Budget Decorator: Shop Your Home for a New Look

DM Designs Helpful and useful article! I tweeted it to pass on your creative ideas. Thanks.@DMDesigns

Rough Linen My grandmother had a saying (used when my brother dropped his ice cream: happy dog!) "It's no loss what a friend gets." I rarely miss items, I usually love the space they leave behind.

brshoegirl I loved the idea of using a dress in any room. Thanks

tcufrog I'm a big fan of repurposing items. Our former coffee table is now an activity and art table in our small play room. The TV bench we used for our living room TV in our old house has been repurposed in our new house as a nursery changing table. It's low and long enough that I can sit on it while changing my son and now that he's a toddler he can climb down from it without help. The media drawers work great for clothes and linen storage. When my son is potty trained pillows and cushions will replace the changing pad and we'll use it as a reading bench in his bedroom.

olldbobbi Usually when I'm done with something, I am done with it and ready to pass it on to someone else. I don't think about repurposing it. I like things that are new and fresh. I do not like having a lot of "stuff". My husband, however, saves EVERYTHING. He still has his entire 80's wardrobe. I would love to find a way to repurpose that. Agh!

tcufrog Bobbi P...
My husband had way too many t-shirts he had collected cluttering up our closet so for Christmas one year I paid to have them made into a lap blanket. We keep is stored away and bring it out while reading or watching a movie on cold evenings. It's one of the best gifts I have ever given him.

olldbobbi tcutfrog - I think that's a wonderful idea. But if I were to even bring that up, he would have very hurt feelings because, after all, what is wrong with keeping your 80's clothes?????

olldroo When my mother passed away at 92 years of age, it took absolute months to sort through her lifetime accumulation so now my daughters constantly remind us of this and our need to minimalise so they don't have to face the same problem when we pass. It is quite an effective guilt trip.

smoore A great way to motivate oneself to declutter is to sit through a few episodes of Hoarders. Someone I'm always in the mood to tackle a closet or two after watching that show.

Becky Harris I love this - I have art and objects and lamps in and out of rotation all the time; it is a bit of a way to justify my light hoarding tendencies, but it's a lot of fun to switch up a look with things you may not have remembered you owned. Your article has given me a lot of ideas for using things in new ways. Thanks!

Charmean Neithart Interiors, LLC. Laura, this is brilliant. Your ideas are not only creative, but very true. If you think of your house like the meals we eat everyday, it only makes sense to switch it up a bit. Great ideabook. Thanks for sharing. Charmean Neithart

olldroo The best part about this is that it lets you see things in a totally different light and things you were too comfortable with suddenly can become very sad and dated. So easy then to identify what absolutely needs to go.

Great article Laura.

jeanettchka The photo of the dining space used as an office is beautiful, but i was wondering where you would plug in the lamp sitting on the table in the middle of the room? And what about electrical cords - where are they? I would love to have some of my furniture placed away from the walls, but if one doesn't have electrical outlets in the middle of the room how does one do this with lamps on end tables, for instance????

olldroo Solar ????? :) Great spotting Jeanettchka.

ellie48 This IS a good post Laura. I believe in repurposing. Turn that amazing old door into an oversized coffee table. Use the flip top console as a casual dining table, a desk or a games table. Yes, dressers and chests can be used almost anywhere. This is a good post thanks so much.

Emily A. Clark I loved this article, and totally agree with the move it or get rid of it philosophy if it's something you don't love.

Thanks for including my dining room turned office. For those of you asking about the lamp cord, I'm able to run a small cord directly to the side wall and since we never go around to that side of the desk, it works fine for now. (I obviously cleaned this up for the blog pics!) We're testing it out to see if we permanently want/need a lamp there and if so, may eventually go ahead and have a floor outlet ran.

mzmcdaniel Great ideas. I especially loved the idea about painting mismatched objects. I have several blue and white items that I now know how I can still use them --paint them! Thanks.

trasgorshek Ugh, wish I would have read this a couple of weeks ago. Just gave my old dining table to my nephew, we could have repurposed it for a desk downstairs. We will be finishing out the downstairs next year and I keep looking at it wondering how ere going to get certain furniture down there with very tight corners to turn. That table would have worked good for awhile since we can take the legs off to transport. Now I'm kicking myself in the bottom.

I am going to try spraying old accessories, I've done mirror frames and picture frames but never thought about old jars, vases, etc. love it! Great post!

retromomma I've held HUGE yard sales (the kind when people line up at 5am) once a year to declutter (groovygranny I can totally relate, inherited stuff and then like to junk) and always love itwhen people tell me about how they will reuse the items.I promised my better half that we'd have no more after this last one but I still have stuff so looking forward to the re-cycling aspect. Love the idea of painting (inexpensive but sentimental) objets. Use it or lose it!

