OHI HOME STYLE

Yesterday, at our installation, I overheard a handyman remark on our home staging work to his colleague. “Man, this is great. It’s so easy looking in here. I wish my house looked like this. I have no idea how I got so much stuff!” His reaction is commonplace in the post staging process. Almost everyone has too much stuff. It’s why so many of our occupied staging clients work repeatedly with our recommended decluttering expert, prior to our home staging.

One of the rare gifts of 2020, has been the opportunity we have all had to self evaluate our living space. At my house, we finally switched out the dated exterior lights we inherited with our move-in two years ago. It was our intention to switch them out immediately, but two years later, during our home stay, I finally executed my plan. My husband, seeing the new fixtures once installed, remarked, “Why didn’t we do this sooner?” We meant too…but the days passed, the months passed, and that turned into two years of neglect.

What have you noticed you have neglected in your space?

And now that we’re getting into it – what has accumulated in your home?

During home stay I finally found time to edit my closet. I had boxes still packed and shoved into the corners from our move two years ago. My sixteen year old is an expert organizer and I implored her to help me purge and make sense of my mess. So many clothes that no longer fit me were taking up valuable hanging space. Handbags I hadn’t used were dusty on high, unreachable shelves. My daughter helped me make a plan for the space. Cold weather sweaters are now stored in containers on the high shelving instead of the purses, since cold weather in Ojai, California is still far away. The bags I am keeping, are now accessible on lower shelving. I can use them! The joy of an uncluttered closet, lead me to expand my edit into the bedroom. Nightstand drawers were cleaned out. My dresser drawers are now half full for the first time in years. I feel lighter. It’s a new world.

Tips:

• Schedule time for de-cluttering and organizing
• Enlist help if you need encouragement
• Get rid of anything that doesn’t fit
• Throw out broken things or items missing pieces
• Give away belongings you haven’t used in years
• Make a “use plan” – make items more accessible that you want to use often like seasonal clothing.

A few years ago, I staged the home of a retired cancer doctor. She was a brilliant woman, renowned in her field. I was surprised to see how this smart woman was living when I first met her at her home. Her furnishings were extremely worn. Her bedding was faded and her pillows were flat. “When did you last do any updates to your home?” I asked.

“We never have. We moved in after we got married and I guess I just haven’t thought about it since,” she said. I knew my client had just celebrated her thirty fourth wedding anniversary. This explained the tired look and feel of her home. She also had a plethora of piles on every available surface. She had alot of stuff! Her home felt heavy, dark and filled with all she had accumulated over the span of four decades.

I ended up staging my client’s home while she was on vacation. She thought it would be best, as she was feeling overwhelmed just from talking about the process. The result of our hard work was another transformed, beautiful, light, spacious feeling and tranquil home. We execute these transformations on a regular basis and I was excited to reveal the outcome.

“Oh my,” she muttered, over and over again when she returned home. “It’s like a hotel. I never imagined it could look so beautiful. Do people live like this?”

“Yes,” I answered. “You can live like this from now on.”

I was thrilled to hear from my client months later, after a quick sale of her staged home and her move out of state. “I want to thank you for giving me permission to live better,” she said. “I bought new sheets yesterday. I feel like I’m twenty years younger.”

It’s always a good idea to lighten your load and beautify your life. You have time.

Over a Decade Ago…

my husband and I moved to Ojai, California with the goal to begin a new life with our then two year old daughter. We were excited about her progressive pre-school on one hundred and fifty glorious acres, the nearby organic grocery store that carried all the ingredients for our primarily vegetarian meals and the view of the Topa Topa Mountains that were to become the new backdrop of daily life. We loved the feeling of Ojai – the easy attitudes, the relaxed living, the idea that we had finally found what felt like home. We purged items from our former life in Los Angeles. The act of doing so, made us feel lighter and unburdened. We became simplified versions of our former selves. Our Ojai home became more personal, filling with hand made items from new friends and curated living pieces acquired in our new town. We began our design company Ojai Home Staging and Styling in 2009 with the intention to help others simplify, revive and renew their lives too. Now, over a decade later, we have grown and become OHI HOME, LLC – a larger version of our vision but a company with the same true intention to help all of our design and home staging clients find their ideal lifestyle vision.

Lila Glasoe Francese March 6, 2019

Hours Agonizing Over Color…

One of the number one reasons we get contacted by clients is indecision about color choices in the home. Weather it be an accent wall, kitchen cabinetry, woodwork, a powder room…choosing color requires a lot of courage. Color trends, like anything in design fluctuates with the current market. Keeping up on recent web posts or reading current magazines and catalogs is a simple way to stay abreast of what’s new in the world of color.

Dark teal has been showing up everywhere and we love this bold color. When choosing a color as bold as teal it’s important that there is an in depth period of exploration. In our search for the perfect teal (pictured above), we looked at magazines, read blogs and ordered color samples to try on our walls. The final chosen color, Dark Harbor by Benjamin Moore, was perfect. We used it to paint the back wall of a dining room to extend the feeling of depth in the room. Bold dark color often achieves this goal. We have accomplished the same goal in other rooms with shades of navy and black.

Bold color choices aren’t just for walls. A design trend we love is choosing bold color to help anchor cabinetry in a kitchen. Cabinetry no longer needs to all be the same color. We have done kitchens using one color for upper cabinetry and another for lower cabinetry. On the kitchen island pictured above, we used white paint on the cabinetry and the dark teal we used in the on dining room on the accent wall. This helped anchor the expansive kitchen and also added connection to the open dining/eating spaces.

Updating dated interior woodwork…

We are all familiar with the dated orangish stain color used in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. It was used in bathrooms, kitchens but most prominently on interior doors. More often than not this stain was used on solid oak which is a high quality solid wood. There is no reason to replace a perfectly good door. Instead, consider paint. With the rich dark stained floors of this house, choosing black was the perfect option. Again, try out many options of the color you are choosing. Black, for instance, has underlying hues of red, purple and green. Dunn Edward’s Aristosheen Black was the best for our project.