It's January, 2008, a new year brimming with potential. You've likely made commitments to get fit, drink less, etc. But what about your home?

Closet organizing systems -- complete with poles, shelves and drawers -- can be bought off the shelf, in versions to fit most budgets. But it's the add-ons, called closet accessories in the business, that are taking closet decluttering to the next level.

Dave Parsons turned to his inner guy when he ordered a dark kitchen for his new 5,000-square-foot home.

Forget the stacks of interior decorating magazines choking the coffee table. Turn off those Home and Garden Television makeover shows, and boot Martha Stewart from your lexicon.

When Conde Nast announced last week that House & Garden, the venerable magazine of American design and decorating, was being put to bed, friends called to congratulate me and our team at House & Home. To them, it meant one less magazine competing on American and Canadian newsstands, and for many of the same advertising dollars.

Who says art has to hang on walls? Jesse Lance thinks it can be underfoot.

Working with talented, patient consultants -- specifically architects, interior designers and landscape architects -- is the best way to learn about design. Over the course of a project, your sensibility is refined and you better understand the designed world around you.

It takes compromise to help children plan their private spaces, according to leading designers with young clients. From an adult point of view, the room has to be functional, while the young client may want wild colours and fantasy.

My bathroom counter has two lives. A public life, in which it is a creamy expanse of honed white marble, topped with a few beautiful perfume bottles on a bevelled glass trivet, white roses in a silver julep cup and two cream hand towels perfectly folded by the basin.

Neutrals. The very word conjures up images of ... neutrality. Of fence-sitting blandness and endless beige-ish grey.