Never mind New Year’s resolutions, after spending so much time at home over the holidays, some of us are looking at our homes and thinking we need to get things in order.
For instance, you got a nice picture but you still don’t have a picture frame for it! It’s time to go shopping, and you can do that online. Take your dimensions and off you go! Or it may be you’ve got lovely photos of children and grandchildren and nowhere to put them; do yourself a favor and look for a pack of frames that will group them nicely together.
Lots of us have small collections. Modern sculpture or little tchotchkes, they get put on shelves but often you can’t really see them all that well, and they retreat into the background instead of being the highlights that they should be. It’s time to get some display lighting for your shelves. There’s plenty online, from classy brass fittings to hidden spotlights.
Got some books as presents? Get yourself a pair of bookends to stop them falling over, or to let you use the mantelpiece or the back of your desk as an impromptu bookcase. Some favorites we’ve seen recently are rustic cast iron ducks and chickens, art deco clear plastic, and adorable but expensive Fornasetti bookends in the shape of gorgeous Florentine palazzi.
A lot of people find cooking for the entire family over the holidays really shows up the deficiencies in their kitchens. First of all, if you don’t have a book rest for your cookery books (or iPad), get one; it makes following recipes so much easier. Clear up your counter; get a pot for your wooden spoons, hooks for hanging ladles and scoops, baskets for your napkins or cutlery.
If your kitchen (or doors, or furniture) just feels a bit drab, you don’t need to redecorate; just go shopping for new handles and knobs! Faceted glass knobs can add a bit of shiny glitz, and replacing old wooden knobs by contemporary chrome can bring a kitchen right up to date really easily.
If the holidays exposed a bit of clutter, you don’t have to do decluttering right now, but you might want to buy a few good storage containers to keep stuff out of sight till you’ve decided what to do with it. Or maybe it was just room to hang everyone’s coats you ran out of? That’s easy to fix by looking for a cute hook-board for your entryway or mudroom.
And it’s the January sales, so there’s no better time to go looking! But take a look on Vipon first, to check out the big discounts available on Amazon purchases.