Whether you call it a living room, lounge or something else entirely, this particular room is the place where you primarily relax, rest and just generally spend quality time. It’s also where visitors, guests, friends and family tend to congregate so clutter is the last thing you want in this area. However, because it is such a busy room that gets a lot of activity and attention, it actually serves as an hotbed for clutter to build if neglected for too long. As a result it’s one of the rooms that should get the bulk of your attention.

Reading material

As the living room is a place for relaxing and chilling out, a common activity that people tend to do is lounge on the sofa and read. Whether it be a newspaper or magazine there are two possible actions here to avoid them all cluttering up the room. Firstly, have a paper rack of some kind to store them in. This is especially useful if you take more than a day to read the paper or you share it with others who may not read it straight away. This is a much more organized approach than having magazines and papers scattered over tables, chairs and the floor.

The alternative option is to read the magazine or newspaper there and then and simply dispose or recycle it. This is much more efficient, especially if you live alone or don’t share your reading material. Remember that a magazine is not like reading a book, which can take days to get through and you may even keep it afterwards. A newspaper is out of date less than twenty four hours after it’s printed and most magazines don’t fare much better either. If you happen to come across something interesting, rip it out and file it away in a reference folder. There is absolutely no reason to have month old magazines lying around. If you haven’t read it by then you never will so process it and buy something more up to date to read.

Other media

People commonly have music, films and books kept in their living room so it makes sense to process them in a similar fashion to the way I described with clothes and toiletries. If you haven’t watched a DVD in months you really have to ask whether you are ever going to watch it again. Or maybe you have an old cheesy CD from when you were younger that you actually now find a bit embarrassing. These sorts of products are very easy to sell on thanks to the popularity of sites like eBay and Amazon, and if that doesn’t work just swap it with a friend. If you want to be cutting edge you can even go fully digital and make it a non-issue. You can now pretty much download all the music you will ever want (legally of course!) and films are following the same route. The only space you really need is somewhere to put your iPod. There is also the option to rent movies instead so you never have a case taking up space for more than a few weeks. As for music, you could try getting a CD bag or box, which can hold many more CDs without taking up anywhere near as much space as when they are kept in their cases.

Regardless of what route you choose, just be sure to get all your physical media off the floor. It’s quite a common practise to keep DVDs and CDs piled up in a corner. However this is hardly attractive nor the safest way to store them. People can kick or knock them over, they can get battered by the hoover, attacked by an over eager pet… If they are worth keeping they are worth looking after. Put them on shelves! Remember to put everything back in their cases too while you’re at it. If you aren’t willing to look after your music, book or film collection then do you really care about keeping them at all?