Home Decorating: Out with the Old
I am not an expert in home decorating, but I know what I like when I see it. Over the past five years of marriage, my husband and I have established our own sort of style, and collected pieces that correlate. Much like in my clothes, I tend towards classic pieces; I love trends but I get overwhelmed by what I don’t understand, so I stay in safe zones, wearing and buying mostly items that won’t go out of style in the next five years. My furniture all have classic lines, and will hopefully weather the next twenty years without suffering too much fashion decline. Pillows, throws, pictures, and accents, however, are more on trend and current.
I started to review old pictures from when our daughter was born the other night, and I realized that our house looks virtually the same as it did then, and some of the accents are a little bit dated. Usually when I start realizing something like this, I go absolutely nuts and it drives me crazy until I can afford to fix it. But between life and budgets and wanting to live simply, it’s hard to do a home decorating overhaul and feel faithful with our finances at the same time. (Am I the only one who could spend hundreds at Target in one hour? Let’s just say my husband put a ban on Target shopping for a while. Ha!)
So, I’ve come up with a plan. Perhaps you’re like me, and you can’t afford to buy all new stuff. There isn’t any shame in that. In fact, I think it’s kind of tragic when we can buy what we want when we want, without having to work and plan for it. There is something rewarding about buying an item you’ve saved and planned for ahead of time.
Thankfully, we are coming up on garage sale season, and I’m slowly taking inventory of our house, deciding what will be sold and what can remain. The list of items to sell is getting a little overwhelming. I am hoping, between some clothing items and random lamps and crosses and accents, I can make a little bit of money. And that little bit will help me start purchasing the more current pieces that will help update our home.
If you’re anything like me, walking into a home decorating store can feel daunting.
I get intimidated by loads of options, and I lose focus on my actual shopping objective. That’s where Pinterest comes in handy. I’m making a “secret” home decorating board of items that I’d like to incorporate into my house. It takes about ten seconds, and I can start collecting pictures over the next few months. If you’re even more detail-oriented than I am, you can make secret boards for every single room that you want to update.
I follow a few accounts whose home decorating style I like on Instagram, and I subscribe to a decorating blog that features price-conscious purchases and a lot of DIY tutorials, and I’m slowly building up ideas. One of the upsides of our world of bloggers and social media is that ideas are EVERYWHERE. So start researching, find your preferred design style, and start collecting ideas.
With this sort of home decorating plan, its almost like I become armed against the greed that comes over me when I’m walking through a store and suddenly feel compelled to buy every trendy item to help our house out. I can walk in and start making a mental comparison, will this work in what I’m going for? Will it actually be on sale when the times comes that I can afford to buy it? These mental questions eliminate a lot of frivolous spending, and they help me stay on track.
Some of the rooms in our house just need a fresh coat of paint, a strategic piece placed here, a cluster of vases there, an updated pillow case on that couch, etc. It doesn’t have to be massive. Sometimes we see pictures of rooms and feel completely defeated by the amount and scope of design that we’re missing in our homes. So start small, and only look at things that you can digest and make sense of, because you won’t ever decorate a room until you can make sense of the decor you’d like to have in it. And most of all, celebrate the creative mind God gave you. Your tastes are specific to you, and that’s not wrong! That’s how God made each of us–unique and with our own set of likes and dislikes. Be comfortable in your own preferences, and then start walking out that design in a faithful way financially, with intention and purpose, and you just can’t fail!
Do you have any home decorating tips to share?
Copyright © Charis Freije, Moms of Faith®, All Rights Reserved
