5 Tricks That Keep Your Maximalist Home Clutter Free
Are you a lover of too much stuff? Do you keep sentimental items but wish for a clutter-free house? Today I’d like to share 5 tricks that keep your maximalist home clutter free.
What is maximalist vs clutter?
Typically when you think of someone being a maximalist, you might think of a hoarder or messy people. But being a maximalist is far from having random clutter.
It is a very focused, well curated style with many items, yet still an organized home. It is having lots of stuff, but those items are thoughtfully arranged and in a proper place.
At the end of the day, clutter is hidden and what remains are the beautiful accessories you choose to decorate your living spaces with.
How to be a maximalist without clutter?
When items are arranged thoughtfully, they will be seen more as decor and less of clutter. If you are one who likes lots of material possessions, then maximalism is a great option to embrace.
It’s all about grouping similar items in thoughtful arrangements, and seeing many small items as one. A maximalist does not just pile things around.
The style requires a curated, designated spot for decorative items along with storage space for everyday items.
Control visual clutter, corral display items:
How do I make my house cozy but not cluttered?
Many think you need to own less stuff to not have a house that feels cluttered. But this isn’t true. An organized space can still provide a maximalist style with a cozy feel.
The key is styling the things you love into meaningful vignettes, and keeping a home clutter-free of basic items. Your living space should always exude your own personal style.
Making your home feel cozy and styled in a way that is pleasing to you, will make a big difference for how you feel and entertain there.
Following these simple tips will allow you to have lots of stuff, yet keep it organized and comfortable for all who live there and visit.
5 Tricks That Keep Your Maximalist Home Clutter Free
Being a maximalist is not a free-for-all excuse for having too many items. Maximalism is curated items in specific areas, well-styled and thoughtful. It offers storage solutions for the daily routine of living, while showcasing items you love.
Clutter is not decor. Let’s discuss the best way to get this look, along with some simple habits that will keep your whole house a clutter-free space.
Corral items
The first step to a successful maximalist style is to corral your meaningful items together. Collections always have more visual power when displayed in a grouping. They are a great way to show off your personal style.
Especially in a smaller home, you must use a critical eye to pare things down. You can think of it as a decluttering process, or a focus on living only with what you really love!
We all have things that enter our home everyday. There is junk mail, general paper clutter, dirty clothes, used and clean dishes to put away, and all the many items that come and go in a home in a single day.
For a maximalist stye to work, you need to set up daily habits where this clutter can be controlled so the best part of your decor can be seen.
Important real estate
Consider areas on your kitchen counter and flat surfaces in the living room and other family areas as hot real estate zones. These should only be used by things that are used daily or often.
The amount of stuff shown in these areas should also be displayed with a critical eye. Useful items that tend to create clutter can be hidden in storage containers, or a kitchen drawer.
When you see photos and inspiration of rooms you love and admire, is there clutter left out everywhere? The answer is always NO.
What is shown is a clean house with well curated decorative items. This would be the goal when things are tidied from everyday living.
Use baskets and bins
My favorite go to things to control clutter is baskets and storage bins. And of course, my favorite kind of these items would be vintage.
I have never been accused of having a minimalist home. I use these easy habits to keep my maximalist space looking decorative and not cluttered. A pretty basket left on the counter can control daily incoming mail and papers. When I have a few minutes, I can then go through it (while standing over the recycling bin) and eliminating what is not needed and handling important documents as I see them.
Baskets are a great drop zone for shoes, blankets, clothing, or whatever else needs hiding. They also allow young children to handle picking items up on a daily basis, and easily dropping them where they are stored.
If baskets are decorative and part of your decor, they can stay out. Others can be easily hidden under a made bed, hall closet, or other decorative cabinet.
Control the chaos
When styling your pretty maximalist space, be prepared to set up some parameters for a consistently clutter-free home. This essential step will give you more focus for the items you truly love and want to display.
Limit spending
I know, it’s easy to go crazy when you are strolling the aisles of Target or Home Goods. But ask yourself these simple questions: will it fit into my well curated space? is there room for it? is it a necessity? If not, limit your spending for the items that you really need.
