Once again, the holiday season has come and gone. If you are like many others, your home was lavished with decorations throughout December as you created a warm and colourful sanctuary from the cold to celebrate the season. And then January came. All of the ornaments and glitter got packed away into boxes and your home went back to being normal again with everything in its typical place. It’s usually then that you start hearing comments from friends about how dull and drab everything feels at home both inside and outside.

With the lustre gone, it seems like the holidays never happened because everything is right back to how it was. Along with the cold and nasty weather, this is exactly what contributes to the winter doldrums and that empty boring feeling. 

But there are solutions. Without breaking the bank, or even spending a penny, it can be quite easy to make some changes in your home to beat the winter blues. Try some of these ideas.

Rearrange Your Furniture

Why not completely reshuffle your furniture? If it works in your space, this can often make your home feel like new.

Rearrange Your Pictures and Art

If you find that you are not able to change your furniture arrangement, the next best thing to do is to change the locations of the pictures and artwork you have hanging on your walls. Often, this is the last thing most people will do as we are all generally creatures of habit and once something is hung on a wall, we feel like that’s where it belongs forever. You will be amazed at how the character and feel of a space can change simply by modifying what is on the walls and where and how things are hung.

Rearrange Your Objects and Collectables

Just like moving the art on your walls, finding new locations for your pottery, ceramics, sculptures, bric-a-brac or whatever else it is you like to keep on display can also help to reinvigorate your space and bring new life to objects that may have been previously lost in clutter.

Change Rooms

If you happen to have a spare bedroom that’s not being used, perhaps this is a good time to turn it into an exercise room, craft room, computer room, games room, home office, music room, library, or whatever else you can think of. The idea here is not to rush out and buy a whole bunch of new furniture, but instead to take a look around your house to see what can be pilfered and scavenged from other rooms to make the new space happen.

Add Some Plants

Sometimes something as simple as some fresh living greenery or a beautiful arrangement of cut or dried flowers can add extra warmth to a space and take the edge off the winter chill.

Add a Feature Wall

Take a chance and add some drama to a space by adding some colour on a feature wall. Bold or subtle, it really doesn’t matter. It is amazing how changing paint on one wall can change the whole dynamic of a space. Paint is relatively inexpensive, and with low odour latex on the market, painting in February without keeping every window open for ventilation is not impossible any more. 

Add an Area Rug

Even if you already have wall to wall carpeting, the addition of an area rug can be a great tool to add colour and character to a room, or to help define spaces within a room. Today there is a huge variety of inexpensive area and throw rugs available on the market. If you already have a rug in one place, maybe its time to simply move it to a new location to create a bit of a change in your home.

Regardless of what you decide to do to make your home more interesting and livable, remember that just a few simple changes can make a world of difference. Although the winter can often seem long, dark, and isolating, it really doesn’t take much to make a few changes around your home to help break the monotony of staring at the same four walls all the time. 

Your space is what you make it!