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5 Top Tips for an Easy Spring Refresh

Practicing being Safe at Home may have you discovering dark corners of your home that don’t get the T.L.C they deserve. Today, I’m rounding up 5 popular and frequently used spaces in your home that need extra care these days and how to accomplish a sparkling refresh without having to open your wallet!

1. Your Kitchen Sink

I’m starting with the area that is most important to me. Sometimes I notice it being the most neglected in homes. Simple tips to keep it always looking fresh are to:

– Sweep excess food down the drain with a sponge. Food and beverages can stain your sink surprisingly quickly and can leave a layer of gunk in the corners. Give your sink a quick rinse after you finish washing dishes.
– Frequently wash your dish draining racks. I’ve mentioned I like to keep a minimalistic drying rack on my counter – easy to clean and put away if I need extra counter space. I make sure I clean it once a week so my dishes are not resting over standing moldy water! Click here and here for my favorite dish racks! The second is intended for baby bottles but we use it for everyday items! So versatile and I highly recommend it.
– Keep a microfiber towel nicely folded by your faucet. It’ll help you remember to immediately wipe down the inevitable splashes from your dish washing!

2. Your Coffee Table

I’m so guilty of leaving coffee rings on my table. We had coasters – nice ones – my kids broke them. I know I can get unbreakable and universally chic ones like this but also, we could never remember to use them. Instead, we got an easy to clean removable tray to put on the table. If something spills on it, we just grab it by the handles and take it straight to the sink. It’s only purpose is to set drinks on (we have the coffee table books set elsewhere) so that space looks clutter free and tidy 99% of the time and it’s so satisfying. Here is one I absolutely love!

3. Your Bedroom

Make your bed every morning and hang your clothes back up when you undress at night!! We have an unspoken morning and nightly ritual between the two of us. No doubt, we break the rules on nights we’ve had too much wine or on mornings we had too much wine the night before… ;-). BUT anyway, here is our routine if you’re looking to add some simple tidying to your life.

AM: Wake up, open blinds to let some kind of light in, make bed and fold pajamas nicely to be set somewhere for the evening. If you sleep with a glass of water on your nightstand, take it to the kitchen to be washed.
PM: Remove clothes, immediately put dirty clothes in hamper, hang/fold and put away clean clothes, put on PJ’s. Do a quick scan of the room and put away any lingering pairs of shoes, accessories, articles of clothes. You’ll wake up the next morning feeling accomplished and a little more zen than if your room were cluttered with yesterday’s things.

4. Your Bathroom

Do you keep beauty/self care items on the counter? Get yourself a small organizer with compartments to separate by category. We have this one and it is sorted like this: My products on the left, things we both use in the middle, and his items on the right. Truth be told, I might use two compartments but… whatever. It’s space efficient and keeps things looking so much more organized during the day. The organizer is under $10 and an added bonus is that, since everything is in one container, we can pick it all up and wipe down the counter when needed.

5. Your Home Office

Last but definitely not least in this day in age. Where are you running your business while at home?

If you saw my post on Instagram, I wrote this post from the comfort of my sofa. What you didn’t see in the post was my notebook, multi colored pens and highlighters, and product print outs. After I’ve completed my daily blog or social post, I tuck away the assortment of desk clutter and sort it nicely in this bin. Sure, we have a home office as well but my husband is currently using it for his job and I’d much rather be feet up on a sofa with my laptop while he’s crunching numbers into Excel on his desktop. Either way, it’s so important to keep the paper clutter organized so you can stay on task during this period of staying safe at home. If you don’t have the budget for new accessories, simply take a stylish binder clip to your stacks of paper to keep them looking tidy. Bonus: This lessens the worry of your young children grabbing a pile of papers and throwing them across the room too!

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Stop Calling it Junk!

In an effort to give more purpose to the storge in your home, lets work together on eliminating the “junk spaces” in your home!

In all seriousness (and I’m hoping you can relate), I don’t only have one drawer dedicated to random finds… For example I opened our game night cabinet the other day to find a GRAVY BOAT in next to my puzzles, next to a pile of cookbooks, next to some deflated balloons. I have an entire cabinet dedicated to serving dishes and a bookshelf fit for those books but for some reason, I crammed them all in one teeny space. I’ve always had an eye for practical organization but we all take off sometimes so I’m not going to beat myself up about it. Recently I’ve been looking at these spaces and wondering if I can come up with a list of ways to keep them from turning into junk spaces again. Then it dawned on me that we don’t need a list.. we just need to remember to: CREATE PURPOSE!