Rhonda Kieson Designs Another great post, Laura!

gokats2 Pretty carve, Solid walnut rails from a youth bed as shutters for a stairwell window. Buy a hutch on which the top can be lifted off (and the top of the lower chest is finished nicely). Use the base for cabinets in a mudroom and hang the cabinet in the laundry room for custom cabinet look.

9numv My front door opens directly into the living room, which is small. I purchased a three-panel divider of mostly glass and a 4 x 6 rug. The rug is where one steps upon entering. The divider sits at the short end of the rug, extending into the room. A small bamboo table sits to the right of the door against the wall and serves as a place to set gloves or the mail. To create the effect of a hall I placed a console on the wall to the left of the front door. It serves as an entertainment center with a small TV and a radio. Above it is a large dramatic picture. On the shelves are books. Straight ahead is the kitchen, with the sink in full view. I chose white fittings for it and paint for the window in a color that leads one to see beyond the white fittings and the green window trim. I changed the window trim to flat surrounding trim with squared edges and added a small shelf of the same green for holding a few small decorative items. I also removed the cutesy, fake wood valance above the sink and replaced a boring hanging light with a recessed one. My guiding light is always "Make something out of nothing." Sorry I have no photo.

wingoms Use a low, but large rustic coffee table with large drawers on both sides and a pop-up surface to use as sewing station - low legs keep the table from blocking the large windows that the piece sits beneath; large drawers on both sides accommodate fabrics and supplies; pop-up surface allows for both the portable machine and a nice work surface and the best part that everything cleans up nicely after I am finished! Just pop a few pillows on top to look like a sitting bench. Divine, yet productive!

Beatrice Lawson We are constantly putting in practice these ideas in our home. I have moved chests and dressers from one room to another, same with bookshelves and cabinets, some have been repainted, had their hardware changed and now look totally different. Small trays are also great - they can be used to contain clutter in pretty much any room from entrance to bedroom to bathroom. We have also re-hung shelves and again, it changes the room... at one time they were widely spaced and holding art in the LR, now they are in my office holding pics and my own crafty creations. I love re-purposing - it's green and heck, it's free!
However, we also try to get rid of things that we have not used in a year or so - thank goodness for kijiji and craigslist. It helps declutter, it stays out of dumps and it contributes $ to the next project.
As far as hoarding goes... I do fight it and mostly succeed but I come by it honestly - my dad keeps everything. Guilting him does not work - I guess it will take a few weeks (hopefully in the far far future) to donate, recycle and otherwise get rid of all the stuff he is accumulating. As long as I don't have to live with it, I am fine.
With my own hubby I insisted that stuff he no longer wears should go and he finally gave in. I guess it depends why a man holds on to it - in our case it was mostly DH not wanting to take the time to sort through it all, and he also did not want me to do it, just in case I threw away some of the things he did want to hold on to. Bribery and cajoling finally worked!

drjosiepc1 These are very good tips for using the things everyone seems to have somewhere in the house. Recycling them into new uses is not only fun but money saving. I'm not a great fan at all of dishes on the wall, but at least they were confined to a few clustered together. I especially appreciated the twin bed set-up, since my office is occasionally a guest room. I agree that the key is to use unusual fabrics or textiles as the cover for the bed, along with pillows that look great with the bed cover.

kjtmmc We are redoing an old cottage. In the proces, we needed something interesting for a wainscoting. So, that started a collection of yardsticks. Even my friends started scouting them for us. It turned out so super wonderful that we are forever showing off the laundry room.

Vibrant Design Great tips, and beautifully illustrated. Thank you

Sudha Thanks Laura. Good and useful article.

Sammiibubbles Holloway @solar, if wanting to use a desk in the centre of a room you can fit some discreet power points into the flooring, depending on the rooms decor you can find some beautiful brass ones that when not in use just look like a small brass tile in the floor, obviously a qualified electrician is needed to do this

zombieknit Dear Bobbi, you might think your husband is bad but mine has tee-shirts dating back to 1973! (It has the date of the tournament on it). I thought of getting some of his classics, like that one and the 2 Olympics ones and framing them, as they are both art and history (with the added bonus that he wont be able to wear them again). Plus, it is honoring his past.

I love the idea of re-purposing, seeing things with fresh eyes, and am thinking about our soon to be spare bed (as we move to a house with fewer bedrooms). Thanks for the post.

astraea @GroovyGranny - I've had to help clean out a lifetime's collection, after my grandmother, mother & an aunt died, and helped after an uncle died. I too know what it's like, spending 4+ hours/day for weeks/months, going thru everyting .. and they weren't "hoarders". I wouldn't wish that on anyone, and have cut down on my small collections!

