An Autumn Home Audit
How to declutter and style your home, organise your wardrobe and romance your time indoors during the colder months.
LAST UPDATED: 08/10/2021
I don’t know about you, but I’m a little disappointed with summer this year. It felt like it kept starting and stopping – sunny one moment and cold the next – and I definitely didn’t get outside as often as I wanted.
Despite that, I’m welcoming Autumn as it feels like a comfort to me. I love being cosy indoors and a part of me always feels a little relieved that I can put a bit of a halt to that ongoing pressure I put on myself to be outside socialising and “making the most of it”.
I intend to enjoy the extra time at home and I hope you do too. This post explores how to prepare for the new season and make the most of your life and home during these darker months.
Organise your wardrobe for the new season
Follow these tips to help you organise your clothes and accessories:
- Hang the things you wear the most and fold the things you wear the least.
- Keep out only what currently fits you and store away the clothes that don’t.
- Store away your summer clothes and accessories – consider using vacuum storage bags for out of season fabrics.
- From left to right, hang dark to bright and heavy to light (this looks nice, but it also makes it quicker for you to find things, as your brain learns where to expect them).
- Organise your clothes and accessories by category – see one of my recent reels to learn how I’ve organised my clothes.
- Work with your habits. Do you tend to kick your shoes off by the door when you get home? Then why would you try to keep your footwear in your wardrobe? Get yourself a shoe rack by the front door and make your life easier. Consider what habits you’ve got surrounding getting dressed and how you might work with them to make your life easier.
Clear out the old
Spending a few rainy days decluttering, deep cleaning, and organising your home is a great way to realign yourself with your environment at the turn of a new season.
These tips should help you with decluttering your home to make it a calmer, happier place for winter:
- Don’t try to do it all at once, or you’ll end up in a mess. Instead, pick one area, category, zoom or room per day.
- Minimise decision fatigue by decluttering by category. If you’re starting with a messy room, spend some time sorting things first, putting things into piles by type, so that decluttering can begin.
- If you’re stuck deciding on an item, try to use your intuition. Relying solely on our rational side to make decisions can lead to thoughts such as ‘I don’t really need this’ and ‘I should probably keep it in case’, which doesn’t help us decide. Instead, try tuning in to how you feel when decluttering. Hold the item in your hand and ask yourself whether it makes you feel lighter or heavier, joyful or sad, energised or tired, peaceful or stressed, positive or negative? Understanding your emotions should help you gain some clarity.
- Try not to offer things to friends and family unless you know they’ll truly love them, as you’ll be passing the issue of clutter on.
- Decluttering can be an emotional task. You’ll likely be facing some feeling that you’ve been previously suppressing. It’s hard, but we must let these emotions out to move past them. Asking a friend or professional for help can make it easier.
- Spur yourself on by reminding yourself of the many benefits of decluttering.
- When it comes to sentimental items, appreciate the ones you decide to keep by displaying them or storing them in a place you access regularly. You’re doing a disservice to them by hiding them away in your cupboard.
- If space is limited, decide which things need to be in use this season and make sure they’re accessible. Store out of season things away.
- Finally, clean everywhere you can so that you start the new season with fresh energy.
Romance your life at home
Try these tips to help you enjoy your time at home this autumn:
- Add a few autumnal hues and textures to your decor with chunky throws and candles to help you feel cosy.
- Commit to making your bed every day as part of your morning routine and practise gratitude for having somewhere to rest your head at night.
- Spend five minutes every evening switching your home into wind-down mode. Tidy up. Switch from overhead lighting to lamps and create a beautiful, peaceful ambience to help you relax and sleep better.
- Turn your bathroom into a luxury spa. You know the feeling you get when you’re in a lovely hotel bathroom? You deserve that every day. Keep your bathroom decluttered, clean and tidy and add accessories such as a pile of neatly folded towels, flowers and plants, mood lighting, scented candles and perhaps a few luxury products.
- What can you see from your sofa? From your bed? Take the time to appreciate the beauty in your home and live more mindfully.
I hope you’ve gotten something from these tips. I will look into each one in much greater detail as time goes on. Please let me know if you have any ideas you’d like to add or if you’d like to learn a little more about anything I’ve mentioned.