve to be just as, if not more, beautiful and enjoyable.

So there you have it. My three steps to a happier home. I hope this approach will take some of the overwhelm out of home organization and motivate and inspire you on your journey to a happier home. If you have any questions or ideas to share, come chat with me on Twitter or Instagram!

This is part 2 of my Three Steps to a Home You Love. If you missed part 1, I recommend reading that first. You can find it here.

Step 2. Organize.

Let’s start with the obvious. Once you’ve decluttered your home, you will have far less stuff to organize. (Even more motivation to declutter!) Now, there are a million articles, classes, and books out there about how to organize your home and they can be very helpful if you need detailed advice. But again, I’m all about keeping it as simple as possible so here are just three rules of thumb I suggest.

• Every item has a home. This means there is a place for every single item in your house and that is where it is kept when not in use.  This is especially helpful for things that are used daily or most frequently such as on-the-go items like keys, sunglasses, bag/purse, etc.; devices and their chargers; coats and hats, pet gear, toiletries, current mail and papers. (More on that below.)
• Store like with like items. I would bet most of us do this anyway but it’s helpful to keep in mind to avoid ending up with….. the dreaded junk drawer or “misc” boxes. You know the ones!  Just repeat the mantra: “Like with like.”
• Process mail and papers weekly. This is the one category that deserves special attention because it’s the thing that trips up most people. The best way I’ve found to handle this is to take just one minute and throw away or recycle anything you don’t need as soon as it enters your house or as humanly possible thereafter. With anything you need to deal with later such as bills, things you want to look into, notes to yourself, etc., put them in one bin or folder in one spot. Then, set aside one time each week to go through whatever is in that receptacle. For most people, I find that 30 minutes is enough to stay on top of things. If you invest this little bit of time each week, you’ll never have to face those mountains of paper ever again.

Next up is third and final step: Elevate.