A couple of unfortunate things have happened to my blog over the years moving servers, changing platforms, getting a new camera, and a few mysteries that have caused some glitches in thousands of old blog posts. Certain links from posts have disappeared (along with the words that were linked), some internal links have a superfluous date in the URL that makes the links lead to nowhere, and some pictures in 2016 were replaced with photos from 2018 that happened to have the same name. All of that to say, I’m working through a few old posts each day to fix this issue and, while the work is tedious, it’s been nostalgic looking through some of the posts from 8-10 years ago. As I’m getting ready to do more painting projects in our current house and thinking through decorating decisions, this post particularly caught my eye. It was a Dear Reader post about avoiding decorating mistakes. Do you remember that series? It included posts like Dear Reader – to the one who feels like it’s too late and Dear Reader – to the one who feels lost in the crowd. You can find the full series HERE if you’re interested. In those posts, I would either answer a specific reader’s question or write to a large group represented by comments or questions I saw repeatedly. Sometimes, I think, I was also writing to myself.
I was fixing some links-to-nowhere in one of those posts and reading it actually made me laugh and it also reminded me how much I’ve grown. I thought it would be fun to revisit and allow present-day Marian to insert a few comments.
Dear Reader (to the one who keeps making the same decorating mistakes),
We should start a club. We’ll call it the “I have not learned my lesson” club or the “Oops, I did it again” club. (Hey! We have a theme song if we call it that.) We can have meetings and everything. “Hello. My name is Marian.” Psst. This is where you say, “Hi, Marian.” I’ll fill in for you. “Hi, Marian.”
“I just had to repaint my walls for the third time, because I have not learned my lesson. I know I should buy test pots and paint a swatch to make sure I like the color first, but I feel like swatches are for weenies and I’m not scared of color and I want my walls painted yesterday, so I’m going to buy $75 worth of paint and spend an entire day painting a room that I’ll hate by dinnertime.”
I (present-day Marian) will insert here that I haven’t done that in a few years, although I am already thinking about repainting our bedroom. I am a bit wiser now, though, and simply painted it white to give myself a fresh start. It might be a little boring, but at least I didn’t hate it by dinnertime. It’s been that way for two years and it’s given me time to think and plan without feeling rushed. As I’m thinking about avoiding decorating mistakes from my perspective today, I don’t think that mistakes are something we necessarily need to avoid. I think it’s fair to say I have learned more from my mistakes than my successes over the years. What we want to avoid is wasteful spending in those mistakes or throwing good money after bad. We just don’t want to make costly mistakes if they can be avoided. Low-risk mistakes, though…bring them on.
I imagine a lot of us are in this club. We buy fabrics and spend time making curtains that we pretend to like, so our spouses don’t murder us, but in our gut, we know we missed the mark. We pick out a tile that makes us sick to our stomach once it’s installed. We splurge on a piece of furniture that we love in everyone else’s house, but we then realize that it doesn’t work in our house at all. In short, we keep making the same decorating mistakes. We rush things along and ignore that little voice that tries to remind us we’ve been here before and it didn’t end well, but we go through with it anyway because we want it done! We are now conditioned to associate decorating decisions with regret, a knot in our stomachs, wasted money and time, and perhaps failure. So, we either stay on the merry-go-round and hope we’ll get it right somewhere along the line or we freeze. I’ve tried both.
So, what do we do to change? How do we get the end result that we want when we don’t know exactly how to get there or even exactly what we want? I don’t think there is a 100% fail-proof answer, but I do think there are things we can do to get moving in the right direction.
avoiding decorating mistakes | stop the madness
Just put down the paintbrush, back away from the sewing machine, and halt the shopping trips to your favorite local haunts. I know that most of us are doers and we want to keep doing something, but plowing in the wrong direction isn’t going to have a happy ending. Take a step back and assess. What do you love about your space? What is the feeling you want to evoke? Does your room feel like that? What style feels most “you”? Does your room reflect that?
Present-day Marian will insert here that most often, we need to edit and refine more than we need to add. If something isn’t right with a room, the prevailing inclination is to add more stuff to it. Maybe another accessory, painting or pillow will be the missing piece. Usually, if a room is wrong, it’s wrong at the core, and taking some time to edit and refine will be more beneficial (and much cheaper) than just adding more things.
avoiding decorating mistakes | collect images that reflect the look you want
For me, this is an incredibly helpful step. Once you have a bunch of images collected, look through them all in one sitting. What are the common elements? Colors, finishes, furnishings, and styles that keep repeating in your favorite images? Put your observations in a list form and use that list and those images to create a plan.
