I love the thought of living in a beautifully decorated home. I want my house to feel like a ‘warm hug’ for people who walk through the door. Unfortunately, I’ve experienced many days where I’ve realized that home decorating is just hard.
You may be able to identify with some of these challenges that make decorating your home hard. Likely depending on your stage of life, you may be experiencing one or many of these right now! My kids are old and I still struggle with a few of these!
My 5 Reasons Why Home Decorating is Hard
Children –
“This is why we can’t have nice things!” Have you heard a parent say that? I know I think it and say it often! Unfortunately, it’s a fairly accurate sentiment. It’s true inside our homes and it’s true in our garages and it’s true in our cars – pretty much everywhere our children venture. Unless micromanaging is your superpower, kids have no natural boundaries.
They will put their dirty feet or shoes on anything. They will eat a bag of Cheetos and then drag their fingers across the wall. They throw and kick balls inside the house with no thought of the glass vase that could accidentally go crashing down. They spill or drip and never think twice about getting a towel to wipe up their mess! We live in our house so my decor has to endure my kids and their antics.
Even as my kids have gotten older, they don’t appreciate some of the things I do to make our house a home. They definitely don’t appreciate cleanliness! No matter how you spin it, dirty laundry on the floor does not count at accent decor!
Frequent Relocation –
The ability to decorate a new house every few years does create some delight in my little decorator heart. However, knowing each place we live is only temporary or doesn’t belong to me, hinders what I am really able to do. In our various moves, we’ve always needed to get rid of furniture or buy new pieces of furniture to better fit the house.
Thankfully we have been able to make a little money with our relocation allowances to offset the costs of these expenses. It’s hard to invest much into furniture, especially, if we know that we may have to just get rid of it in a few years. One day we will have a forever home. Until then…
We have finally settled into our “almost forever” or “longer than anywhere else” house so this isn’t as big of a roadblock for me at this point. Now I need to force myself to get rid of old decor that doesn’t fit my current style, but I’ve had for so long! Who knew attachment to decor items would be so hard?
Budget –
Pretty things aren’t free, unfortunately. Often I settle for pieces that I LIKE, but may not LOVE because of the numbers on the price tags. I’m just a natural tight wad! There are times when rooms in my home are just all out neglected because I don’t want to spend money on them. Bathrooms are always on the bottom of my decorating budget. As long as the toilet flushes and there’s soap to wash hands, what else do you need?
Even as we’ve settled into our somewhat forever home, I still consider budget a major hindrance to my decor choices. When I’m decorating a space, I try to figure out what I can reuse before I go and blow money buying all new stuff. Unfortunately, this leads me to hold onto things like curtains, throw pillows, curtain rods, etc. waiting to see if I can ever use them again. The Organizer in me would say to drop them off at Goodwill, but that’s even hard for me to do!
Time –
At this point in my life, time is valuable. Decorating projects require time. Time to shop. Time to prep a room. Time to move furniture around. Time to clean up after the project is complete. There’s always some element of trial and error before a space to looks the way I imagined in my mind.
Nothing ever works the way it’s supposed to on the first try at my house. Nail filler is my best friend! I also work better without distractions. As you can imagine, I have limited time without distractions, or when I don’t have other more pressing priorities like feeding my children or paying bills or getting kids to and from various activities. Hanging a picture or curtains naturally takes the backseat.
Now that I work a 70% of Full Time schedule for someone other than myself and my kids are older with very active schedules, my timeframe to project or decorate is even smaller. I have a piece of MDF in my garage that I’ve had for 5 months! It’s going to be used on a project I just bought other elements for last week. Now I’m waiting on my son to have time to help me cut and move all these pieces! So it’s not just my time any more!
Fear –
Not just in decorating, but in lots of areas of my life, I avoid new ventures out of fear. I don’t want to mess something up or waste money on supplies that I may end up just ruining. What if I put in all kinds of effort and then hate the end result or I get started and then get sidetracked and never finish?
Anyone else have half finished projects sitting around? I also fear doing irreparable damage to doors, walls, or furniture! This perfectionistic part of my personality can be pretty paralyzing.
Many people say that paint is just paint, and it’s easy to change. Yet, repainting takes TIME!!! See above!
I’ve definitely made some bad decor choices recently. I have dressers and nightstands in my bedroom that I don’t LOVE, but they work for now. I’m trying to figure out how to move them to other bedrooms so that I can still use them so they don’t go to complete waste!
What are your Home Decorating is Hard challenges?
Could you add any to this list?
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