How to Make Your Living Room Look Less Cramped and 10x Better
Apartment Therapy’s January Cure is a free 20-day program that’ll help you refresh your home for the year ahead. Sign up here and get all assignments delivered to your inbox.
The living room is likely the space you spend the most of your waking hours in, which means it’s usually the first place you think to decorate in full, especially if you like to host others in your home. Now that peak hosting season has passed, it’s time to give your living room a much-needed reset. Whether your living room is feeling cramped, cluttered, or something in between, here’s how to give it an instant refresh.
Day 9: Kick off a living room reset.
Today you’ll kick off your living room reset by removing any non-essential items. Then, in a couple of weeks, you’ll start to welcome back the items you truly want (and miss having around) — but we’ll get to that part later! If you live in a small space or don’t have a designated living area, go with the room that you spend the most time in.
Start by removing a few unnecessary items at a time. Think moveable (small-size) decor pieces, an extra lamp, candles, pictures, magazines, books, etc. You want to take as much as you can out, but leave the essentials like your couch, throw pillows, chair, coffee table, and area rug. Just get things as close to bare as possible or what you feel most comfortable with. Put the cleared-out items in a closet or bag — not the outbox! — and set them away in a temporary storage space.
Now, let your space breathe and give yourself time to see how you want to piece it back together. Who knows, maybe you’ll declutter some of those items and find new ones or decide to keep them all!
What did you remove from your living room? Let us know in the community forum.
More ways to participate in the January Cure:
- Sign up for email updates.
- Visit the 2026 January Cure page and catch up on assignments.
- Download the January Cure calendar.
- Activate your free membership to talk about all things Cure in our community forum, check off completed tasks, and track your overall January Cure progress!
The Cure Program is a tradition here at Apartment Therapy — it happens every January, April, and September. Click here to learn more about the year-round program and when to sign up.