WHEN YOU MOVE INTO A NEW HOME, THE FOCUS TENDS TO BE ON WHAT YOU’LL NEED TO BUY OR REPLACE. WILL YOU NEED A NEW BATHROOM, OR KITCHEN, OR SOFA OR BED?

And even when we’ve lived in a place for a while, if we start to grow tired of our home, the first question tends to be, do we need to spruce the place up with a quick fix (a few candles perhaps?) or with a more major renovation? Or perhaps it’s time to make a bigger change and sell up and start again.

What we don’t tend to ask ourselves is whether what we need from our home is not more but less. Perhaps if we could browse our bookshelves without being confronted by all those books we’ve been vaguely meaning to read for years, or open our wardrobes without seeing the outfits we kind of wanted ‘til we got them home spilling out, we’d actually feel a bit more relaxed.

Sometimes instead of thinking about all the fixtures and fittings and gadgets and accessories that everyone tells us we ‘need’, there’s a lot to be said for looking at the bare bones of your home and working with them. Look for companies like Glow Glass that’ll help to bring the outside in with simple glass rooflights, floors and bi-fold doors. Adding some contemporary glass is a great way to bring natural light and views across the garden into your home, which can be especially welcome at this time of year when we tend to feel a bit deprived of sunlight.

Once your layout’s looking the way you want it to, perhaps it’s time to consider whether there are any pieces of furniture, accessories, or maybe even bathroom ‘essentials’ that just don’t seem so essential anymore.

The His & Hers team loves Marie Kondo’s ‘The Life Changing Magic of Tidying’, which we’ve used to edit down our belongings to just those that we really appreciate. And like much of the rest of the nation, we’ve developed a newfound obsession with the Instagram sensation Mrs Hinch, whose cleaning videos are strangely mesmeric and yet motivational all at the same time.

Sometimes there’s a strange sense of satisfaction to be found in having a bit of a clean and de-clutter and leaving everyone else to battle their way through the crowds at Ikea at the weekend, not that we could give up the lure of meatballs, Daim cake and flat-pack furniture forever, you understand. We’re just cutting down, not giving up, when it comes to ‘stuff’. Because who wants to contemplate a world without book or shoe shopping. Not His & Hers, that’s for sure!

We’re very proud to bring you this feature in association with Glow Glass. They’re the inspiration for this feature, but the words and the dash of advice are all our own.

For more inspiration for your home, please pay a visit to our interiors page.