The Satisfaction of Undecorating a Small Space
This post was kindly sponsored by Seventh Generation. All images, words (with the exception of exact product descriptions) and opinions are my own. As always, any images of the pups were captured as they interacted in their own natural way.
It seems like the annual removal of holiday decor seems to bring folks just as much satisfaction as the initial decorating itself. What begins as an enthusiastic burst into the most festive season of the year ends up as frustration a month later, as trees shed and extra layers of temporary decor overwhelm spaces.
I recognized this feeling in myself a few years back, which is one of the (many) reasons why we stopped bringing any new holiday decor into the cottage, and why we pared back on decking the halls— even as our son has entered his first year of recognizing (and clearly enjoying) the uniqueness of the season.
Still, we do put up a few natural, unflocked branches strung into garlands in late November, which we later disconnect and compost via LA County’s Green Carts. Since we use live greenery, we spray it with a water mister throughout December. By the time January rolls around and we remove the garlands, we have a mess behind. Thankfully, it doesn’t take long to clean a tiny house.
THIS is my favorite moment for Adam and I to clean the cottage. From a reevaluation of all our belongings, to a deep scrub of our weathered wood floors, to tidying shelves and drawers, we take the opportunity presented by undecorating after the holidays to making our home more organized and functional.
This year we started with the built-in bed.
From shoots, travel, holiday decor, the general quickened pace of the season, and the shorter fall + winter days that keep us indoors a bit longer than usual, our bed and its built-in bookshelf were ransacked over the past month.
It was particularly disorganized this year, as I recently went through our personal collection of books and donated about 40% of them to our local library. This opened up far more space than we’ve ever had on the shelves. Instead of filling the surfaces with styled decorative items (staged “shelfies” are actually an odd pet peeve of mine), we waited to see what purpose the new, open spaces would best serve.
While pausing to determine what to do with the cubbies, everyday life crept into them. Picture books for West (which we usually keep on custom shelves in the closet), tights and scarves, and new books gifted to Adam and myself jumped on to the shelves.
This jumble of items shared the tight space with a live garland and our colorful holiday pillowcases, making everything more cluttered than I’d like— especially since this area of the house is supposed to sooth the eyes and mind while supporting relaxation.
Sophee watching as we refresh the built-in.
To refresh the space, we removed the garland, followed by all the books and bins so we could do a deep clean and start from scratch.
Once the surfaces were empty, we vacuumed up the leftover greenery debris with a handheld attachment on our vacuum. (Read about how we store our vacuum here.)
We then used our washable/reusable cleaning cloths to wipe the wood clean of tiny water spots, dust, and dirt with Seventh Generation Wood Cleaner, which is Leaping Bunny certified, and EPA Safer Choice certified.
This means that all ingredients— no exceptions— are reviewed and and pass for the safest possible ingredients for human health and satisfying environmental criteria. Seventh Generation Wood Cleaner comes in a bottle that’s made with 100% post-consumer recycled materials, and is a USDA Certified Biobased Product (95%). It cleans treated wood with organic coconut oil that hydrates the surface with no yellowing build-up. Seventh Generation is a Certified B Corporation, which means it’s certified as being better for workers, better for communities and better for the environment.
After thoroughly cleaning the wood, we sorted the books, putting West’s back on the kid-friendly height shelves in our shared closet, and setting aside a few titles to donate to the library. We then put the rest back on the shelf, and replaced the plants that drape above our bed 11 months out of the year. (I love waking up to the green leaves overhead in the mornings…)
From there, we used some spare drawers (left over from a damaged rolling dresser sent to our house 3 years ago) as shelf organizers. We sorted our socks, scarves and hats before placing them in the bins. (Anything damaged was set aside for future repurposing projects.
We also covered a few colorful book spines with bookbinding tape, simply to subdue the tones in the bedroom:
The end result is a much tidier built-in.
My hope is that having our streamlined bedroom back will help keep us in a healthier and calmer mindset as we step into 2020.
Thank you to Seventh Generation for making quality products that we use here in our tiny home, and for sponsoring this post. Partnerships like this help us keep our small creative business in operation, and keep our twinkle lights glowing year-round.