Sometimes it’s easier for us to see our style in someone else’s home. We know what we like, but we’re not 100% sure how to execute it. In addition to looking at inspiration pictures, take some pictures of your room and compare them with your inspiration. The pictures can also give you a fresh eye to see what’s working in your room and what’s not. It’s human nature to become blind to the things around us and pictures can give us a fresh perspective.
avoiding decorating mistakes | armed with your list & photos, assess your room again
What pieces will work with that plan? Are there pieces you should sell/donate? This is a time to edit and undo things you’ve done in haste or without any real plan or direction – the whims. It’s also the time when you can give yourself permission to get rid of things that you know in your gut aren’t working.
I am in this stage now in our current house. We moved in almost two years ago and I feel like I’m getting a better sense of what’s working well and what I want to tweak or change. This is a step that takes time. In the end, the time spent assessing and planning is worthwhile, though, because it will help you get your spaces right the first time (or at least closer to right or right for now.)
avoiding decorating mistakes | add with intention
Everything you bring into that room should fit with your plan and I’m not speaking strictly from a design perspective. If you have toddlers and need a kid-friendly play area, that should be in the plan. If your husband has an oversized recliner that is essential for football season, yes, that should be in the plan, too. But everything you bring in, from the furniture to the fabric, accessories to art, should fit into that plan. Setting some boundaries for yourself. Being focused on staying within those boundaries will help you avoid those impulse buys and quick decisions that usually don’t end well.
I’ve gotten better at making those decisions over the years. I used to buy pieces that made my heart flutter only to realize they weren’t right for my house or I didn’t even have a good place for them! This wasn’t too much of an issue when I sold things regularly, but it became a problem when I didn’t. I felt like I needed to hang onto that piece and make it work. In the end, I have sold things on Facebook marketplace and I still think I’ll have a large tag sale to clear out all of the things that don’t really fit in this new house. At some point, you just have to let go, even of special things.
avoiding decorating mistakes | be patient
If you really want a specific piece of furniture or fabric or rug or whatever, don’t settle for something that’s not even close. I’m all for bargain shopping and trying to get the look for less, but sometimes a piece is worth waiting for. Again, I know we’re doers; women of action! We want the room done! Patience is not our style. But, just imagine that moment when the bed frame of your dreams is delivered to your door or you finally find that perfect piece at an amazing price on Craigslist. Those things are worth the wait and are rarely ones you’ll regret purchasing. And show yourself some grace. I know my intentions were always good as I bumbled my way through some of my rooms. Some of it is trial and error and if you misstep, just regroup and keep working towards your goals.
I have also gotten much better at being patient and I think that comes with age and experience. I also think it has come with expanding my hobbies and pursuing my curiosity. Instead of having my home be my business and hobby, which meant I was thinking about it and working on it constantly, I became much more content with my home when I had other places for my creative energy to play. I still enjoy working on my home, but I don’t feel the urgency to get it all done as fast as possible and I don’t put as much pressure on myself. I tend to do a spurt of projects to get some things done and then I work on other things for a while. It’s an approach that is much more balanced!
Soon, we’ll all be so good at making decorating decisions that we’ll have to start a whole new club. Maybe “The United Sisterhood of Makeover Enthusiasts.” USME That has a good ring to it. And we’ll probably need a support group for our husbands as well… We’ll get there, friends.
I smiled at this last line because, at the time, working on furniture and room makeovers was my favorite thing. That was evident in the content of my blog and you can find thousands of posts dedicated to furniture makeovers and room projects in the archives. In the last 5-7 years, though, I consider myself to be more of a creative enthusiast than a makeover enthusiast. I have embraced the enjoyment of pursuing many creative avenues, even though it might not make for a concise resume or clear job title. I dabble in whatever captures my fancy at the moment, even though it makes me feel scattered sometimes. My home is more of a living canvas and not as much about being blog content.
So, if I were going to create a whole new club for my fellow former makers of decorating mistakes who are now a little older and a little wiser, I would make a club for creative enthusiasts. We would share our creative endeavors, celebrate our failures every bit as much as our successes, and talk about the books we’re reading and the people we’re learning from. And we would honor creativity in all mediums from home and furniture makeovers to painting and collage, gardening and music, dance and writing. We would applaud the specialists as well as the generalists. We would encourage the very young, telling them it’s not too soon to start and their naivety and ignorance can be a benefit. We would encourage the very old, telling them that it’s not too late and their wisdom and life experience are the best materials of which to create.
It would be a pretty awesome club. But, I suppose this blog and those who read it are, in a way, already the members. Every day, when I sit down to write, whether I start the post with “dear reader” or not, I am writing to that club.