Like we said about your kitchen a few weeks ago, tackling the whole of your living room if you want to clean and declutter can seem like a hopeless task. It’s no surprise that you are considering it - with the success of Marie Kondo’s Netflix show on tidying up via the Konmari method, it seems like everyone else is as well - and it’s a noble goal to have. Just as you can’t eat an elephant in one bite, so can you not rid an entire room of items that don’t spark joy in just one day. You have to take little bites, and that translates to picking tasks that you can realistically accomplish in short bursts so that the big picture doesn’t seem quite so unmanageable. 

What can you accomplish with just fifteen minutes to spare in your living room? A lot, surprisingly! With just a quarter-hour, you can majorly chip away at some tasks that will make a dramatic difference in your living room. Step one: fold and stash all your throw blankets and pillows. If you’re like me (you have kids), then you are constantly dealing with piles of pillows and blankets littering your floor, begging to be tripped over. Change the game with a basket, tote, or storage ottoman in which you can store these blankets. No matter how pretty, they don’t look good on the floor. Hide them away, but keep them close for when you want to cuddle up. 

Next step - tackle your magazine pile. You know the one I’m talking about: it’s that watermarked, disheveled pile of People, Vogue, and/or Sports Illustrated issues that are gathering dust on an end table or overflowing in the magazine rack. Time to jettison all that clutter. Take 15 minutes and make a “keep” and “don’t keep” pile. Issues older than two months that you haven’t read are unlikely to get read, so toss those. Already read them and have no intention of reading them again? Toss them. Issues that your kids have torn pages out of? You know what to do. Once you’ve minimized your reading material, find a good place like a pretty box or basket to store current issues and catalogs. 

With just a little more time, you can tackle another project: organizing your movies and video games. For some people, this can be quite a task, so allot 30 minutes. Go through each case, making sure that the appropriate disc or cartridge is matched up, and evaluate each title to determine whether it is something that you are going to watch or play again. If the answer is “no” to either, it hits the donation pile.

Whether you are looking to spark a bit more joy in your day when you sit in your living room, or if you're preparing to sell your Northern Virginia home and need to ready yourself for viewings, as you can see, just a few minutes can help you make a noticeable difference in your living room.