When I bought this house, I realized that despite the cap lighting in most of the rooms, I wanted some lamps & chandeliers, to make things more cozy. Because the great room is so large, I did have to get the electrician in to install a floor outlet for one lamp. I was lucky that area is over an easily accessible crawl space!

As for "repurposing", I have 2 pieces from my grandmother's mahogany bedroom furniture, that I use for additional linen storage; they haven't made furniture as good as that in years!

olldroo Astraea - the hardest part is identifying the things parents were emotionally attached to and deciding what to keep and how and where to keep it. I have so much paper memorabilia my mother kept, my job one day will be presenting it in an album as a record of my mother's life and times for her descendants. Fortunately, I sat her down many years ago and had her identify old photos to include them as part of her life story. If only I could find an extra 10 hours in a day!!

astraea GroovyGranny - I just got a fireproof file cabinet last week, and consolidated all the folders with "family memorabelia" in one drawer. Since I also recently got a new printer that scans, I can start capturing things electronically, to better share them with family members! I also have documents from Europe, that I've been unable to have translated by friends & family members, so scanning will allow me to post material like that online .. hopefully with better results! I do have one item that most people would find very bizarre .. but I can't bring myself to throw it out. For most of her life, an aunt who spent her last years with me, had long hair she wore in a braid, made into a bun. When she was older, she cut it much shorter, so it was easier to care for. I have that length of braid that was cut off, carefully wrapped up!

olldroo Astraea - that is a good idea, especially being fireproof. I am an avid scrapbooker, which takes up way too much of my time, but I love to create albums to combine all these things and tell a story as I go. I will also include all the information I have on my mother's family tree. My printer scans also and I have sent copies to others this way but everyone prefers the album idea, probably because they don't want the clutter, better in my home than theirs'. More interesting for my grandchildren too, they love browsing the albums I have done everytime they visit.

Love the hair braid - just the sort of thing that I find very challenging to find an interesting way to safely store, but I would want to display it for the interest. My present challenge is my mother's 21st birthday key, a large timber shape key that opens to reveal signatures of all the guests at her party and festooned in ribbons of every colour. I also had my mother's headpiece from her wedding veil and pieces of lace from her dress, but I happily passed them onto my niece who is very family minded and appreciates the value of things like this. She would even like to wear the hairpiece when she gets married. I also have her christening dress but it hasn't been stored properly and sadly is disintegrating so I may have to let it go.

jcapehart My family frequently swaps furniture and accessories. I currently have a table and a chest. On loan is a lamp, a rug, and a picture. No purchase, no storage.
joycee

astraea Groovy - I think my cousins were a little weirded-out by the brain, so I don't know if displaying it would be a good idea. I have no children, and I doubt my cousins' kids would want any of this stuff.

peggy1204 My sister and I used to do this at each other's homes all the time. We had a ball rearranging the furniture, then walking all through the house to find just the right "new" thing to place in just the right spot. Our husbands knew that when they came home from work things may be in a different place......kept them guessing!!

jeanettchka Re: Relative's hair braid. If you have other mementos or small historical items that relate to the person, make a shadow-box display of the items telling a history of her life.

astraea Jeanettchka - Thanks; I actually thought about that! For her 92nd birthday, I made a large college of photographs taken throughout her life. I'm sure I could put something together .. after I got thru the thousands of other family photos I've got! (LOL)

jeanettchka Astrea - when my late husband's aunt and uncle celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary several years ago, I put together a collage of pictures taken throughout their lives (one of them was with my husband when he was about two years old - he was 72 when we had the anniversary party for his aunt and uncle). They loved that frame with the snapshots better than anything else they received and his aunt kept it on her dresser for the rest of her life! Gift don't have to cost a lot to mean the world to someone. Love to recycle and enjoying this article and all of the comments!

astraea I'm sure your parents loved it, as did my Aunt at her birthday party! My effort kept growing, with all the great material I found, until it was on 2 posterboards! Several months later, the rest of the family got to enjoy it - unfortunately - at her funeral. But I think it brought back nice memories for everyone. I still have it wrapped up & stored.

olldroo I accidentally stumbled onto a way at looking at your home from a different perspective the other day, take photos of your room or an area in your room and it is amazing how often you will see it in a totally different light, especially if you compare it with the fabulous photos on this website. I think it is easy to get comfortable with things and a photo really shows up how tired or dated something can be. Move things around and take more photos, the camera seems to see things the naked eye doesn't. How did we exist before digital cameras!!!

Love all you lucky people with rellies living nearby to swap items with - what a fabulous idea!!

MaryJo Like kjtmmc, I have been collecting yardsticks. I don't have enough yet for a project though! And I completely agree with groovygranny about viewing rooms via a camera shot.

