An Arkansas Snow Day 2.8.2010

Looks like about half the state has a snow day today. It’s inspired us to think about cozy places where we’d like to spend the day…curling up with a book, having a warm cup of tea or hot chocolate. Some of our favorite “get cozy” spaces from our recent Color issue:

Spending the day cooking is a snow-day favorite too–some warm chili and cornbread, or a hearty stew. We’d like to cook and sit down to dinner in these spots:

If you find you have some spare time today, could be an ideal day to get your At Home Arkansas’ Best contest entry ready! Admire your home, take a few photos, email it off to us…we’re eager to see your place.

Add comment February 8th, 2010 at 12:10pm Diane

(Colorful) Friday Favorites 2.5.10

Interested in all things colorful? Check out our Color issue (now online with a rainbow of tips), and then hop on over to some of our favorite sites.

Check out Colour Lovers, a “resource that monitors and influences color trends, giving people who use color–whether for ad campaigns, product design, etc.–a place to see what’s going on in the world of color.” Have a gander and get lost in a sea of palettes and patterns.

Providing an in-depth look at color in the home, fashion, beauty and more, Sensational Color even delves into the messages and meanings of certain hues.

Decor by Color is the place to go if you want to play out your obsession with with a certain color or mix of colors. Click on any of the number of colors on the main page (pink+brown, turquoise, green), and you’ll be directed to a variety of home products available for purchase in that shade.

Repainting? Remodeling? Revamping your bedroom? That will likely involve slathering on new paint, and My Perfect Color is here to help you find the perfect hue with more than 100,00 color matches from more than 100 paint brands.

Add comment February 5th, 2010 at 12:47pm Paulette

Room of the Week 2.4.10 My Family Room

We’ve been talking home organization this week, with a great blog post yesterday from organizational expert and blogger extraordinaire Katie Buchanan of Little Rock Paper Scissors. She talks about organizing her own closet, so I thought I’d air some of my own dirty laundry and reveal a before and after organization project as well.

Here’s what my family room looked like when we moved to Fayetteville. Yes, decidedly un-glamorous. We had some organizing work to do.

Here’s my 5 Step Program:

1. Add built ins for corralling all that electronic mess, plus games, books and more

Yes, that really is the same space where the TV was on the table. See what built in storage can do?  And yes, that is me, showing how easy the new space is to use   And our little puppy Roxy. This was a few years back and Roxy is now too big for that dog bed. But the shelves still work great.

2. Choose multi-purpose furniture

We found a coffee table that could hold games, books and that slew of magazines that I always have around…occupational hazard. Same for the side tables, they have shelves below for more magazines (all my copies of At Home, of course).

3. Use bins and boxes

This one goes without saying…boxes and properly-used (not junk piled) bins are an organizer’s best friends. I marked the photo boxes with pictures showing which family member’s stuff was in each box. Which leads to the next point…

4. Get the family stuff out of the “save” pile and somewhere you can enjoy it

While I was rummaging through all those years of great pre-school art, hand prints, and such, I decided to put it somewhere I could see it. Since that cute little handprint now belongs to a 14 year old, it’s great to be able to look back daily and enjoy these.

5. Sit back and enjoy your hard work. Find a game in that well-organized bin and play it with the kids. Enjoy that puppy.

In the interest of full disclosure…no, my house is not this neat on a daily basis. A friend of mine at Ladies Home Journal liked the home organization concept and published this back in 2007. And my good friend, photographer Dan Piassick, took these great shots. Our house always looks lived in, my photography skills are no where near this good, and it did take months to find these items, have the shelves made, etc.

But it was worth it! We spend more time in that room than any other one in the house.

If you’d like more home org tips, check out our features this month on organizing a home office or organizing a closet.

1 comment February 4th, 2010 at 12:13pm Diane

Organize Your Closet (In Less Than 10 Steps!)

Katie Buchanan of Little Rock Paper Scissors has 13+ years experience in fashion, retail and event management, so it’s no surprise her business (organization, event planning, style consultations, holiday gift wrapping and delivery, you name it!) is exploding! We love her chipper personality and are thrilled that she allowed us a view of her own closet clean-up. Aren’t the results fabulous?

Thanks, Katie! (When can you come over to our house?)

Although I happily spend my time in a profession that involves organizing other folks’ messes, I rarely make time to sort out my own junk properly! Do as I say, not as I do, if you will. But with 2010 brewing, I decided to “hire” myself to get my own disastrous closet in tip-top shape. After all, I had recently moved into my own house…ahem…eight months ago, and the shoes on my dining room table were making it difficult to serve a decent meal.

I have a philosophy when it comes to organizing the useful yet rarely-seen closet/pantry/attic spaces in a home: We all go to such lengths to make the obvious rooms in our homes look beautiful with well-chosen colors, fabrics, furniture and fixtures, yet when it comes to the closet we personally enter 85 times a day, we treat it like a trash heap. There is absolutely no reason that our private spaces shouldn’t be as lovely as the rest of the home while remaining functional. After all, YOU are using that trashy closet, and YOU deserve to look at an extra-pretty space as much as sweet Aunt Hilda who has tea in your decked-out living room once a year!

To begin, I decided to paint the inside of my closet the same shade of pink as my adjoining bedroom. (Because, fun, hot single girls can get away with that sort of thing.) While a paint job is not a necessary step in this process, it did get my lazy ball rolling.

Painting the closet not only made me love it more, it forced me to TAKE EVERYTHING OUT OF IT. Removing absolutely everything is the very best way to really get down and dirty and purge what you don’t need, hate, or, let’s face it, can never fit in again. I was resigned to only put back what I truly loved and needed, including my Mt. St. Mary high school uniform, but not including the dress I wore to Sigma Chi formal senior year in college. You see where I’m going with this…..prioritize wisely!

The one downside of removing everything is that, well, everything is removed. This made the task look daunting! But it also forced me to get myself into gear, unless I wanted to sleep in a hotel.

…much less walk anywhere in my house.

When it was time for the actual closet re-organization, I followed the guidelines that I use when re-vamping closets for my clients:

1. Only keep what I really love or need.

Check the denial at the door and be ruthlessly honest with yourself. The cost of letting clutter pile up in your life far outweighs what it might cost to replace a silly skirt you haven’t worn in 6 years.

2. Hang as much as possible.

Jeans, t-shirts, slacks, all of it. More often that not, if you can’t see it, you won’t use it.

3. Use thin, sleek felted hangers; your space will double.

Although plastic and wood hangers make a closet look great, they are far bulkier and do not grip clothing well (without ugly hanger marks on the shoulders).

4. Hang pants and skirts on tiered, clipped pant hangers.

5. Only fold things like sweaters, lounge wear and pajamas.

Use extra drawer space for accessories.

6. Keep out-of-season items, eveningwear and rarely used specialty items in a guest room or spare closet.

Doing this will force seasonal rotation and purging.

7. Store out-of-season or specialty shoes, hats and handbags in safe, mildew and moth resistant containers.

Place containers in alternate closet or under beds. Do not store in attics that are not climate controlled!

8. Did you hear me when I said be ruthless????

The results…

1 comment February 3rd, 2010 at 02:10pm Paulette

On The Road 2.1.10

Are you a reader of At Home’s travel section, On the Road?

This month we’ve traveled to Bentonville and Rogers for a weekend getaway combining the best of both worlds: historic downtowns and modern amenities (including a great hotel and lots of good shopping). You can read the full story online.

1 comment February 1st, 2010 at 11:47am Diane