How To Decorate Your Home With Little Money

Happy New Year Everyone! Can you seriously believe that 2019 is now here??? I can’t. I honestly feel like 2018 whizzed by so fast, I could barely catch my breath. I wanted to get on here and chat to you about how you can decorate your home with little money. I get a lot of messages like:

“I wish I could do what you do, but I have no money”

“I wish my home was as beautiful as yours”

It drives me a little bit nuts because firstly;

A) The last 1.5 years we’ve been in bankruptcy and prior to that we had no money and no not for frivolous spending.. because our business that we put every ounce of ourselves into failed.

B) We live in not the nicest rentals as housing inflation here is insane. BUT I make every home we live in look beautiful with the key factors I talk about below.

So how can you decorate your home with little money?

It’s pretty simple. With these key things:

Something Salvaged, Something DIY’d and Something Reused.

I score the internet often and find used or salvaged items on Craigslist, Marketplace, Kijiji and Thrift Stores. Some of my absolute favourite items in my home are antiques passed down to me, or thrifted items. You can’t buy cool, keep that in mind.

Decorating doesn’t have to be expensive and honestly, if I’m being 100% honest with you, when I get those kinds of comments that I mentioned above, it makes me think of someone as not wanting to put the work in. I work so hard to make our home beautiful with very little and it’s easy to do if you put a but of elbow grease in!

So, how can you decorate your home with very little?

I like to pick one item in my room (like a rug) and pick one colour or texture out of that piece to bring to other parts of the room. IE: drapes, pillows, throw blankets and accessories. You also have to think what your style or vibe is. For me, I’ve always loved Modern Farmhouse. I like a good mix of beat up, vintage goodies with streamlined and sharp lines. It’s a good mix!

Once you’ve established your style, you can start looking for inspiration on the internet. I personally love Pinterest. I also have mini boards on Instagram in my “saved” folder.

If you’re anything like me, you score places like Amazon, Wayfair and Target for sales or clearance items too!

One of the best places to get clearance items is Amazon. A trick that I’ve learnt is to add your “Goal List” of items into your cart and watch it. It might take months, but quite frequently Amazon will drop prices drastically if it’s one of the last items in stock and then you can snatch it up.

I got Brinley’s Upholstered Bed on Amazon for $149 down from 600-something dollars. I also got our rug in our Master for $111 for a 8×10 down from 1600! It’s literally insane the deals you can snag on Amazon sometimes.

I also like to DIY pretty much everything. I make a lot of our pillow covers and no, I’m no seamstress.. I can barely sew. Even if you can’t sew on a sewing machine you can sew by hand. I DIY’d our curtains in every room.. and yes, I’ll have a better tutorial coming for you soon, but for now, here’s the one I did a few years ago.

I also DIY a lot of my decor. For instance, I purchase mirrors for next to nothing and paint them. I reuse items that other think are junk; old crates, vases, containers, bins, distressed old vintage art work etc. The possibilities are endless.

I like to spend time searching Pinterest for inspiration and then trying to replicate it in my own style with DIY’d or salvaged items.

I hope this helps with making your house a home. I know it’s hard not to envy others with more money or things, but honestly, I’ve been the most content and happy with my home when I work with what I have.

What’s your decorating style & where do you find the best deals?