Week 13 of the Weekly Organization Challenge

This is week 13 of The Good Wife's Weekly Organization Challenge! This week focused on the living room/family room. This post kicks off our six week living room/family room organization mission. 

For most homes, the living room/family room is the first room that people see when they enter your house. It is the best place to give a strong first impression. There are several organization principles you can employ to help your house appear neat and organized.

 view of the living room from the entry way

The first one is to limit clutter. I know I talk about clutter on here all the time, but it really does give me hives if the house seems messy to me. And I don't like giving that impression to anyone that walks into the house. I make sure to vacuum and pick up the living room daily above all other rooms in case someone stops in. Even 15 minutes of nightly tidying up is helpful.

The second organization principle is to have plenty of seating. We are currently lacking in seating, which most of the time is fine with our little family of 3 but as soon as guests come over, our sofa and one chair seem mighty lacking. In a few years, the plan is to upgrade the living room furniture and move what we currently have into the family room in the basement. The new seating will consist of several single chairs, sofa, love seat and possibly a recliner (I'm still fighting The Good Husband on that). Since most of the furniture we have now, save for the entertainment stand are all hand me downs or college furniture, we are past due for an upgrade.

living room as seen from the dining room

The third organization principle is to create a smooth flow to the room. We currently suck in this department too. The tv is currently on the wall where all of the traffic flows. So if you are on the couch or in the chair, everyone will have to walk past the tv to get to all the other rooms of the house. To create a better flow, I will reorganized the room and move the tv to the wall where the chair is currently. It is also really the only option for the tv since we have to work around the features of the room - the half wall, the fireplace, the patio door, etc. But once we rearrange, the room will have a better flow and be more appealing and practical.

The last big tip and this is controversial, especially if you have young kids, is to keep the kid clutter to a minimum. It is very easy to have their shit take over the room and the last thing I want to do is give everyone the walks in the door the impression we are Toys R Us Lite. When she was smaller, we had ONE basket of toys in the room but as she got older it evolved into this:

A toy area behind the chair. It is out of the way and not the very first thing you see when you walk into the room but it is still cluttered and unnecessary. With The Good Daughter getting her own Big Girl room soon, all of these toys will find there way into her room and we will return to the ONE toy basket after The Good Son is born.

Get ready for next week - the entry way/mud room! 

Organize along with me in The Good Wife's Weekly Organization Challenges