Spring cleaning: Mobile apps to help you declutter and restyle your home
The daffodils are out, the evenings are getting longer, spring is definitely in the air, and so is the urge to turn our homes upside down in an attempt to do some serious spring and deep cleaning.
Houzz.co.uk, the world’s largest home renovation and design platform, found that amongst the 9 million inspiring images in its directory, the most popular UK image is a clever fold-out storage solution for a corner kitchen cupboard. Indeed, ‘storage’ was the 7th most searched for term on the platform over the past 12 months. Houzz UK’s editor Victoria Harrison said;
“Creating better storage solutions is one of the top ways you can declutter your home. To help you get organised there are several fun mobile apps available to catalogue and reduce the number of possessions you have in first place. Once your home is sleek and streamlined there are excellent apps to help you refresh and redecorate. What are you waiting for…”
Create a Home Inventory
The first step in decluttering your space, is to take a good look at all the possessions we currently own. There are numerous cool apps that can help you create a home inventory, such as Encircle. The mobile and web catalogue tool allows homeowners to visually gather info on the items inside their property to create an online gallery and the ability to print excel and pdf reports. While the app’s main purpose is to create an inventory of valuable items for insurance claims, the process also forces people to go through and sort possessions they no longer use or need. Super clever features include the ability to upload and store receipts and warranties helping people to create paperless homes.
Go Digital
Back in January, Houzz set its community a decluttering challenge. Victoria Harrison said; “Paperwork, books and catalogues were shamed as some of the worst offenders when it came to dust-gathering clutter.”
Thankfully there are apps that can help us create digital libraries for our books and also any CD and DVD collections still gathering dust in our homes. Go-to apps such as libib offer a virtual library management service to help homeowners track their media and store online. Ultimately this will help free up shelf space and give you the motivation to donate any old favourites that have seen better days.
As well as book shelves, wardrobes are also handy places to forget items that haven’t seen the light of day for years. Apps such as Cloth help you create a digital catalogue of your wardrobe to help you put together show-stopping outfits. Cloth also offers a handy feature where you can track when you last wore an item: thus flagging when a tee or dress hasn’t been off the hanger for over 12 months. This is very handy for culling unwanted clothes and making more space.
Make Some Money
With so many apps helping you to downsize your possessions, it may well be worth cashing in some of your unwanted items. Depop is a fun way to shop on your mobile. Buy, sell and share an array of items from vintage and luxury fashion through to art, books, and records. The mobile app lets users try their hand at shopkeeping by allowing them to open their own little boutique, creating an added incentive to regularly evaluate the resell value of hidden gems in your home.
Keeping Your Home Tidy
Once you’ve invested in a weekend decluttering your home, the next challenge is to try and keep it tidy and resist the temptation to let things get out of hand. That’s where apps like Chorma can help. Chorma assigns household chores among housemates, or individual family members, setting targets, letting people know when they’re complete and providing rewards. This can be really handy while you’re spring cleaning, to get everyone in the house involved, but also maintaining a clutter-free, clean home year round.
Redesigning Your Clutter-Free Home
Make sure you reward yourself after all your hard work by giving your home a bit of a restyle or freshen up. Rather than go out and buy lots of new things, make sure you first seek inspiration from apps like Houzz, where you can browse over 9 million high quality images to pinpoint the look you want to achieve. The app provides regular tips on home improvement topics, such as decluttering your home, and can help you identify items you should keep, modify or lose. You can also connect and enlist home storage designers and professional organisers, who are listed in Houzz’s professional directory.
With the Houzz app homeowners can create ‘ideabooks’, virtual moodboards, to collaborate ideas and style choices with family members and professionals. To make communication even simpler, they have just introduced a new Sketch feature that allows users to scribble notes and add products directly onto images, taking moodboarding to a new level. With Sketch you can really bring your ideas to life to better convey exactly what you want; ideal for sharing and building ideas in real time.
