I have moved house six times in the last five years. From Nottingham to Scotland, Belgium to Scarborough, and then finally settling in York.

One of the most valuable things that I have learned which has made each of these moves as painless and fuss free as possible is that if you theme your whole house, organising, unpacking and arranging your new home comes naturally.

If you choose to centre your home on a few key elements and colours that you love, it becomes incredibly easy to rearrange rooms, move furnishings between spaces and easily adapt to the new spaces which you are given.

Even if you don’t move regularly, a themed home allows you to move items as needed from room to room, thus minimising the need for waste. You don’t need to buy new cushions for the spare room, as you can easily borrow from another space. You don’t need to worry about lampshades suddenly not matching when you redecorate, or the need for new curtains.

By theming your home, you reduce the need to buy, therefore saving you time and money to spend on experiences and moments which you will remember. New curtains as the room has been decorated, or a weekend camping with the family?

Now I am not saying you need to live in a house without character, without colour and without personality. You can theme your home using any palette you like, as long as you can move items between spaces easily. Think complementing colours, timeless rather than trend setting furniture, and neutrals for accessories which can live anywhere.

As you theme your home, you also tend to have less clutter. You don’t need to buy bedding in every shade to match each room and end up with enough to service a small hotel. As your rooms also look more ‘matching and together’, you also notice the noise from the excess much more.

One of the biggest misconceptions people have when it comes to minimising your home is that you need to remove everything from your surfaces and walls. They see it as having no photos on the fireplace, no books on the shelves. This isn’t the case.

A home which has been minimised can contain any number of items. They just need to be either:

Functional

Sentimental

Has a purpose

So you certainly don’t need 12 towels in a household of two. But you might want the vase full of flowers on the coffee table, because for you, it has a purpose. It brightens up that room.

My home is themed with a simple colour palette. And my rooms are filled with the things that matter to me.

It makes moving things between spaces so easy. It also means I have less waste from things in the home as anything can go anywhere.

How to start theming your home

Start simple, find three things you love in each room, and use these as the basis for your theme.

Take the living room for example. It might be a painting, the sofa and your vintage footstool. What do they have in common, can you begin to start theming everything you purchase for that room around these items?

It takes time to properly theme your home, so don’t worry about doing it overnight. It’s taken me five years and I am almost there.

Choose a colour palette, and try to keep major items within this so that they have flexibility around the home.

Take an hour to reduce the clutter which is already taking up some of your space.

Then when you’re done, sit back and relax and enjoy your new fuss-free, limited waste environment.

Tomorrow – Tackle Your Junk Drawer