The drab days of winter are headed out to make room for the bright, green days of spring! Celebrate this time of nature’s rebirth by sprucing up your home’s décor. Even on rainy days you can still enjoy the beauty that is erupting around you. Incorporate the sights and scents of flowers, trees and freshly cut grass by bringing them inside! These new features will lift your spirits and remind you that summer is right around the corner. Here are some decorating ideas to get your creative juices flowing!

Before the redecorating process, participate in a quick spring cleaning. Brush away the winter dust and cobwebs to make the interior brighter and fresher! De-clutter by forming a pile of unneeded items to give to charity or to sell in a future garage sale!

Attempt to create a room with a feng shui personality. A feng shui room displays an open, uncluttered space with balance, positive energies and soft colors. For more information, click here.

Color reappears in the form of blossoming trees, fresh green grass and lush flower petals. Bring this happy energy inside by painting an accent wall in a citrus color or by adding bright throw pillows or a throw rug. Or store your area rug away during the spring and just show off your hardwood or ceramic floor! Hang floral patterns inside frames for the wall or swap a neutral lampshade with a bold patterned shade!

If your outdoor furniture has been stashed away all winter and isn’t quite ready to reaffirm its outdoor placement, bring it inside for now. It’ll add new texture to a room and remind you of upcoming barbecues or pool parties to look forward to!

Spring fills the warm outdoor air with an abundance of fresh scents! Bring these smells indoors with candles or scented plug-ins that remind you of spring. Fall asleep to the calming scent of rain, get ready in the morning to the scent of jasmine and throw together a healthy salad to the scent of lilac or lily of the valley!

Integrate spring into your interior by adding nature accessories. Hang a bird house on your wall, accent house plants with bird feathers, line a mantel with a green vine or keep a vase of vibrant flowers on the dining table. If using fake flowers, fill the vase with colorful pebbles or grass.

Bring the natural elements of the outdoors as close to your interior as possible! If you don’t already have screens on your doors and windows, add them! This will allow you to open your interior to fresh air even during rainstorms and bug disruptions. For the sound of chirping birds, throw some bird seed onto your patio or front porch.

Replace window blinds with thin, pastel-patterned curtains. These curtains still block the light when needed, can easily be opened and will always remind you that the sun is making a comeback!

Introduce crystal and glass vases or silverware to any area for style that attracts the sun! Replace the heavy winter blanket that’s been draped over your couch with a soft, satin sheet and switch the old tablecloth with sheer linen.

Instead of buying new accessories, just move around what you have! Moving a decoration from one room to the other or switching the layout of the furniture can appear as significant as buying a new item. Store some of your furnishings away for a more open, brighter environment.

If you decide to only add one spring attribute, opt to turn a regular mirror into a room’s audacious showpiece! Purchase a mirror with a flat frame and then cover this frame with a vivid, artistic pattern! Every time you look into the mirror, the pattern’s dazzling energy will absorb into you.

Ah, spring. In many parts of the country, after months of protracted winter, spring signals the arrival of many long-awaited benefits: green grass, thriving flowers, a week of school break, the drawing near of summer. And this is truer nowhere than in real estate.

As lawns and landscaping begin to flourish, homes look better than they have in months. And even in areas of the nation where beautiful weather runs year-round, spring still brings increased interest in buying homes.

So, beyond planting flowers and trimming your hedges, what do you need to do to prepare a home you’re selling for spring interest?

In a word: declutter.

Now more than ever, it’s time to get rid of unnecessary clutter in your home, and here’s how.

1. Organize. This task will be easier if you break it down into manageable steps. So start with one room, any room. Then, in that room, start with one section: a bookshelf, a dresser, a cabinet, whatever. Pull everything from that section out and put like things together. (Example: all DVDs together and all CDs together.)

2. Evaluate. After you have all the items from that section pulled out in front of you and grouped into categories, figure out what you need to keep. If you use things (or legitimately plan to use them), keep them. If you don’t, get rid of them.

3. Purge. The stuff you will toss can go to several places. Does it have resale value? If so, look into eBay, Amazon or Craigslist. Would someone you like to have it? Give it away. If you can neither sell it nor give it to a friend, then the item should either go to Goodwill or a similar charity, or, if it’s in especially poor shape, it should be thrown away.

When you’ve finished with your first shelf or closet, congratulations! Step one, done! Now, move to the next section of your space, and repeat the steps. One area at a time, you’ll be able to work through your home and get everything in organized, efficient shape.

It hardly needs to be said, but the benefits of this task are numerous:

1. Order in your life. Imagine how wonderful it will feel to look for a book and know exactly where to find it, to go for a box of cereal and be able to pull it from the neatly stacked cereal shelf. Organization makes for a less stressful life.

2. Usefulness for your things. Through this process, unused possessions are either being discovered and used or given away to people who will want them.

3. Maximized selling appeal. Organized, clutter-free living spaces give your home’s quality characteristics the opportunity to shine. And make no mistake: sellers notice.

4. An easier moving process. After all, the whole reason you started this decluttering activity was to sell your home, right? When you do sell your home, you’re going to need to go through all of your things, packing them up, anyway. Why not shorten that process by doing a lot of the work now?