While working here in New York I had the privilege to makeover my friend’s daughter’s room. She turned 13 last year and wanted her room to reflect her more grownup self. They grow up so fast! However, at any age, using the Space to Love® 5 step method: Setup, Sort, Select, Sanitize, Stylize™ is easy to help anyone achieve their goals to create the room they visualized and to stay organized.
We started with step 1, Setup. I made sure we had room to work and spread out. You need space to organize. We agreed on using the bed and the top of the dresser to sort items. If this wasn’t an option I always have a folding table on hand. I also have ready in my organizing kit: garbage bags, post-its, markers, scissors, box cutters, and cleaning supplies. Keep these items ready whenever you are taking on any organizing challenge. Continuing with the setup process we established specific areas of the room where items would be placed. Donations in one area and other areas for what she’s keeping, maybes (what she’s not sure of), recyclables, and trash. These are the common categories to start with and you may come up with other categories in step 2, Sort, so have your post-its and marker ready. We then customized categories that tailored to her specific needs, ie, blankets, memorabilia, family games, and products for her soap-making business. I was thankful they had a newly renovated basement with extra storage for these items because she doesn’t need access to them on a daily basis.
Once we had our Setup in place we moved on to step 2, Sort. When starting this step it is so important to remove or take out all the items from the closets, drawers or bins you are working on. Here we began with her makeup drawers and started sorting like items together. This may seem like a tedious step but it was so much easier for her to make a decision on which lipsticks/glosses to keep when they were separated from her eyeliners and blushes. We also sorted the cosmetics by color. Know that as you break the clutter down from a big pile into smaller ones, it streamlines the decision-making process when like items are grouped together.
Which brings us right into step 3, Select. Now that items were sorted she could make decisions with ease by seeing everything separated. At first, she felt overwhelmed until she started seeing like items grouped together. This made it clear to her that she had many duplicate items. At that point, she knew she only wanted to keep two light pink lip glosses instead of five. As we moved on to other areas she could easily tell me which hair products she wanted to keep and what stuffed animals she wanted to donate. By the time we got to her closet, she was really getting the hang of it by keeping the best and getting rid of the rest. Her old t-shirts didn’t stand a chance.
Before we put anything back we completed step 4, Sanitize. We wiped all surfaces down including the inside of all the drawers. We swept the floor and cleaned inside the closet. The sanitizing process is so important, not only because of the current COVID situation but the idea that you are clearing out the old and negative energy. By sanitizing, you’re not only purifying your space but you’re allowing good things to come into your life. For these reasons it’s important to follow through with sanitizing before moving on to step 5, Stylize.
Step 5, Stylize. This is probably one of my favorite steps. We had so much fun making her ideas come into fruition. She wanted a celestial theme with gold stars and dark blues. We started with paint swatches and simple drawings to figure out the wall layout. Then we moved on to furniture ideas which lead to changing up the floorplan to maximize her space.
For inside the closet we fell in love with the dark blue wallpaper with gold stars. This was peel and stick wallpaper that made it easy for application. That segued into spray painting all the closet shelves and brackets gold.
To keep costs down we purchased the furniture and accessories from Ikea, Homegoods, and Amazon. What also helped with the budget was hanging the wallpaper, painting, and assembling all the furniture ourselves.
Overall I’m thrilled with the way the project came together. More importantly, my friend and her daughter are so happy with their new space.
