Christmas will be here before we know it.

Fall is in full swing.

Especially this year when we’re all craving some familiar comforts and cheer.

But if you’re like me, you might have grown up with a connotation between seasons (especially fall and winter) and the accompanying décor that takes over the house.

I’ve always loved fall and winter, even more so Christmas. But all the little tchotchke items and decorations up the wazoo grate on my more minimal sensibilities these last few years.

I want to celebrate the seasons and have my home reflect them without being full of too much stuff.

Reasons I don’t like to over-decorate:

It makes me feel claustrophobic to have all my surfaces covered.
It makes for way too much stuff to find places to store the rest of the year.
It’s a lot more work to pull out the stored decorations and find places for everything.
Without fail, there are always things that don’t get put out because there’s just not enough space.
It takes a lot more motivation to set aside that much time on one day (or weekend) to pull everything out and find places for it.

My fall dining room table centerpiece with artificial flowers I can reuse and miniature pumpkins.

Reasons I like decorating without cluttering:

It still feels peaceful and tidy, but cozy and seasonally appropriate.
I don’t have much to store the rest of the year because I don’t have that much stuff.
It’s not much work to put out a handful of things.
I have room for everything, plus room to spare.
It’s exciting to get to put out a few things and spruce the place up, not draining or time-consuming.

For fall, I bought a few larger pumpkins to put on my front step to brighten up the entryway.

I also bought $20 worth of artificial flowers for a centerpiece on my dining room table that I can use year after year, and I plan to use some of the pieces for next summer (like the sunflowers) and some for the winter (like the red eucalyptus for Christmas). I added a few small (also real) pumpkins to the table to finish it off.

Embracing all the senses

This isn’t new, and in fact was talked about recently on a few of my favorite podcasts with guest Myquillyn Smith, but it’s important to not just decorate visually for different seasons. We don’t have to limit ourselves to only visual cues to the seasons.

Scent

One of my favorite things is to find a seasonal essential oil blend to diffuse. I did a quick Google search and found these fall ones that all sound so lovely, and there are more wintery and Christmasy ones, too! Think cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, pine, leather, and citrus.

I also am a huge fan of soy candles and their more subtle scents. I have my eye on a few like these, and this one has been burning on my coffee table in the last few weeks.

Touch

I am a big fan of blankets year-round, but now’s the time to break out the really heavy, cozy ones instead of the lightweight throws you might have out in the spring and summer. I just bought a cozy plaid flannel/sherpa blanket from a local shop, and I’m loving it!

I also like the idea of changing out pillow covers if you want more cozy feels and seasonal change. I personally don’t think that’s necessary in my home, but I did just change out our covers for a new look, and I love how simple it is to make that shift! Bonus: pillow covers take up so little space when they’re folded up that you really could change them a couple times a year without having a lot to store.

Taste

I’m by no means a pro at this, but there is something to be said for eating seasonally. There’s a reason certain foods are more prominent in one season or another— that’s their natural growing season. And guess what? They taste so much better then! Have you ever had a fresh apple in September and wondered why the ones you bought in February just weren’t the same? It’s because they’re a fall fruit. Even if you don’t refrain from buying them in the winter, take this opportunity to celebrate them by making apple pie, apple crisp, apple scones, or homemade applesauce!

Sounds

One thing I discovered recently was the recommendation (again, from Myquillyn) to have a seasonal playlist. I’ve expanded this to include seasonal movies and shows, although I realize that’s also something you watch visually. Are there certain artists, songs, or genres that feel more seasonally appropriate this time of year? Or are there movies you like to watch? I’ve been loving catching up on old Halloween movies on Disney+ myself.

Sight

Me at a corn maze that I went to with my extended family.

Of course, I can’t forget the most common approach to orienting our homes with the seasons: visual cues. Signs, letterboards, framed printables, wreaths, leaves, pumpkins, gourds, and whatever else you like. Soon it will be stockings, trees, stars, lights, and even more!

I love these items, but this is where I want to caution you that less can be more. This is the area in which things can add up quickly and cause you to have a lot of bins that you have to store for 75% of the year and try not to throw your back out moving around.

One thing you can do that isn’t sense-specific is look for a seasonal activity you can take part in. Those kinds of things allow you to celebrate the season without adding the clutter to your home. This time of year, I find myself looking for apple orchards and pumpkin patches to visit, corn mazes to wind through, hayrides to go on, and more.

Easy ways to reduce visual clutter

Think of things you can easily swap out. I aim for seasonal candles, essential oil blends, flowers, letterboard quotes, and a couple blankets. I’ll add some more for Christmas to really celebrate (Christmas trees, stockings, some mantel decor, lights), but I try to keep even those things from taking over the house. If you focus on things you can swap out season after season, you have less to store, which is a huge win! An easy way to do this is to print out seasonal quotes to have in a frame; you can store several in the back of the frame and rotate which one’s at the front without anything bulky to stash away. You could also change pillow covers because folded ones take up so little space.
Focus on a small portion of your home. Unless you want to go gung-ho and decorate your whole home (and if that’s your goal, more power to ya), I recommend focusing on just your common living spaces, and maybe not even all of them. I typically focus on just my living room, dining room, and occasionally entryway. I’ll be adding in the porch once it’s finished, too. But know that you don’t have to decorate your bedroom, bathroom, guest room, office, basement, or kids’ rooms unless that’s your jam. It’s freeing to realize you can just create a couple of decorated zones in your home and leave the rest in their “normal” state as a sort of grounding space so the whole house doesn’t feel different.
Choose items that you’d use anyway. Similar to #1 with swapping things out for the seasons, focus on items you actually use, like pillows, blankets, serving trays, and centerpieces, to name a few. That doesn’t mean that you need different ones for each holiday, but it can reduce the number of small decorative items that simply clutter up your shelves.
Aim for balance. If you have a gallery wall on one side of a room, you might want to leave the other walls empty or more simply decorated with one larger piece to compensate for the busyness of the gallery wall opposite it. Similarly, if one surface, like your mantel, is more heavily decorated, you could consider having another surface in the same space, like your coffee table, cleaned off. This provides visual balance and keeps the room from feeling cluttered and overwhelming.
Think about what’s flexible and can carry over from one season to another. I’m a fan of neutral items that can be out year-round, and that bleeds into my seasonal decorating. I don’t want tons of plastic orange pumpkins because they just don’t work in my space. But flowers that can be pulled apart to work for summer or winter work well. Cozy blankets I can leave out until March are wonderful. Vases, serving trays, and essential oil diffusers I use all the time are necessary, and I don’t have season-specific ones, even if I fill them with more seasonal things. If you can find more neutral bases for your home, you can mix up the smaller things that go inside without adding too much clutter.

Fall decorating inspiration from the internet:

Left to right: My Farmhouse-ish; Micheala Diane Designs; Beauty for Ashes; Smart School House; Boxwood Avenue