Friday Inspiration

Ooh it's getting chilly been looking at the heating a few times this week but holding off...other than that not much to report here so on to the home inspiration...

I love all the colours and light here, with the blue door, stained glass and tiles. It's such a cheerful hallway!

The rustic shelves and chopping boards here caught my eye, but the light fixture is also pretty cool

Have a great weekend everyone!

If we owned our flat

I'd change the carpet. We've found the carpet to really not be very hard wearing at all, look at the state of the living room one.

It seems to snag and pull really easily and really soaks up spills! We've never had this at previous houses and I really hate to think I might lose some of the deposit on it but what can you do? The cats are pretty good at not clawing stuff and use their scratching post, so I don't think it's their fault, but the carpet just seems to snag so easily.

The rest of the flooring is OK, the bathroom is hard wearing black lino and the wood floors in the hallway and dining room are great, the kitchen is a little marked and under the oven is actually a bit warped and chipped but it's still got a bit more life left in it. I'd just run the same flooring through the whole that is in the hallways, it's a nice dark wood and looks great with the white walls.

Ah well, nothing we can do but nice to think about it!

Um...

I've been feeling a little uninspired about the flat recently, the big decluttering mission was kind of started by this. I just felt like I was sick of everything we owned and it all is just rubbish and I want to get rid of all our crap and start again...ever have those days? I'm having one of those months I think!

I just keep looking at our flat and wondering how we got so.much.stuff. Seriously, where does it all come from!? I also feel like it's getting in the way of the place looking how I want it to. We have things I don't really love but that are functional and we would need to save up to replace (bed, turtle tank, coffee table) which is fair enough and I know we'll get there in the end (although sometimes I wish we could just buy it all now!) but there is also a lot of stuff I just cannot see why we have!

The the flat just looks so 'blah' sometimes, I just feel like it's not how I want it to be. I don't know if it's just frustration that the to do list isn't progressing as fast as I'd like, or that as we've been living here nearly a year now the novelty is starting to wear of the 'new' flat. This might be a part of renting, not being able to really make your mark on a home so always feeling like it isn't quite right. What do you think? I know certainly at our last rental I felt a lot more ownership and pride in the decor there as we were allowed to paint and do DIY (although I didn't want to spend too much time and money doing anything much). Whereas here the place is nicer but we aren't allowed to do anything so it maybe is a bit impersonal. Any tenants out there feeling the same? 

However, we also have a lot of stuff that I just do not like at all that were mistake buys, or gifts, or were once useful but now serve no purpose other than getting in the way. I think this might be clouding my judgement a bit as I just can't see past it all at the moment (e.g. the living room is a constant mess and there are always things out on the kitchen counters as the cupboards are full so I'm never happy with those 2 rooms). Once I've decluttered the place I'm really going to try not to keep so much but I know I'm a hoarder at heart. This is the problem really, I can never get rid of things one by one, it takes a realisation like this that we are getting overrun with things to kick start me into getting rid en masse. Hopefully once I've gone through this process and gotten rid of some clutter I might be able to 'see the woods for the trees' and I might get a bit more inspiration...

Don't worry there are plenty of projects and posts coming up it's not like I'm out of ideas, just feeling a little unsure of what direction I'm going with this place at the moment.

Do you know any ways to keep the amount of clutter to a minimum? Please share if you do!!