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April 8, 2015

Spring Cleaning {or Life-Changing Magic} in 5 Steps

After an absolutely wonderful long weekend away celebrating Easter with my husband and parents in Italy, we’re back to our day-to-day lives and spring to do list. This involves shaking off the winter with a bit of reorganization and decluttering some of the extras that have built up over the past few months.

MP Magic of Tidying Up

Have you heard of Marie Kondo? She’s a cleaning expert in Tokyo {seriously!} and has inspired me with her method explained in her book The Life-Changing Method of Tidying Up. She suggests focusing on what to keep {instead of looking for things to discard} and picking up each item you are considering saying “does it spark joy?” What a great concept — and how many things do we all have that just detract from our happiness? That shirt we stopped wearing three years ago or the old plastic tailgate cups that just take up space {and should have been left in college!}. Those are elements that don’t spark joy for me anymore. Here are the tips I’ve adopted:

1. Group like items together {instead of going room by room}. You may find you have multiples of the same item, and you can choose what inspires you most out of that group. Plus, who needs eight spatulas?

2. Pick up each item and ask “does this spark joy?” If the answer is no — it goes. Set the items together that you’re keeping to be organized once you’re done sorting.

3. I’m a work in progress on #2 and getting better. But — there are still times I’ve been unsure. If I am, I put it in a duffel bag under our bed. I set a calendar alert a year from now {truly!} and if I haven’t thought about the contents in a year, I donate the items. It sounds extreme to wait that long, but I’ve found it’s worked for me {and sometimes something I thought I was ready to part with, I really did enjoy wearing seasonally}.

4. Place all your papers, including cards, photos, receipts, etc. on your kitchen table. These items take up so much space in drawers {so guilty here}. File the papers you need like your tax forms, keep any receipts from the past month to check your credit card statement, and toss the rest. Leave cards and sentimental letters till last, as they’re the hardest. Appreciate the joy they gave you when they arrived, and then let them go {eek! so hard, but necessary}.

5. Now invest in great storage solutions — shelving system and shoe cubes for your closet, a proper filing box for those important papers you kept, etc. This will keep things in their place and easily accessible for when you need them next.

Most importantly, let things go with gratitude. Appreciate what things were to you, and what they can be for someone else. Next I’m thinking about the capsule wardrobe. I’ve been really inspired lately by ideas of a uniform and brands like Cuyana with their motto of “fewer, better things.”

MP JoyImage 1 / Image 2 

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Posted by Kristen Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Organize Tagged: Organization Tips, Spring Cleaning

March 16, 2015

After Guests Have Gone

I love welcoming guests, and we have had a wonderful time with my husband’s parents in town this past week. It was lively, fun and we made such great memories. I tried my hardest, but teared up as their train left the station for Heathrow this morning.

Once guests go, there are a few tasks to do to get ready for future visitors. I recommend breaking this down into a three day process to move it along, but not feel stressful. {You just hosted, afterall!} It’s helpful to decide what is most important to you, and tackle that first. Here’s my go-to routine:

Day 1: Wash the table linens {tablecloth and napkins}, strip the guest bed, and wipe down the bathroom.

Day 2: Wash the guest sheets and remake the guest bed, dust furniture with a damp cloth, and toss out any wilted vegetables or expired items that you didn’t use {as much as I like to use every little thing, sometimes this just happens — it’s okay!}.

Day 3: Wash the towels, vacuum the carpets, and straighten any miscellaneous items.

By using this process with laundering a different group of items every day, it also makes it easier to complete before and after work if needed. After just 72 hours — ta da! All set for the next guests to visit.

MP Tablescaping

So many beautiful nights spent around the table. Till next time!

