I have been reading many posts about decluttering. I am taking in all the information. Because I really need to declutter. As some of you know, we are moving across country in about 8 months. I want to get rid of as much as I can. Here is my dilema. We will be moving into a rental place. Thus no painting and such. I don't want it to feel like an apartment; I want it to feel like a home. On the other hand, I do not want to have all the clutter to dust around. We are living in a rental right now, and it feels like I live in an apartment. I have been slowly but surely buying decorations to make it feel like a home. Our house prior to this one was the same way. Another part of the dilema is I like change. I am one of these people that likes to rearrange a room and the decor to make it feel new again. I have thought about having two different decoration sets for each room, and changing it out every few months. But that requires even more money, and storage space. Can you help me?

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My personal definition of decoration as opposed to clutter is that decoration makes you smile when you look at it, and clutter makes you cringe. If you truly feel that the "stuff" you are talking about makes your house feel like a home, then it is not clutter. Yes, you have to store it and move it, but if you are enjoying it then you should try to make the room for it.

I have quite a bit of "decoration", but I have cut down in the past few years by getting rid of the things I just don't love. I used to keep things because they were gifts and I felt guilty getting rid of them, or just because it was something I had always displayed in the fall, etc - by getting rid of the things I didn't really care about I made more room to display and store the things I did care about. When we moved I got rid of a lot of stuff after our move that just didn't fit into our new home. My husband laughed about moving the stuff just to get rid of it two months later, but he understood that I just didn't know how it would fit in until we actually lived here (it helped that donated about 4 van loads of stuff before the move plus the 16 bags of trash the week before we put our house on the market).

I like decorating too. What I've found is that I kept storing decorative items like candle holders, picture frames, etc. and then would never use them again (even though I thought I would). Now I'm going to try and go through all of it and just donate what I haven't used lately. It's kind of like clothing - styles in home decor come in and out of fashion and what you typically haven't used lately you probably won't ever again. I figure I can always replace that stuff if I really want it back.

I also have found that I don't buy as much knick-knacky stuff as I used to. Instead, I invest in bigger pieces that are more timeless.

Good luck!

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I don't have a decorating gene in my body. At best I see blank wall space as 'Hmm, how can I turn that into organizing space?'. I prefer function first, then plain after...

My daughters room drives me NUTS with her stuffed animal hammock, 4 framed Beauty & the Beast lithographs, 2 Disney Princess posters and various other unconventional wall hangings... She even has the wand from her Cinderella costume as a wall hanging! But she likes it and I don't have to spend time in there so I bite my tongue. She's definitely got all the decorating genes that skipped me.

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