Frugal Fridays - *True* Home Decorating for Less

Frugal Friday Tip: You can tastefully and inexpensively decorate your home to make it cozy and inviting. The trick is to know what you want, effectively use what you already have, be savvy about where you look for bargains, pray and wait. From my perspective, frugal decorating is no more than understanding the bones of basic decorating and then applying the art of bargain hunting and faith that God will provide.

If you don't understand basic decorating, you won't be able to tastefully decorate even if you have a huge budget. A great book to get started is Christopher Lowell's Seven Layers of Design. I don't necessarily like his style, but breaking decorating down into basic parts is a good place to start. I'll mention other books further down.

As I alluded to above, my idea of "Decorating on a Dime" is not $1000 per room like those "cheap" home decorating shows or even $1000 for the whole house, unless you're installing vinyl siding too. When I say frugal decorating, I mean it cost me less than $500 to decorate all 3500 square feet of the house we bought early last year - extra furniture included. The most expensive room so far cost about $35. So how did I pull that off?

1. Know What You Want: When I started keeping house almost 13 years ago, I didn't know much. I thought decorating meant hanging some pictures on the wall and having a few knickknacks around, maybe a few lace doilies or fake flowers. That's how the women in my family "decorated." As I was exposed to other families and styles after I got married, I began to realize there was more to decorating than I had been taught.

Knowing what you want can take time if you don't have a natural flair for decorating or never really considered it. The cheapest way to find out what you like or want is to head to your local library. Over the course of a few weeks, check out every decorating book they have and browse the decorating magazines, then make notes and start forming ideas. Use Google to find decorating ideas. There are some really good articles online. Try adding style description words to your search like: country, Victorian, cottage, etc.

2. Effectively Use What You Already Have: I've always been a bargain hunter. After Rich and I married, I started gathering some more home oriented things like pictures and flower arrangements. But even if I hung or rearranged, our home was still drastically missing something. Several years ago a dear girlfriend in the same decorating fix stumbled on Lauri Ward's book Use What You Have Decorating. This find was key for me. Finally everything I'd been trying to do clicked all at once.

Ms. Ward explains how to place furniture and accessories to make spaces cozy and inviting. Once you understand placement, your entire outlook on decorating changes. You might not feel like spending a dime. After reading the book I started moving furniture, rearranging the stuff we already had and wa-lah! It was bliss. Finally OUR HOME looked like home should look. I loved it. I can't recommend this book enough. She wrote a companion book entitled Trade Secrets From Use What You Have Decorating. It has tips and tricks that are helpful, but it's unnecessary gravy and doesn't repeat the basics.

One idea I can't stress enough -- think outside the box. Just because an item "belongs in the bedroom," don't discount that it might fit and function much better elsewhere in the house. I have two dressers in the dining room holding my good dishes and linens. I don't need them in the bedrooms, but I need something to hold my good dishes.

3. Be Savvy About Where You Look for Bargains: Although yard sales and discount stores seem like a good place to start finding great pieces less expensively, don't presume they're the only place you'll find frugal bargains.

• Most of the paint I purchased to decorate our current home came from the OOPS paint selection at our local Home Depot. I paid $5 a gallon for Behr. I saved hundreds of dollars through this alone. We have a large house - about 3500 sq.ft. and everything needed paint because it hadn't been done in years.
• Find the bargain bin or clearance table at your favorite craft store. I've found stencils, paints, stamps, lace, wallpaper borders and other decorating tools for a fraction of regular price. Don't forget to haunt the clearance aisle when everything is on sale for 50% off! Sign up for sale flyers to know when that is.
• Look for stores going out of business. Another girlfriend found an oak mission dining table top (with no legs) at a fine furniture store that was going out of business. It was $100. Knowing that we were looking for one, she called and I bought. My parents got a local Amish gent to make mission style legs and now I have a gorgeous dining table. It only cost us $200. (To be truthful, my parents bought one leg for us as an anniversary present. The Amish gent crafted them for $100 each.)
• Stop at yard sales late in the day. Sometimes things are half off, other times they are free. Just in the last two months I got 3 matching ocean prints for the kids' bathroom, a gorgeous like new decorative bird cage, 3 huge Waverly floor pillows, several lamps, a couple smaller prints and a beautiful desk all for FREE! I've gotten other great deals at the end of the day. I picked up a 5x7 area rug for $10, woven cotton throw blankets for $1 each, 19 older wooden seat folding chairs from a church for $5 and other goodies like that.
• Some town dumps or transfer stations have "swap shops" where people can donate things they want to get rid of. If you want it, you take it or if you want to leave something, you can. We got our favorite living room chair that way! I also got all the back issues of Taste of Home, a green Depression glass pedestal bowl and an old fashion typewriter table that holds my sewing machine.
• Companies or stores paring down their office furniture. We've picked up nice filing cabinets for $10 each that now house my fabric. We also found pharmacy cabinets that once held prescriptions that now hold my sewing supplies.
• Stores that are purging stock. I found $50 a roll wallpaper from Sherman Williams for $1 a roll. They were getting rid of their in-stock supply. The border rolls they were using as samples were in a bucket for free. I picked up several and now have one in my kitchen. It was a perfect fit.
• Look for holiday or seasonal decorations after major holidays. Some things can be use all year. I've found wonderful seasonal items for 75% off or more. I decorate with string lights all year and generally get them for 25¢-50¢ a string after Christmas. I have harvest-y type things for autumn that I get after Halloween or Thanksgiving. In December, I'll be putting up big red plastic bows that I picked up for 10¢ each last year after Christmas.

