Happy Announcement!

I am happy to announce a new add-on for Reclaim A Room! Introducing: Calming the Chaos. I am offering this extra service with my very good friend Anna-Lisa Ptolemy. She is the queen of conquering clutter. She loves helping her friends and family go through their possessions and decide what things really make them happy to have in their homes and what they can let go of.  I knew her skills and passion would be really life-changing for my clients. 

We all have excess stuff in our lives, and it adds stress to our homes and inner dialogue in ways we sometimes don’t even clearly see. It can feel overwhelming, and people often don’t even know where to begin. If this is you, this new service is just what you need. 

When you hire me for a Reclaim a Room, I use what you already own to restyle your space.  I rework your room’s layout to optimize flow, function, and beauty. I organize what we decide to keep in the room and I decorate by shopping your home, highlighting the things you really love. While I work to restyle your space, I usually remove a lot of excess items. Then you have to either find a new place for them or decide to get rid of them.  

This new add-on takes care of all that excess stuff as we go along! While I am working on the layout and styling of the room, Anna-Lisa takes the stress out of going through your items and figuring out if you really want them.  She walks with you, helping you go through the room until you are sure that every single item left is something you love and want to be there. She methodically guides you through the process so the mental load and decision-making is not all on you. What to keep and what to let go of ultimately rests with you, but Anna-Lisa will encourage you along the way and provide a different perspective and her opinion too.

At the end of the day we take any trash and items to be donated with us. This means that when we leave, we take all that literal baggage out of your house. You never have to see it again. You have a beautiful restyled space, and feel lighter physically, mentally, and emotionally.  A few weeks ago we Reclaimed A Room together for the first time and the results are amazing. 

Where we started

Our first client wanted to reclaim her living room space. This is a much-used part of her house, and things had started to pile up and create clutter. She wanted help deciding what should stay in the room and what to do with what didn’t belong there anymore. This is where we started and below is what the room looked like at the end of the day.

Taking the stress out of decluttering

After Anna-Lisa went through literally every single thing in this room with our client we were left with the items that she truly loved or needed. The reason we could accomplish so much in a single day is that all the decisions about what to look at next and how to figure out what to keep were not on our client’s shoulders alone. Anna-Lisa guided her through the process, and helped her think through the items. Sometimes you just need to talk it out with someone who can help you see what items are really important to you and which are not. It took so much stress out of the process, because all our client had to do was decide about the next thing put into her hand.

Restyled bookcase

Anna-Lisa methodically helped our client go through her items in a carefully planned way so it didn’t feel overwhelming. One of my favourite transformations in this room was this bookcase. Our client let go of a lot of books (we donated four boxes of them), and the ones that are left are important to her and are now on display where she can see them.

I was also able to style the extra space with some personal items that were lost and forgotten before we brought everything into the light. She LOVES plants, and once cleared of clutter the top of this bookshelf was a perfect display area for some of her favourites. This little corner of the room now displays the things she actually loves and needs.

Layout changes

One of the biggest changes I made in the room was moving the TV off the mantel and over to this wall. The family doesn’t usually watch TV in this room together. They have a family room upstairs with a bigger TV and a comfy sectional. This room is where my client sometimes watches a show by herself while she is cooking or relaxing. Where it was before you couldn’t see it well from the kitchen. Now there is a clear view. We moved the bird into the dining room where there is lots of light.

The brilliant thing about Reclaim a Room is that once we see the room as it should be, I can make suggestions for future changes. The TV cabinet works for now, but one of my suggestions to her was to look for one that was longer to fit the scale of the TV better and provide extra board game storage.

No spot left untouched

We sorted out every square inch of the room, even behind and under the couch. One of the things that made a big impact was removing one of the chairs from the room. The love seat and chairs are large, and having the extra chair in here was making the room feel cramped.

I tried a couple of different ways to keep the extra chair but once she saw how the flow of the room looked a lot better without it our client made the call to remove it from the room. The dining room is right beside the living room, so it will not be difficult to move the dining room chairs into the living room for extra seating when company is over.

Feelings

Over the course of the day we had lots of conversations. We laughed and we cried. It is incredible how much our stuff and our homes impact our emotions, even when we don’t realize it. At the end of the day we filled the back of my car with items to be donated. There was a physical feeling of lightness, peace, and calm in this room when we were finished. And we accomplished all this without purchasing a single new thing!

Kind Words

Our client said this about the experience:

“Getting rid of things is hard for me. I’m sentimental, I justify that it is still useful, I make plans to sell it. But then it all sits there piling up and filling my house with chaos, clutter, and stress. I didn’t know where to start and I didn’t have the energy to do it myself. Katie and Anna-Lisa provide an amazing service. They helped me go through my living room, keeping just the things I love. They also taught me the value of letting go of what has already served me well but no longer has purpose in my life. Katie then restyled all of my favorite things and redesigned my space into a more functional layout. At the end of the day I felt so much lighter. My living room was filled with so much more natural light and everywhere I now look I am filled with peace and joy. Reclaiming Home Cecorating reclaimed one room in my house and now that room feels like home.”

Contact us to calm your chaos

If you have a room in your house that you don’t love and feels overwhelming because of too much stuff, this new service can make a huge impact on your home and your heart. In one day we can transform your room from chaos to peace, not quite right to beautiful, uncomfortable to homey. If you have a space like this we would love to help. Contact us for an appointment today!