I swapped big tidying sessions of my awkward living room for mini resets for a week – now I’m hooked

A dark blue living room with built-in bookshelves around a window. A white sofa beside them, opposite a grey arm chair. .

For the longest time, I have followed the same approach to tidying my living room – leave the ‘lived-in’ look for as long as I could cope before snapping and tidying everything up in one go.

The terms ‘coping’ and ‘snapping’ should have been enough to signal that this approach to maintenance was simply not working for me or my home. I was positively drowning in stuff, and it was affecting everything from my productivity to my ability to relax.