4. Pray and Wait: This is the key to frugal decorating for Christian women. If you can't master #4, the rest of my suggestions probably won't work for you. God knows your needs and wants. He is more then happy to meet needs, and sometimes our wants too, in his time.

I can not tell you how gracious God has been to me and our family in providing so many of our needs and wants this way. I think the thing that amazes me most about praying and waiting, is finding exactly everything I need and quite a lot of what I want. Things like, well, the perfect pink paint for Ariana's bedroom and two gallons of it, like I needed. A perfect green to match the pink with both being the ideal match for the Wallies I planned to decorate her room with. Then of course was the desk I longed for. When our third son graduated out of a toddle bed, we needed an extra bed. Not only did God provide, but it was a rather expensive sleigh bed in solid cherry plus three sets of almost new Waverly sheets - for free. I could go on and on about silly little things that God has provided. I won't, but I encourage you to trust him and see what happens.

Some of My Other Favorite Decorating Books:
* How to Decorate: The Best of Martha Stewart Living
* Pottery Barn Workspaces (Pottery Barn Design Library)
* Pottery Barn Storage & Display (Pottery Barn Design Library)
* Pottery Barn Bedrooms (Pottery Barn Design Library)
* Pottery Barn Bathrooms (Pottery Barn Design Library)
* Pottery Barn Living Rooms (Pottery Barn Design Library)
* Laura Ashely's Complete Guide to Home Decorating (which is out of print. I found it for 50¢ at a used book sale.)

To Inspire You: Our Dining Room (This will help you decide if you like my frugal style enough to use my tips!)

Below are pictures of our finished dining room. Here are the details in very random order... I did the papering myself. It was easy paper to work with. The wallpaper was $1 a roll and I used 4 rolls. The purple paint was already there and I liked it. * The table was my $100 find mentioned above, plus the $100 legs. * The adult chairs are part of my 19 for $5 find. I plan to repaint them and make slip covers, but I haven't gotten to it yet. * The bird cage was free. * The fabric on the windows was very inexpensive. I got yards and yards of it for $1 a bag. * The dressers are from my bedroom growing up. We don't need them in the bedrooms because we have huge closets. I don't have good dish storage, so that where I've utilized them. * The mirror was $12 at Linens and Things. It was on clearance because the frame had a bit of damage plus I had a 20% off coupon. It was another "accidental" purchase that matches the chandelier perfectly. * The painting showed up at a thrift store for $12. * The black candle holders (above the green bowl) were made by family. I added the gold to make them match the mirror and chandelier. * I got the ivy eons ago at The Christmas Tree Shop for $2 a length. (I was garland when garland wasn't cool. :wink:) * The Christmas lights I have twisted in the ivy were 25¢ on clearance after Christmas. * The green bowl was picked up at a transfer station swap shop for free. * The glass fruit was $2 for 4 pieces on clearance at Target. I got it long before we were at this house. I fits perfectly in our present dining room! God provided long before I knew I had a "need" or a want. He's been so sweet to me that way.

So there you go. I hope you're inspired!

Don't forget to visit Biblical Womanhood for more Frugal Friday tips!