Book Review: Downsizing Your Home with Style

Ok- time for another review! And this one- i'm totally excited for.

Downsizing Your Home With Style by Lauri Ward is a wonderful example of how we should all downsize our homes and lives.

here's the synopsis of the book from Amazon.com:

No matter your reason for downsizing--whether you are moving from the suburbs to the city, or you are trading the larger family home for a smaller, more manageable one, or perhaps you are just looking to simplify life--the transition can be a challenge. When you're moving a lifetime's accumulation of belongings from a larger home into a jewel box, the task can seem overwhelming--and so can your emotions. How do you decide what to pack and what to part with? Where will you put the contents of your attic, basement, and/or garage? What if the ceilings are lower, the windows are smaller, or your living room rug would fill the entire space? How can you use the stuff you've got so that it functions well and looks right?
Downsizing Your Home with Style answers all of these questions and more. A professional decorator in New York City for over thirty years, Lauri Ward is an expert in making small spaces both elegant and functional. From the initial evaluation of your new home to one year after you have settled in, she takes you through every step with detailed tips, lists of good buys, tricks of the trade, photographs, and anecdotal examples, so that achieving spectacular results is simple and affordable.
Learn How To:
Create more storage
Make your stuff look smaller and your space look bigger
Update and modernize your favorite old pieces
Multipurpose your rooms and furniture
Find a new home for the stuff you no longer need
Having less room doesn't mean that your home can't be even more stylish. Downsizing Your Home with Style shows you how to reduce what you have to the best and most loved, so that your new space can be even more special. After all, downsizing isn't about restrictions and sacrifice. It's about living more simply and calmly; it's about leading a richer life by having less.

When you start reading this book, it seems as though it's only about taking what you have and deciding what you really want and need for moving to a smaller space. At first, i was kind of put off because I thought that it wouldn't apply to me, because in my life right now- I'm not planning on moving to a smaller space. But if you keep reading, there are SO many tips and tricks that you come by, that it doesn't matter what size a place your are moving to or living in, you can downsize your "things" and make your home look better and be more organized. I've always looked at magazines and books with proffesional designed rooms/houses and wished that I could do that. I've always been interested in design and organization. I want my house to look good. It doesn't need to be proffesional looking by any means, but it would definitely be a perk!

like to consider myself pretty clean and organized. I'm not a packrat, i always pick up, i don't have piles all over my house, and i like to have matching things to make my rooms look uniform. With reading this book, I've come to find out some things that I have supposedly been doing "wrong" in the world of decorating. Simple things such as: how high or low to hang things on the wall, how to arrange your furniture to get the most out of a conversation area, what walls to put things on and which ones to leave empty, how to optimize my small space and getting the most out of what i have, how to update what you have, etc.

Now- if you've been to my home, you know that NONE of my furniture matches. It's either been given to us or purchased for a nominal price. One thing I've done, is sanding things down and refinishing them so they "match". doesn't cost much, but at least it matches now.

Whithin the first 2 chapters of this book, it made me want to get up immediately and want to rearrange my house. I was so motivated to try and make things look better so that it would not only "flow" better, but me more pleasing to the eye. I have since been moving things around and trying to create the sense of having more room- even though I don't.

This book can't come more highly recommended from me! Seriously- it doesn't matter what size house you live in. If you want to "get rid" of things and just try to make your own house look and feel better, this is definitely the book to read. I may be a little biased because I am VERY interested in design and decorating, but it really is a fabulous book. Very easy to read and has pictures to show Lauri's points.

Ok.... go get the book. You won't regret it, it's one of the best decor books I've ever read. Seriously. :)

Get it here!