Live in Sleek Luxury by Creating a Carefully Edited Space

1.???????Build a carefully edited collection of furniture and accessories over time – Think about your home like a stylish wardrobe that you have to assemble over time. You’ll have clothes for each season and for every occasion (formal, casual, business, sport, etc.). And then once you’ve put that wardrobe together, you simply have to take care of it to last you a lifetime. To have a high quality home, ask a design pro to help you come up with a furniture and accessories plan so that you can carefully build up your home to accumulate beautiful and functional objects that you can keep for the rest of your life. There will be several rooms to be furnished and lots of empty walls, corners and table surfaces that will have to be filled with interesting pieces of art, sculpture and various decorative objects. Rather than buying stuff at random and not being certain whether it will work, it makes more sense to have someone with an experienced eye create an overall visual plan (using ‘mood’ boards) that will guide you on what to buy, whether you have the funds to buy everything in one go, or whether your entire purchase will have to be staggered over a year or longer.

2.???????Make sure something goes out when something new comes in to live sustainably and with quality - I know a guy who likes to go almost every weekend to yard sales. Invariably, he tends to fall in love with something and buys it. Unfortunately, he doesn’t resell any of his ‘finds’. Rather, he keeps on accumulating things that he and his wife have been forced to rent a two-bedroom apartment instead of a one-bedroom space just to accommodate his expensive retail addiction. Unfortunately, his purchases are far from being the treasures that he imagines them to be and are really just random tchotchkes that he finds interesting and refuses to let go of. Avoid being a hoarder like this person, and buying things just because you found them to be irresistibly cute or seemed like a bargain. Stick to that visual plan that your interior designer helped you to come up with and once you’ve ticked off each and every box and filled every room, wall, table surface and corner, then consider yourself done. Don’t keep on buying just for the sake of buying. If something new comes in after you’re completed your visual plan or map, something has to go (i.e., either be given away or sold). That’s how to live with quality and not simply quantity.

3.???????Make sure to touch things only once and not postpone decisions on where to put things – Being a creative person, I tend to have two opposing forces constantly at war with one another: (1) There's the project management side of me that loves order, and (2) the 'maker' side of me that likes to create things but in a messy fashion. The organized side of me gets easily agitated by the disorder that 'creative me' is capable of producing almost every single of minute of the day. To rein in that clutter-manufacturing side of my brain, I’ve developed a simple system wherein I handle every little object only once and make a decision on it immediately. If I don’t do that, said object will sit on a surface like a floor, tabletop, or a piece of furniture. I’ve also taught myself to detest anything that is out of place, be it a piece of mail, a used drinking glass, an empty laptop bag, a magazine, etc. All of these have to be immediately set aside to their proper place. Otherwise, I will just lay them down and forget that they’re there. You know how you can sometimes become blind to your own mess? I used to be that way once until someone who is more organized comes over and points out the clutter and piles that I’ve learned to no longer ‘see’. Instead I’ve developed the habit of handling things once and putting them away when I'm done with them. The result? My whole place is always neat and organized every minute of the day.

4.???????Do a daily surface (i.e. office desk, nightstand and floor) clearing at the end of each work day – Remember that day when you or a friend of yours recently redecorated or decided to sell their home? An interior designer may have come in do some changes to ensure that the space would look attractive. Do you recall how beautiful the space looked and how the living room resembled a receiving area in a nice boutique hotel and how each room looked they were a guest suite at an exclusive resort after it had been staged? Here’s a radical thought: your home can look like that every single day of the year whether or not you’re living alone (or with someone else), have kids, or own a pet. All you have to do is to develop a system for keeping your place ready for the spotlight. Pretend like you’re having someone important (like a potential home buyer) who is coming over that you would like to impress with how well your home is decorated and kept clean and clutter-free. And then keep that in mind throughout the day. Whenever you’re done with something, don’t let that item sit on a piece of furniture, table surface or kitchen countertop to be dealt with later. Deal with it now because that special person will be coming and you’d like to present your home as nicely as possible like the space pictured below. Except that person you’re trying to impress is you. Once people in your home realize how serious you are about keeping your place neat and tidy 24/7, they will pick up the same habits since you’re leading by example, and of course that habit for neatness will have become part of your own house rules as well.

5.???????Do more with less – If you gather a dozen pictures of professionally decorated homes, you’ll find a few clues as to what makes all these places so breathtakingly beautiful. Not only are the furniture, lighting and accessories carefully selected, there’s usually not a lot of stuff laying around. Even if you were to do a maximalist or eclectic space that are a riot of colour (or pattern), it’s never about buying a lot of things and then trying to cram them all into a single space. It’s really about following a visual map or plan – usually planned out in advance with the aid of a professional, be it an art consultant, decorator, or interior designer – and then filing in the missing pieces until everything is complete. And then not going beyond that once the puzzle has been finished. It can potentially become a problem when you’re out and about during weekends or traveling abroad and then you see something you think you absolutely must have. Keep in mind that nothing is an ‘absolute must have’. If you’ve finished decorating your house, that means you’re done. If you’ve come up with something like the space below that already has quality furniture, art, and accessories, it’s time to stop and avoid the temptation of to keep ‘changing things around to keep things interesting’ or simply 'adding things to your collection'. Living well is really about paring things down to the bare minimum so that you are left with what is necessary and beautiful and then being able to enjoy what you already own. I mean… if you had a space as attractive as the one pictured below, why would you ruin it by adding more superfluous knickknacks?