DIY Window Treatments

I thought I would take a break from the organizing and decluttering tips and share some decorating ones.

Curtains, blinds, or shades can make or break a room and be a quick and easy way to changing up the decor and enhance any space. Not only for decor, but they are also crucial for the amount of light you want in the room. For kitchens, you want the room as bright as possible and the opposite it true for the bedroom.

I wanted to share these two videos on how to show easy ways to put up window treatments. I loved the way they came out and hope you do too.

How do you feel about your window treatments? Do you think you will try one of these projects to change up your space? We would love to hear about it, and please share your pictures. We love a good before and after photo:) Happy decorating!

How to Choose Bar Stools for Your Kitchen

Most of the time I am decluttering and organizing with clients but when I get to decorate with them I almost feel like it’s a day off because I love it so much. I was so grateful to work with this client in beautiful Santa Barbara. They had moved in recently and needed help adding a few accessories and pieces of furniture that were missing around the house to make it feel complete.

We started in the kitchen and wanted to add bar stools to her counter height island. We fell in love with these stools from www.furnitureclassics.com. that we saw on-line. Are you looking for some bar stools?

Here are some tips to keep in mind while you’re shopping around.

  1. Measure and measure again, scale is so important and with bar stools you will either need counter height, 24-26” high or bar height 28-30” high.

  2. Make sure the style will work in the space. You can mix styles but make sure they go together.

  3. Try it out…comfort over style? What’s important to you?

Want to see our journey with the bar stools? Check out this video below.

Which one's did you like better? Do you think we went with the best choice? Let us know in the comments, we would love your feedback.

Bar Stool set #1 from www.furnitureclassics.com

Bar Stool set #2 from www.habitathomeandgarden.com

Bar Stool set #3 from www.thebluedoorsb.com

Thanks so much for spending some time with us. See you again soon.

A Move-in Ready Apartment

As a professional organizer I’m usually helping people get rid of stuff but for this client I was buying all their stuff for the two bedroom, two bath apartment that they were moving into. It brought me back to 2014 when I was staging homes in Costa Mesa and we had to purchase everything from living room decor to bathmats.

This project was fun yet challenging because we had a tight budget, we were ordering furniture on-line, and only had one week while I was in LA to put it all together. Normally you would order something on Amazon or Wayfair and it shows up at your doorstep in a couple of days or you run into Target for a few items and be on your way. However, as we all know during Covid, it was delayed deliveries and lines that were an hour long before you even got into the store.

So this made my tight schedule a little more of a challenge. To help the situation I made sure to purchase items with the shortest delivery times and I created a shopping list for each room. From there, I broke down the room lists to each store I would need to go to and get only what was on the list. This helped me stay on track…it’s hard to go into HomeGoods and not get distracted. This also ensured that each room would be complete before I left to go back to New York.

We purchased the couch from Amazon, the bunkbed from Wayfair, the rug at HomeGoods, some accessories from WorldMarket and the bathroom decor at BedBathandBeyond. We also shopped at The Container Store for organizing items, Home Depot for the plant and get the kids bedding at Target.

Comment below if you want to know where something was purchased and it’s not listed above.

How To Re-purpose Your Garage For Outdoor Living Space

While I was working with this client in Los Angeles on other projects around their house (See living room makeover), they happened to mention “Well, eventually we want to build some kind of storage in the garage, do you think you can help us with that?” Um…yes, please! I love drafting out closets.

They were already using the garage as an outdoor movie room but stuff starting piling up and taking over the space. I can see why they wanted to add storage. It could be challenging to build out the perfect custom storage closet for this garage/movie room but as a professional organizer and decorator, this happens to be one of my favorite kinds of projects. Here is an opportunity for me to create a space that is a perfect fit for my client, their stuff, and their home.

I’m going to walk you through the Space to Love® 5 step method on how to achieve the perfect custom closet. Starting with the first step, Setup. I like to have all the supplies needed beforehand. I make sure I have markers, scissors, boxcutters, gloves, donation bags, recycle bin, trash bags, and post-it notes for labeling categories. We set up fold-out tables to make sure we had room to spread out and be ready for Step 2, Sort.

The sorting process is going through everything and separating them into categories. For this project our first category was “kids’ stuff”, which consisted of large and odd-shaped toys, crafts, and painting supplies. The next category was “travel”, which included suitcases, dog carrier, and travel stroller. The remaining categories were pool supplies, outdoor cushions, and tools. Once everything was sorted we were ready for step 3, Select.

Now it was easy for my client to go through each category, one at a time, and assess the items. This gave them a clear idea of what they had so they could make decisions on what they wanted to keep and what they were ready to let go of. If you skip the sorting process it makes the selection part slower, overwhelming, and almost impossible to complete. Once they finished selecting what was no longer working or needed, these items were then donated, trashed, or recycled. Now we were ready to move on to step 4, Sanitize.

For this project, Step 4, Sanitize, was easy because all of the storage was going to be newly custom-built. However, we did clean out all the bins that we were going to keep and stacked them on the temporary metal shelving until the storage unit was complete. We liked the plastic bins that were being used for the kid’s organization. I’m all for keeping what is working and didn’t want to change them out.

Now for the fun part, Step 5, Style. The goal here was to use the entire right wall to build the custom-fitted storage closet. Also, have additional storage on the opposite wall around the fridge and add a countertop.

I can’t tell you how exciting it is for an organizer to get to create a custom space for their clients. I was able to make the cabinets wide enough to fit all their luggage and outdoor cushions. All the tall awkward toys had their own shelves. I really couldn’t have done this alone. They had an amazing carpenter on hand that was ready to put all this together. He was very patient with me as I went over every detail, even some odd ones…spiders are pretty bad in LA so I wanted to make sure that there were no openings on top of the cabinets for an Arachno-Ville to happen. He customized the top panel to accommodate the sloping ceilings and closed them off. It was important that all the shelves were adjustable and could be changed as their needs changed. Storing fold-up tables can be problematic, so being able to create a gap between the fridge and wall just wide enough to fit their tables was very satisfying for me. Overall I love the way this project came out and my client couldn’t be happier with the end results.

Tween to Teen Bedroom Makeover

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.