Waiting for the things that you truly love that will add to the overall style you have chosen for your home. Each new thing you bring into your maximalist space should be a necessity or an “I really love it” item.
Donate and rotate frequently
As a lover (and seller) of all things, many times I will buy something I “love more” than another item and replace and release something for it to find a new home. This might mean I sell an item in my antique booth, on Facebook Marketplace, or donate it to a charity shop so someone else may enjoy it.
As much as I love stuff, I also prefer a positive mental health outlook, and limit the items that I bring into our family home to those I really love and will use.
Ignore the consumer traps (aka trends)
I’m sure you have figured out by now that you cannot follow every trend that pops up in home decor, nor would you want to.
In order to curate a home you love and want to live in, let alone a maximalist one, you will want to stay true to your own style and ignore trends. Trends come and go, and don’t really offer you an authentic space, if everyone is doing it.
Create a new habit of embracing your style as “authentically YOU” and move forward in curating that look to what you love.
Colors should always be chosen on what looks good in your house, with your light and space. Choosing shades simply because they are a trend will not give you the home that will serve you well in the long run. It will only find you having to change things for the next movement that comes along.
Clean out frequently
If you want to adopt a maximalist decorative style, then regular maintenance will be needed to keep your rooms looking styled and not like an episode of “Hoarders”. Adopt these small habits, and even track progress in your planner if you desire.
Daily
Make the daily sweep to control the paper clutter, dirty dishes, and shoe pile up that seems to happen. Also, starting the day with a made bed will do your mental health wonders when you return to an organized space at the end of a day.
Each family member should be responsible for their own items to be returned to where they are stored. Even young kids can help keep a decluttered home so your decorating style can show through. Each weekly sweep will take less time when daily habits are followed.
My daughter calls for a “10 minute tidy”, where her and her four children all take 10 minutes together to get everything back where it goes. This can be done at the end of the day, or before company shows up! A lot can be done in 10 minutes when everyone is focused and wanting to get back to their own tasks.
Weekly
We all have the weekly chores that need to get done, like laundry and taking out the trash. Make sure your decorative spaces are in harmony with real life tasks and how you live in your spaces.
Watching and noticing which areas are repeatedly hard to manage during the weekly cleanup may be the key for you to rethink the space and make it more efficient.
Are decorative hooks needed to make hanging items easier to get at? Could your collections help control or hide other clutter? Reevaluate each week to see what is working and what can be tweaked. Our lives and needs change frequently, and so should our decor to accommodate this.
Seasonally
A seasonal decluttering project is important in most homes, especially those in climates that enjoy four seasons. Every quarter, what items deserve to be in that ‘hot real estate zone’ of storage need to be updated.
This is a natural process to what you would be using during those months. If you enjoy decorating with seasonal items, your maximalist style may need to be tweaked to display new seasonal items. This is where large storage bins and a basement/garage storage space come in handy.
Seasonal displays can even be quite easy, when utilizing what you have in your maximalist styling. Simply add natural items of the season into your decor without disrupting your carefully curated displays.
Curate carefully
Maximalist design is all about those well curated vignettes. Even with multiple items, the eye will need a break every now and then.
When items are grouped together, they can be seen as a whole, and less like lots of individual items that have no relation to each other. Curate carefully for the best maximalist look.
Thoughtful styling
Whether grouping by color, style, size or category, thoughtful styling will keep your space looking intentional and not cluttered. Items should be placed where they are used (if the items are not purely decorative) and should be stored in a way that adds to your home decor.
Vintage art can cover one entire wall, or be displayed around the room in thoughtful groupings that have similar themes. Dishes can be put together by color or by how they are used. Displays can be aligned with daily routines to make simple tasks seem special and thoughtful.
Rotate your items
Not only seasonally, as discussed, but curated items should be dusted and rotated often. If you are piling and not styling, you are walking the line outside of styled curation. In collecting, it should be second nature to always keep the best and let go of the rest.
Rotate your items and see which ones are not getting used or still loved through the years. If you are reluctant to get rid of items that have meaning, pack them away for awhile and see if they are things that still fit your style or if you think you may want them for future use.
Although many things do come back around in style, do you really have the space to keep things you don’t use or that currently serve you?
