The Sunday News
FOR some people decorating is about stuffing a room with everything and anything they feel is attractive or colourful. To some extent this is not a bad thing especially when you know what you are doing.
For those who like playing safe when it comes to decorating or designing a room, I would like to suggest that you avoid cluttering. Cluttering is whereby there is a lot of disorganised stuff in one place. I know some things are extremely stunning but that does not mean they all need or deserve to go into the room. Each and every room deserves to have an unoccupied space which is referred to as “negative space”. This means that it’s a space that surrounds an object and in the process bringing balance to a composition.
Negative space could also be considered as blank spots in your home where there is no design, no art and no furniture. It can have a huge impact as it make people pay attention to it even if there is nothing to look at. When it is expertly done it brings calmness as well as balance in the room, some people believe that it brings a certain relief. That does not mean that you randomly pick any spot.
However, there are tricks to doing “cluttered” well but they can only be done by experts. First rule in making cluttering look well is to have an organising principle it could be a colour, maybe a theme but figure out what your furniture has in common and bring that out.
Even though the purpose is to clutter your room but that does not mean you put things that do not have a purpose. Everything must be there for a reason. The reason can be simply that you love it. But don’t accumulate stuff just for the sake of accumulation. Keep it neat. There is no room for ugly clutter (papers, shoes, dirty dishes) in a beautifully cluttered room.
Anything extra just looks like mess.
To get going, start with what you know you want to get rid of. If you aren’t sure about something, it’s fine; save it for later and keep moving. Throw away everything that’s trash and haul out anything you know you want to give away. Tackling what you already know you’re willing to part with will create momentum. Once you have taken care of everything you know needs to go, focus on setting aside what you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, you want to hold on to.
