It doesn’t matter if your living room features the latest high-end furniture or the hottest sustainable flooring. Clutter keeps any room from looking its best. Too many accessories and personal items can make a room appear less spacious and messy.

So, how can you hide the clutter, keep the room functional and still express your personal style? Hire a professional organizer. A professional organizer can give information and provide resources needed to de-clutter. In addition, this person will deliver objective advice based on a professional assessment of your home. That’s a big contrast from listening to friends and relatives with no experience or education on the matter.

Hiring a professional trainer can be a life-changing experience. That might sound too dramatic but the results can keep your home looking stunning. As an added benefit, once you learn more about your style of management, improved organization skills can spill over into other parts of your life.

Hiring a professional organizer is different than hiring other professional help. Due to the nature of the job, it’s not as easy as hiring the highest paid person. The organizer will be working in your private space and dealing with your personal issues. Because of the personal aspect of the job, make sure you think about the interview carefully.

Consider the following questions: Am I comfortable with this person? Do our personalities click? If you feel awkward or uncomfortable around each other, you can waste time and money. Have you verified this person’s skills? Check for membership in the National Association of Professional Organizers or a similar group. You need to go beyond documents and talk to former employers, look at other projects or discuss background and experience. Can you communicate effectively with each other? If you want the best possible results you will need to share your ideas, listen to feedback and trust the judgment of the professional organizer.

The challenge of interviewing and hiring a professional organizer can be time consuming. But, you will forget all about the time invested when you experience the results of working with a professional organizer. You and your home will sparkle once you lose all that clutter.

Author Bio

Rigette Saycon is regular writer for NC Design Online, North Carolina’s premiere resource guide for interior design and home décor.

A decade of the millennium is over, and high end design and contemporary furniture is quickly transporting us into the future, with shining chromes, clean lines and bright whites. There are several key trends that are going to be characteristic in the next year, all of which will add style and elegance to your home.

One of these trends for 2011 is the Lustre trends, which will certainly bring your everyday items into a new decade and add contemporary class to your home. This particular trend is about adding shine and polish to everyday items. TV cabinets, storage units and tables will be glossy and reflective, designed in luminous chromes and silvers. This gives a clean and shining appearance to your living space.

Another key trend for 2011 is colour, the bolder and brasher, the better. The twist on bringing colour into your home in 2011 is that the colour is not limited to key pieces of furniture such as sofas, tables or accessories. Colour in 2011 is meant to inject some fun and unpredictability into your living space. Previously unnoticed objects such as storage boxes and cabinets are streaked with bright and bold blues, oranges and pinks so that colour is used in new and unique ways that makes perfectly functional items, though not key style pieces, become the new focus of your living space.

In contrast to these splashes of bright colour, whites will be a large part of key design trends in 2011. This trend is characterized by expansive white furniture against clean white walls, with the focus again on glossy shines and crisp lines. Once more, complimenting your furniture styles with matching wall colour is changing traditional design rules and bringing us into the future of contemporary design. Also with this trend, mix whites with chromes for a bright, unpolluted feel.

This trend works well when incorporated with others. If one trend is fully followed throughout your home, it may result in a linear style that lacks personality. The key to good design is to incorporate your own character and flair to each trend.

This article was written by interior design expert on behalf of Amode.

For the Home Office

Many people like to pick out classy looking barrister book cases for the home office. These are useful and attractive pieces of furniture. If there is one room that you want to be organized, it’s the home office. Think about adding a book case not only for books, but also to get rid of some of the filing cabinets you may have been collecting for years. Bookcases can serve as an excellent, open way to store a lot of paperwork and are much more attractive than filing cabinets. If you put anything on a shelf or counter top, a bookcase can be a more attractive and orderly substitute.

What to Look For? Shelves.

Solid wood bookcases are very attractive, but many lack the availability of adjustable shelves. If you are O.K. with the shelves being static in size, then a solid wood piece is an attractive addition to any room. However, if you want to change things up over the years, you might want to get an adjustable model instead. These are not quite as sturdy, but there are many attractive bookcases available these days to flatter any room’s design.

If you want a quick way to add some interest to a home office or family room, bookcases are the classic route to take. You’ll feel better after getting a handle on things that needed to be organized, and you will have a room that has an interesting and functional new piece of furniture in it.