Create limits
If you have a specific area (wall, bookcase, shelf, etc.) that is showing off your maximalist style, set limits for how much to display. Choose the best of the best for the easily viewed areas, and when they get full, have a limit so you know when it is time to purge and rethink the space.
Knowing up front what your limits are, especially when starting a collection, will help you keep the best of what you want and desire. It will also allow you to see what you have, enjoy it, and focus on honing your clutter habits.
I have a huge collection of milk glass, which most is used daily in the kitchen. However, I have a limit of extra items that get rotated into decor, whether seasonally or otherwise. This allows me to keep the best of the best.
Customize
If you are a lover of things that you want to see, creating custom storage will be an important task to display your items. With thoughtful styling, even simply adjusting shelf heights, can go a long way to making your space feel authentic to what you love.
Fit storage to your needs
If you can’t build it, find someone who can. Fit your storage to your needs, whether it be drawer organizers inside a closet to store all your craft supplies, or display for a plethora of ironstone you like to look at and use. Your home will always feel less cluttered when items have a specific place.
What are your hobbies? And what do you tend to have a lot of? Consider items that can be displayed as decor, and other items that need to be stored as to not allow rooms to look cluttered. Allow storage for both kinds of maximalist behavior.
Hobbies, and all the gear that goes along with them, are important to our well being and stress hormones. However, they should be handled properly so you can actually enjoy whatever they are, and allow proper storage for what you need.
Create hidden storage
Even if you don’t think you have extra space in your home, you can always find ‘hidden storage’.
Behind the closed doors of cabinets should be organized, with shelves adjusted to your needs. Especially at the top of kitchen cabinets. If you haven’t touched items in several years, then maybe they are ready to be donated to the charity shop so others may have a chance to enjoy them.
Your space then can become a step-by-step roadmap of the items you love and use the most. You will find hidden storage; at the tops of cabinets and closets, under the bed, behind large furniture (for flat items), or out in the open decoratively.
Find custom solutions for collections
Custom solutions will help you display your maximalist and authentic style. If you love to build large lego structures and keep them, install floating shelves to display your treasures.
Do you love vintage fabrics? Show them off behind glass where they are stored. Build shelves, use hooks, create display nooks, all to keep the items you love and want to see in close proximity. Whatever you collect, there can be a custom solution to keep your space looking its best.
Loving your maximalist home
With thoughtful organization, a maximalist home can be both authentically vibrant and clutter-free. You don’t need to hire a professional organizer, if that is not your desire and not in the budget.
You will only need to ask yourself some tough questions about what you truly use and love. When you create habits to control the daily clutter that comes to any home where multiple people live, you will be able to focus on enjoying the items you truly love and want to live with.
Our homes should be a reflection of our lives, even a roadmap of where we have been. You can create a maximalist home that is clutter free and a representation of your personal style.
If you’d like to get inspired about more stuff for your home, let’s hang out more. Follow along on these platforms. Check back next week for more design tips for that next level step.
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Keeping things thinned out over time is a great way to living with only the things you use and love. Glad to know there are more maximalist in the world.
I am an eclectic decorator and somewhat maximalist too! I love trays and macrame placemats to help organize my decor. There is no drop zone in my home, my husband knows where his keys and wallet go! However, being retired without kids anymore sure helps! A few times a year I’ll go through my rooms and if I no longer want an item, to the thrift store it goes!
Thank you “Anonymous” for your opinion. But that’s the thing about PERSONAL STYLE, it’s personal to the homeowner. If you like to live with nothing, then great, I guess you aren’t dusting. But for those of us who find JOY in a maximalist style (whether we frequently dust or not), it looks better to us.
That is very cluttered to me…….get rid of about 1/2 and it would look better!!!! Too much to dust.
Love this! Thank you for your comment Linda.
I’ve FINALLY found someone who understands me! Thank you for recognizing that some of us don’t want to be minimalists. I have so much stuff that I love and that represents who I am: my values and the roadmap of my life.
Thanks Kim! Your home is soooo fabulous. I’m so happy there was some value you found in the content. xoxo
I learned a few things from your great post, Jill! My house is so small, and I’m always afraid of cluttering it. Thanks for sharing. You have the most amazing home decor!