Spring Cleaning: How Decluttering Your Custom Floating Shelves Can Help Bring Peace to Your Home
Tips for Styling Wood Shelves to Show Off Collections, Photos, and More
It’s official: clutter causes stress!
Two studies by major research universities - Princeton and UCLA - showed that cluttered homes can affect your health.
- A cluttered home decreases your ability to focus, which causes frustration and stress.
- Women with cluttered homes have higher levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, and were less likely to feel happy.
Conversely, Yale School of Medicine found that discarding belongings increased activity in the areas of our brains in charge of conflict and pain.
It’s a dichotomy we must contend with: how can we declutter our homes and our beautiful floating wall shelves to decrease stress, without having to deal with feeling upset about tossing or donating some of our possessions? Try these tactics!
Don’t Buy More
Your debit card is on lock-down! Put a stop to collecting more clutter by trying a month without spending. Then, work toward a string of months without spending.
Of course, you can still buy groceries and other necessities - but skip out on dropping cash on additional home decor pieces.
If you’re the kind of decorator that falls in love with a single decor piece, only to later find it doesn’t “go” with your style, this tactic will be very helpful for you. It lets you eliminate that buyer’s remorse you feel after bringing home a new vase.
Be Thankful for What You Have
Taking a few moments each day to mindfully consider how thankful you are for what you have, especially as you look at the decor, family photos, and collections displayed on the custom floating shelves in your home, can help you stop the urge to add to your belongings.
And if you do end up deciding to give away some of the decor items you don’t need, take the Marie Kondo approach and thank that item for serving you well as you gently place it in your donation box. Gratefulness could overshadow the feelings of conflict and pain the Yale School of Medicine study uncovered.
Invest Time into Styling Your Wood Shelves
If you love decorating and making your home feel cozy, then it makes sense that you’d get something out of styling gorgeous vignettes on your floating wall shelves. By carefully curating your collection on display, you reduce clutter while adding warmth to your space. Try these tips.
- Before you attempt to style your wood shelves, remove everything from them. Then, clean and apply wood polish to your shelving. Clean your decor items, too. Dust and cobwebs aren’t classy.
- Choose one to three pieces you must display, and build your vignette around them.
- Consider blending textures to create visual interest, or keep everything matching for a cohesive, modern look.
- Identify a couple of pieces that don’t look quite right with the rest of them. If they have sentimental value, find alternative places to display them in your home, or carefully wrap them up and store them in an organized way, so you can find them again if you need them.
If your gorgeous bathroom shelves are more about utility than displaying beautiful pieces, you can still style them! Arrange cosmetic bottles by height or color. Ground categories of items by placing them on small trays atop the shelf. Toss anything that’s past its expiration; it’s not good for your skin to keep using it.
Employ Home Organization Methods for Success
If you removed items from your wood shelf vignettes, and you aren’t ready to part with them, you need to find space for them somewhere. If they don’t fit elsewhere in your home, try a functional organization method that also looks tidy.
Purchase a set of matching, clear plastic containers with lids from your local store, and place items you need to stow away inside. Clear containers allow you to see what’s inside, and if each container matches, your storage area, like your garage or basement, will still look neat with them, all lined up on a shelf.
You also can use the highest shelves in your linen or coat closets to store items you don’t want on display. Because they’re likely above your head, they aren’t at eye level for you to take in, so your brain won’t read it as stressful clutter.
Opt for Functional Custom Floating Shelves, Handmade in the USA
When you’re planning out your home decor, the shelving you display it on is important. Mass-produced shelves made of cheap, flimsy material won’t look good or last you very long.
Make an investment in your home, and opt for handmade custom wood shelves or pipe shelves from J Thomas Home. All our custom floating shelves are made by skilled artisans in our Kansas City-area wood shop.
Our latest fabrication techniques don’t even require nails, so the finished product is smooth, and you can focus on the spectacular grain and character of whatever wood species you choose.
Shop directly on our website for wood shelves that complement your home decor, and we’ll ship them straight to your home, where you can quickly and easily install them yourself.
At J Thomas Home, we’re proud of our products, because we want you to be proud of your home.
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