from Styled, Staged & Sold by Melissa Tracey Charlene

The holiday season is over for another year, and many of us use this time to make personal resolutions for the year ahead — such as promising to lose weight, spend less money, make more time for ourselves and our families, and the list goes on. If you’re like me, it’s a rolling list that gets carried over from year-to-year, yet never seems to get accomplished.

This year, I decided not to do that. Instead, I’ve made a list of resolutions for my home.

Have you made a home resolution list for this year? If not, give it a try, especially if you plan on selling your home in the not too distant future. It’s never too early to get your home looking its best for potential buyers.

Here are a few items that are on my list in random order:

Tackle the basement storage area. Items that have stayed in boxes since our move five years ago are obviously items I can live without. If I haven’t used them or missed them in that time period, chances are I won’t yearn for them if they are given away. The key for me will be to not look inside the boxes. If I do, I know I’ll find an excuse to still hang onto each and every item. Maybe I’ll get my hubby to take a peek inside each box before they “exit the building” though (just in case).

Sort through all my old decor and design magazines. Recycle any magazines that are older than July of 2009. Then by July of this year, I’ll set out to recycle any 2009 magazines that are still left on the shelves. If I keep a rolling one-and-a-half year subscription on hand of the many magazines that I subscribe to, it will be more manageable and take up less space. I’ve bought magazine holders to store them in so that they’ll be much easier to get to if I want to refer back to a particular issue.

Cleanse clothes closets. This is a particularly tough one for me. I have a hard time parting with any of my wardrobe. You just never know when that certain outfit will become trendy again. Logic tells me though that by the time a particular outfit comes back into style, I’ll be way too old to pull off the look anyway, so it’s best that I listen to my head and not my heart and/or ego.

The toughest to let go of: the ‘Remember When Collection’. You probably have a few pieces from the same collection – a.k.a. the “remember when this used to fit me” collection. You know the ones that you hang onto for when you drop those few pesky pounds. If you haven’t worn it in one year, it’s time to let go. If you’re planning on selling your home, remember that people will look inside your closets.

Go through the china cabinet and donate items that are never used. After all, how many of my grandmother’s non-matching china teacups and saucers do I really need to keep? Right now, they’re jammed into the cupboard below my cabinet teetering precariously every time I open the door. It’s a good thing we don’t live on an earthquake fault line!

But to justify their purpose: I vow to use my good china and silverware more often and not just saving it for special occasions. In fact, I’m going to make a four-place setting of “my good stuff” more accessible by keeping it in one of the kitchen cupboards. That way, I can use it whenever I want. In the end, who is going to want any of it anyway once I’m no longer around? I know that our kids won’t be interested in anything that can’t go in the dishwasher. And if I get dish pan hands from using them, so what — I’ll treat myself to a manicure!

These are just a few items on my home resolution list, but I’m sure that as the year goes on and I work through my list, I’ll come up with other items to add as fast as I tick these ones off. But hey, even if I strike a few of them off the list, I’ll be ahead of other years.