Home organization trends for Spring 2017

Spring is in the air, and new trends for home organization are making their way through homes across the country. Spring symbolizes a chance for many people to renew and refresh their living spaces, so why not take this opportunity to re-organize the way you store the items in your home? Below we’ve compiled a few of the big trends that are projected for Spring 2017:

Custom closet cabinets

A popular new trend in closet storage is all about customizing your options to fit your clothing and lifestyle. Custom racks to store ties and shelves for shoes that fit in the space you have are increasing in popularity. With customization, you can make sure that all of your belongings have a proper home and stored easily. Proper storage and display can help prevent the collection of clutter, because when your items are displayed nicely and in easy access, you can use the items you have and need more often.

Open storage

Rather than hiding away all your items, why not show them off? This concept is especially popular for kitchen cabinets and shelves, allowing you to showcase dishes and appliances. Open storage is also handy for bedroom closets or storage units and garage storage, as it is easy to grab and pick up items as you need them. Even better, knowing that your items are always on display is a great incentive to keep your belongings organized and uncluttered!

Maximizing space

Utilizing the space that you have is always a priority, and it can now be achieved not just through the furniture you buy, but how you designate and layout the rooms in your home. Multipurpose rooms are a new trend this spring, which allow you to get many different purposes out of the rooms in your home. For example, the guest bedroom can also be a library, and office, or a second entertainment room. Instead of specifically designating a space for guests that only visit a few times out of the year, make the room usable for your everyday life as well. These fold-up murphy beds are a great way to easily transform a guest room into an usable daily space, like an office.

Goodbye winter, hello spring!

We can still expect snow in Calgary for the next couple of months, but there is no denying the higher temperatures and the fast approaching spring season. However, the change of a season means re-organizing your wardrobe and swapping out heavier coats and shoes for lighter items.

In Calgary, it’s difficult to determine what pieces to put into storage and what items to bring out, especially because our spring weather is always changing. Many of us have clothing that we can wear year-round, so Calm Order suggests that a good remedy for this situation is to pair-down our clothing and consider looking at capsule wardrobes.

For anyone not familiar with it, a capsule wardrobe is made up of basic pieces of clothing that are easy to mix and match. This means you can make many different outfits of fewer pieces of clothing, which makes transitioning from season to season easier, so you don’t need to worry about having specific clothes for specific seasons.

According to the Vivienne Files, a capsule wardrobe is typically comprised of a black turtleneck, a t-shirt (in gray, white, or black), a button down shirt (white or blue), a black cardigan, a denim shirt, a long-sleeved black shirt, khakis, jeans, and black pants. 

These items sound very neutral and plain, but to add your own creative style or make them more seasonal, they can be accented with colourful accessories that can be tailored for each season, like shoes, scarves, jewelry, and bags.

A capsule wardrobe is not only easier to manage and organize, it also takes up less space in your closet, and is very economical. For people living in Calgary, having a year-round wardrobe that can be mixed and matched for whatever weather we may be facing is the perfect solution. To learn more about capsule wardrobes, go here.

Unpack to organize: The kitchen

The kitchen is one of the most popular rooms to organize, and for good reason: we all spend most of our time there cooking and eating, why wouldn’t we want to be able to find and use the room as easily and efficiently as possible?

To get your kitchen unpacked and organized, Calm Order likes to use the analogy of placing down a border first, then the rocks, and then the pebbles. The border or main items in your kitchen, like every-day used appliances, dishes, glasses, cutlery, pots, and pans, that are used daily should be placed first in locations that are easier to access, in drawers or cupboards that are within easy reaching distance.

After these items come the other items that are used often, but not quite every day, like baking supplies, specialty kitchen tools, and serving dishes. These items can be placed in higher cupboard shelves or lower drawers. Even though these items aren’t used daily, they should still be easy to access and easy to remember where they are located. It’s a good idea to store like items with like. Consider designating one drawer or cupboard shelf for baking supplies, for example, or keep all dishes and serving items together.

The pebbles are the non-essential decorative items like placemats, napkin rings, and other items that don’t need to be kept in a specific place, items that can essentially fit anywhere you have room. However, you want to place these items with some logic so you know where to find them when you need them. For example, measuring cups can be stored in the same drawer as other baking materials like mixing bowls.

When you’re unpacking your kitchen, it’s also important to make sure that your items are placed in a way that makes sense for your lifestyle, and the layout of your kitchen. For example, some people bake more than others, so baking supplies may be given higher priority, or depending on the layout of your kitchen, you may have to move items around depending on the space you have available.

Unpacking and organizing a kitchen sounds like a daunting task, but sorting out items into borders, rocks, and pebbles breaks down the process into manageable steps that everyone can use to set up their kitchen.