If You're Doing This, You're Making Your House Look Cluttered

Important furniture like couches and tables can really weigh down a room if you're not careful. When a couch is clunky and rests on the floor, it immediately creates a barrier to the rest of the space and prevents light from flowing. Instead, raise major pieces of furniture on legs to allow a breezy feel and prevent that trapped heaviness.

If there is any chore I do every day, it's making the bed. Being the lazy person I am, I'm not about to fold down sheets and make hospital corners; I have more important things to do. With a comforter, no matter how nicely everything is tucked and pulled, everything still looks clumpy and disheveled. Why go through all that work to still have a bed that looks unmade? Once I switched to blankets that I can merely lay across the bed, my bedroom went from unkempt to smooth and finished.

Painting various walls different colors throughout the house — or worse, different colors in the same room — is an easy way to make a house feel disorganized. Besides being dated, it gives those coming into your house an uneasy and disconnected feeling. If you want your house to feel put-together, colors should be similar or at least part of a complementary palette. Each room should feel like it belongs to the same house, not to a bunch of different roommates who happen to share a roof.

A hard rule that I had to learn was to stop centering art based off a current layout. It looks great for the time being, but all it takes is a quick rearrangement and your perfect collage wall now hangs a foot off balance. This creates a feeling of unease and wildness. It's better to center art to the wall and then adjust furniture accordingly. Trust me: it'll prevent a lot of headaches, and save your plaster, in the future.

Mixing patterns is a dangerous game, with hopefully beautiful results. It may be tempting to put a floral rug next to a Navajo tapestry, and you may equally like both parts, but consider the disjointed effect it gives. If you plan on mixing patterns, keep within a similar color palette and the thickness of the lines. Also, think of it in terms of sizes. A crazy, awesomely patterned rug should be a statement piece, and while a cool designed accent wall may look amazing, maybe it'd be better to pair that rug with a couple of interesting throw pillows.

This will come as a shock to no one, but the quickest way to make a home look cluttered is by cluttering it with knick-knacks, tchotchkes, and whatever else is gathering dust. Instead of strewing your thimble collection across the house on various shelves, have a designated location, like a bookshelf or mantle, for the important display items. Personally, I favor a shelf with a glass door to help me with my goal of never dusting.

There must have been an interior designer in the '80s who came around to people's homes and chastised them for leaving a wall devoid of furniture. This overstuffed approach, instead of making a room look rich and well furnished, makes the space feel like it's busting at the seams. Think about what a room really needs, get that, and stop trying to jam furniture up against every wall. At the very least, it'll be less you'll have to clean and buy.