Imagine finding the perfect Tom Ford suit that cuts your frame impeccably. You pick out your crisp white poplin french-cuff, freshly pressed, and dig out those exquisite cuff links, which that "special someone" bought for you. You have your oxfords shined so meticulously, you can see how sharp and devastatingly handsome you look on its toe cap.

Now imagine putting on all these items without showering or changing your socks and underwear.

Ew is right.

The Importance of the 'Edit' stage

Before you even begin to decorate and style your place, you must start with a good, clean foundation, fresh to accept new, improved energy in the form of heightened design. Decluttering and organizing is the main part of the Edit stage in my 5-Step Design Process, and must be completed before proceeding to the designing and styling of your space.

What you gain in my 'Edit' stage is worth the price of your design package alone! This is where we purge your place of things that you no longer use or which bring you down. This is where we discover loved items that need to be resuscitated. This is where we set up organizational systems that best suit your lifestyle. Where you establish a regular cleaning schedule. Where you get to exhale and prepare for the even more exciting design steps to come.

"A place for everything and everything in its place."

That was my mom’s favourite phrase while I was growing up. It’s no wonder that there is something about decluttering and organizing that still thrills me. And it should thrill you too.

I remember passing by my mom’s room while she was immersed in her quarterly decluttering session. She would be sitting cross-legged amidst piles of items pulled out from her large closet and I would plop down on the bed beside her and watch as she thoughtfully placed items in the 'Keep', 'Donate', or 'Throw Away' bins. She taught me that cleaning and organizing was not just an exercise in keeping house, but more importantly, a chance to take stock in what you have accumulated, revisit memories, and plan for the future.

Never Underestimate the Power of a Good Broom, Storage Bins, and Throwing Trash Out

I know you must be excited to get going on the "exciting" part of the process - the actual designing and styling of the pieces you want for your home. But when you start to notice you are rushing into this, revisit that scenario described at the beginning of this post. Before I had established my 5-Step Design Process, I would create these intricate design boards and eagerly get to work helping my clients style their home. What I noticed was the following:

Some of them would not have their place cleaned and prepared before their new furniture would arrive. This would delay my styling time with them and actually be awkward to clean around the pieces we were trying to position.
When I would visit some clients a couple weeks or months later, their place was rarely maintained the way we had planned. The main reason for this was we had not addressed the loads of crap they had hidden from me during our consultation phase. These things would creep back into their living space, and they either did not have the tools and systems to maintain them in the home, or they had needed to get rid of them.
Some were having difficulty manifesting their desires.

Do yourself a favour and take the time to literally "clean house" before you design and style your home. This can be the most overwhelming part of the design process, which is why most people tend to skip this step. Or they figure they'll "deal with that stuff later".

The thing about clutter is it will always pull you down if you don't address it early on and set up systems to keep it under control. No matter how beautifully you make your place look, if you keep a "closet of skeletons", they will inevitably come out to haunt you and mess with your goals.