I've found that for displaying items, they look more cohesive or like a grouping if put on a tray. I use old picture frames for that. Just slip in a solid color paper, or a picture from an old calendar - and you have a tray. I also use mason jars to display collections such as buttons, shells - anything small works.

olldroo Ooooh, thank you for the photo frame idea. They became very trendy as gifts and I have more than I will ever use. Have quite a few stained timber ones, I could even paint. Love it.

limakhanam Its my dream my husband & i'm stay with love

Always Nesting Love the idea of a dresser in the entry. We love linens and are always in need of more storage.

fmg0825 This is a question - how do I deal with furniture parents gave me (traditional secretary) but does not fit my style (modern eclectic)? I can't paint but probably still need to display. Any ideas?

olldroo fmg - that is really difficult. I'm assuming this is an antique so could be very valuable. Does it have a family history at all? I know it is hard when you want to create one specific mood for your home, but maybe you are trying to be a bit too perfect with it??? Can you create a special place for it, polish it till it shines and embrace it - an entrace way could be good or a landing if you have stairs. If you love it and appreciate it for what it is, you will find visitors to your home will do likewise, even be envious of you having such a beautiful piece that no one will notice it doesn't quite 'fit in'.

RuthSings I found that I used my dining room (the largest, brightest room in the house) only 2 or 3 times a year. I decided to make it my sewing studio/office. All the furniture remains, so if I need to I can still use it as a dining room. I cleared out the dishes from the highboy and store fabric and supplies there now. I am very happy using my ginormous dining room table to lay out entire quilts. It does look very different than normal, but most of the people who visit here are also artistic, and most look around and envy me the space.

Gretchen Maurer I use a pedestal crystal bowl for my make-up it keeps the table top of the sink clear, a creamer for q-tips and the sugar bowl for those small drinking paper cups....chic and free

Modern Age Designs, LLC I don't attach myself to things very much. I use them and then re-use them and then I let it go because I believe as many have mentioned that I do not want to leave my relatives go through stuff and be emotionally confused whether to let things go or to keep them.
A year and half ago when my mom passed, she had me give away many of her clothing she hadn't even used and could not because of her skin condition, which could not tolerate anything but the softest cotton. I have always been one to use things and then give them away and move on ahead. She used to appreciate that I keep my my belongings to a minimum. I do re-use things but only to an extent. I switch the decorative items, for example, the stuff from downstairs goes upstairs and the stuff upstairs comes down and gets redistributed to different rooms.
I hold people near and dear not objects or things. We come empty-handed and leave empty-handed - so why collect things to the extent where it can become difficult for others to take care of after we have passed.
I believe in living a beautiful life filled with our favorite things but I make them very selected.

Modern Age Designs, LLC Great article though. I might re-purpose a thing or two to display in a new way.
Thanx

olldroo Modern Age - Yes, it is easy to move on with things we buy ourselves, I never intend anything I buy to last forever but the problem is many objects people hang onto are often things given to them by very special people in their lives or in some way hold very special memories and seeing that object brings special thoughts back, especially if the giver has passed, sometimes even refocussing a person on their life or part of it. Memories fade so easily but an object can not just bring back one memory, but sometimes years of memories.

kathicalif29 Astrea - Regarding your aunt's long hair you might want to consider donating it to a charitable organization that makes wigs for cancer patients. Contact the American Cancer Society for referrals. I did this w/my own hair which was 6 feet long (I'm only 5'2") when I decided to cut it off. Wow, what a relief to my neck. Never realized how heavy it was. It brightened the life of a number of patients. I kept a small strand, put a ribbon to hold it at the top, had it framed & it's now hanging in my guest bath but I move it around to walls in other rooms. ..KathiCalif29

Dove Cochrane I used the furniture protectors after we had our carpets cleaned to create a work of art. It was accepted in my communities annual recycled art show. The frame was recycled too.

kathicalif29 To Dove Cochrane - Congratulations on your recycling creativity. Nice piece of art work.

elvasue FABULOUS INVENTIVE IDEAS!!!!! THANKS!!!!

Modern Age Designs, LLC I worked on a project for a friend who had an extremely tight budget. And I did just that I looked at her accessories furniture and everything that needed a facelift. I will post pics of it very soon. In a week or two. You can take a look at my profile for the photographs. The Project will be called Shining Wire Way.

We shopped her house for all things and decided what to do with each piece and how to give it a fresh new look and it looks fabulous. When her husband walked into the space he couldn't believe his eyes. He couldn't speak for a few minutes and took it all in. It was the best expression.

melinda1977 @ Dove Cochrane I absolutely love this piece. Amazing to think that it is created from recycled furniture protectors!

Dove Cochrane Thank you Melinda,
I admit to buying the 3 red squares and placing them under table legs for 24 hours to complete the look. It's titled "Three Women Laughing"