Ok just kidding, this blog post would be boring if we didn’t have a list so let’s do the following:

  1. Think of where in the home the space is and whether you can categorize by the most common item found in that space.
  2. Take the basic rules of organization and empty, sort & TOSS. Does every pen in your drawer work?? Now’s the time to check and toss. Also, maybe you don’t need 20 black pens? Unless you’re a caligrapher, chances are you don’t… so TOSS!
  3. Create a new home for the loose items you find in the space. Can your batteries be moved to a utility closet? Is there a paperclip that can be put back in the office? Why is your gravy boat next to your puzzles? All questions I’ve asked myself in the past week.
A junk drawer turned stationary drawer

I didn’t start writing this post to tell you how to organize your junk drawer but to, better yet, eliminate it!

Doing so will help you take better care of your belongings. No more crumpled bills you forgot to pay. No more expired bottles of tylenol taking up space in a drawer… It’ll also alleviate some of the anxiety of not knowing where to find those things. If you open a cabinet or a drawer and it immediately gives you a headache, please do yourself a favor and empty it out now.

What’s your most recent junk clean out and what did you turn that space into? Leave a comment below!

If you need some good drawer organizers, click here.

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Green Home Without the Green Thumb

I have always loved the color green. There’s something special about every shade. From emerald to mint and everything in between, your space can really pop with a hint of the color. For an added bonus of oxygen and purifying benefits, create that pop with a live plant! Your home will look so much more put together and complete with a plant in a pretty pot or basket.

You don’t need to be a green thumb or have all of the time in the world to care for some of the most beautiful house plants and I’d like to challenge you today to go to that local nursery you’ve been eyeing up and treat yourself! Before you do that, check out my list of favorite resilient houseplants below. Thanks for reading. Comment below with easy care tips or to let me know what your favorite resilient houseplant is!

THE DUMB CANE

Diffenbachia – aka Dumb cane

I bought this pretty plant at a Home Depot as an impulse buy and boy am I happy I did. Plant it in a moisture retaining soil and water with a couple of ounces just once a week and you’ll have a quickly growing plant. Please note that it was easily 1 foot shorter when I first bought this and grows in both in filtered sun and darker spaces (though growth will be slower).

THE UMBRELLA TREE

Shefflera – aka Umbrella Tree

I snagged this beaut almost 2 years ago at a pop-up shop for a very talented designer, LA plant girl. Check out her instagram, she has the most beautiful selection of curated pots and plants of every variety. This plant did take a bit to make happy. I had it in my son’s room and, unfortunately, not much light gets in there so it was wilting and looking sad. Once I moved it to a spot with filtered light, it came back to life. It hasn’t grown since I bought it but I’m ok with that because it fits my space. I’ve only been giving it a shot of water once a week. EASY!

THE CHINESE EVERGREEN

Agalaonemas – aka Chinese Evergreen

Local nursery find! This one was sitting a dark corner of our local nursery so I knew I had to have it. I actually ended up putting it on my nightstand (what a nice thing to wake up to) which obviously gets a lot of sun (see pic). It’s FLOURISHING! And it makes me smile every day. I just noticed a bloom on it today too and I was definitely not expecting any flowers from it! Honestly, it is in the same plastic pot & soil I first bought it in and I water it every few days with the small amount of leftover drinking water I keep beside my bed. See, EASY!

THE ELEPHANT EAR

Caladium – aka Elephant Ear

This plant came into our home already pre-planted in a pretty pot I bought from my favorite home store – Kate Lester Home. I moved it into this terracotta pot because it went with my daughter’s decor better and the original pot has a much better home now in our loft anyway. Since her room is full of sun all year round, I have to water it more frequently but it doesn’t take much to keep it healthy. It can survive in shady areas so go pick one up if you have a darker room that needs a beautiful pink/green plant!

THE DEVIL’S IVY

Epipremnum Aureum — aka Devil’s Ivy

How can you go wrong with a plant by this name? Why they gave it this name should really get you excited. Named because it is almost impossible to kill and stays green even when in dark spaces. I’m very seriously considering moving it to my powder room (with no windows) so I’ll update you on it’s reslience later. BONUS – it is drought tolerant and very easy to propegate so you can add more to your home!!

THE ALOE PLANT

Aloe Vera

Last but definitely not least is the Aloe plant. June picked the above one out herself and I found the perfect home for it on her bookshelf. I water it probably once a month and it not only stays alive, but is growing beautifully in the little amount of soil it has! It’s such a funky little addition to her bright room and I’m definitely adding more to our home very soon.

roxanaabdollahi Introduction

Hello

Welcome to Keep the Chic!

My name is Roxana Hetzel and I love all things fashion, organization, and parenting. I’m 30(ish) living in Southern California with my husband, 2 not-babies-anymore babies, and 2 pups and I get that there is more to our lives as a Stay at Home Mom than putting toys away or washing dishes.

Hopefully, after visiting my page, you leave with some very simple tips and tricks to create more balance in your life and looking stylish doing it. Whether it be packing for a trip, cleaning out your fridge, or essentials for your home… I will keep it chic through and through.