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Posted by Kristen Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Guests, Organize Tagged: Cleaning tips, Hosting, Post-guests

February 8, 2015

Beautiful Bookshelves

I’m excited to share our living room bookshelves today. They are one of my favorite areas in the flat — I went gaga over them when we were viewing the place. Gorgeously built-in, painted white and all for our books. When our things arrived (we shipped them across the Atlantic from New York to London, it was an epic site to see the crate coming down the street with all of our belongings), the first boxes I unpacked were our books. I knew the look I wanted to create: colorful, classic and a good glimpse into who we are as individuals and a couple. I wanted them to be aesthetically pleasing, but also approachable for guests to feel comfortable taking down a novel or pulling out a decorating book.

Bookshelves

I started by sorting all the books by color. We had so many red, blue and white books that I wanted to display, so those I started with to find a suitable amount of space. A few of my favorites on our shelves are Martha’s Entertaining, Aerin Lauder’s Beauty at Home, Tory Burch’s In Color (a recent gift!), and Alexa Hampton’s Decorating in Detail. We have quite a few more books than what’s on these shelves, but these are truly for display (though I’m always pulling different ones down to read or reference). Our other books are hidden away underneath in the cupboards, or in other bookshelves around the flat. There’s an entirely different bookshelf dedicated to cookbooks–a necessity.

You shouldn’t be afraid to have the books organized in varying ways. Some of ours are standing traditionally, and others are stacked. It depends on the size, color and how many books we wanted to display. It adds some interest to the eye when you look at the shelf as well.

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I decorated the spaces around the books with a variety of our favorite decorative pieces from a perfect-sized crystal bowl filled with Moët & Chandon corks from parties we’ve hosted since moving here, to red crab bottle openers from a Maryland wedding last spring, to silver seashells from my hometown of Virginia Beach [purchased at Shore Gallery & Design]. It was so much fun to play with where objects fit, and I love to linger around the shelves remembering special moments they represent.

IMG_1901I loved receiving this gift from our wedding — it was so exciting seeing our married monogram, and especially on a Mariposa tray {love this one too}. A lover of all monograms, I just squealed with joy when we opened it. It’s also one of my favorite gifts to give newlyweds! 

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We love both New York (our old home) and London (our new home), so we wanted to display that as well. It’s fun to play around with the symbolism and your guests will ask questions about you from what you display. It’s a true built-in conversation starter.

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I also believe fresh flowers are a necessity and purchase blooms every Saturday (a habit I picked up in New York where two dozen roses were $10 from my corner bodega in the Village). It’s great to have a bit of plant life amongst the books and decor. I use Kate Spade New York’s Gardner Street Rose Bowl to host the whimsy pops of color, and it nestles in nicely.

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The result is a unique, creative area that houses our favorite books and pieces. It’s also a special space for us with momentos we’ve collected, and many of which serve as bookends to keep all of those books in line. I hope you enjoy creating talking points through your bookshelves, too!

Full Bookshelf

 

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Posted by Kristen Leave a Comment
Filed Under: Home Decor, Organize Tagged: Bookshelves, Decorating, Organization

February 6, 2015

Sweetly Structured Kitchen Shelves

Do you ever have that “aghhhh” moment when you look into your kitchen cabinets? No? Just me then? Despite my best attempts at keeping our shelves orderly, inevitably it comes falling down (sometimes literally falling on me) by the end of the week.

It’s also immensely scary when we have guests coming in for the weekend, and are running around organizing at the eleventh hour. It’s best for me — and my sanity — if we keep it as together as possible regularly.

During my last fit of reorganization, I realized that most of our cabinet goods fell into one of a few categories. Plus, living in an apartment means we don’t have a huge kitchen space so we are limited in what we keep. I wanted a clean, natural look so I invested in rectangular wicker baskets that fit our space.

Since the baskets aren’t clear, I made some simple labels with cursive and a navy sharpie. I also found a credit card size self-laminating pouch so the labels kept their luster with all the use they’re sure to get with pulling the baskets down. Using a handheld hole punch, I threaded a thicker ivory ribbon through the holes and around the handle. Ta-da! Easy to read, store and keep clean. Even my husband is relieved.

Organized Shelves 1

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Posted by Kristen Leave a Comment
Filed Under: DIY, Organize

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