(continued)
These small changes will make a big difference in no time at all.
41. Use your best silver and glasses every day. What are you saving them for?
42. Put a table next to your tub. You wouldn”t have a sofa or chair without a table, would you?
43. Change your house numbers.
44. Change every light switch in your house to a dimmer. Including the bathrooms. Now add a dimmer to every lamp.
45. Remove three things from every room in your house. You”ll feel liberated.
46. Invest in a set of matched wooden hangers for your closet. You will feel like the most organized person in the world.
47. Paint just the front edges (the "piping") of your bookshelves. Or tack on a fabric trim.
48. Hang small pictures at the corners where bookshelves meet.
49. Remove all the pictures scattered around one room and rehang them on one wall, together — "salon style."
50. Tack nailheads on a plain, inexpensive ottoman.
51. Create your own lantern: Fill a bamboo or wood birdcage with LED pillar candles of different heights.
52. Install battery-powered lights in all your closets. You don”t need an electrician or a carpenter!
53. If you always buy white candles, next time buy black.
54. If your kitchen is cramped, remove your upper cabinets and install open shelving. Just as much storage space, but without the bulk.
55. Hang two large mirrors on opposite walls. You won”t recognize the space.
56. Make a slipcover for your headboard, even if it”s wood. Ever consider shocking pink?
57. Love the frame but hate the picture? Dump the picture and have a piece of new "antique" mirror cut to fit it.
58. Paint the ceiling of a white room a pale, pale blue or gray. It will feel as if there”s no ceiling at all.
59. If you have a room with a low ceiling, put up striped wallpaper or curtains — it will feel a foot taller.
60. Iron your bed linens with scented water.
61. For your entry hall, paint an aluminium flower container and fill it with lots of umbrellas, all the same colour.
62. Decorate under a console table. Dress up all that empty space with big inexpensive objects in dramatic shapes. Or put an ottoman there; who ever has enough seating?
63. Add a deep-coloured silk lampshade to your living room. Red, turquoise — it”s like buying jewellery.
64. Replace your ten-ton coffee table with two ceramic Chinese garden seats. Or a big ottoman with room for everything and your feet, too.
65. Change your heavy curtains for sheers. Your room will still look soft, but much more modern.
66. Cover the books in your bookcase with white or brown kraft paper, and write the titles on the jackets with a fountain pen in a really personal handwriting.
67. Turn a tabletop into a drinks table. Choose liquor bottles for their shapes and labels, then buy lots of glasses and an ice bucket. Do everything in one colour: Picture blue bottles and glasses on a blue tray.
68. Pile all your rugs in one place. Now start all over and put them someplace new: Move the bedroom rug to the living room, and vice versa.
69. Buy handfuls of jewellike beads at a craft store. Put them in a big glass apothecary jar or footed vase.
70. Tired of your red coral? Spray it black!
