Home Decor: Creating Fun, Not Stress
Decorating your home can be a huge amount of fun. However, it can also be extraordinarily stressful.
As you start planning your decoration project, it can be very exciting. But when you start to carry it out, whether you're working on something small or large, it can get a little more stressful to manage. Your decorating can get in the way of other things in your life, especially if you decide to carry out an extensive project. So how can you make sure that your decorating is as fun as possible and doesn't stress you out? If you take the right steps, you can have plenty of fun with your interiors while keeping the worry and stress low.
Have Fun with Planning
The part of decorating your home that is often most fun is the planning stage. There's no pressure to get anything done, and you don't have to put anything into action just yet. You just get to explore ideas and come up with some plans to start transforming your home. You probably won't spend much money when you're planning if you spend anything at all. Perhaps you'll spend a little on samples or download some useful apps. Speaking of apps, there are some great ones you can use on your mobile devices and on desktop to start planning what you want to do. You'll also find plenty of great websites to inspire you, from Apartment Therapy to HGTV.
Ease Money Worries
One of the things that can cause most stress when you want to do some work on your home is money. Even if you try to budget and save for your project perfectly, it doesn't always work out the way you want it to. You might also be desperate to start decorating, but you won't have the money saved for a long time. If you need to ensure you have a substantial budget to work with, you might consider taking out some credit. Your two main options are a loan or a credit card, which can both help you spread the cost of your project. You might consider looking at installment loans as one option, which could allow you to take on a larger project in your home. But if you're working on something smaller, using your credit card might make more sense. It's important to have a good idea of how much your decorating will cost and allow some wiggle room for unexpected costs too.
Keep Things Easy and Simple
If you want decorating your home to be fun instead of stressful, don't give yourself too much to stress about. Keeping things simple will make everything easier to manage. Although you might be tempted to plan something spectacular, it could soon prove too big to manage. There are thousands of easy decorating projects you could take on if you want to refresh your home. While there are times when more extensive renovations and refurbishment might be best, you don't always need to do anything complicated. Simple projects will stay fun, instead of becoming overwhelming and hard to handle.
Don't Create Too Much Pressure
Sometimes when you're decorating your home, the stress can be of your own doing. Unless there's a reason you need to set a deadline, avoiding it will take some of the pressure off your project. Just like choosing to do something simple instead of complicating things, taking your time will allow you to enjoy what you're doing, instead of feeling the pressure of getting it completed by a certain date. Even if you do have to set a deadline, make sure you're realistic about it. If you give yourself too short of a window to get things done, you might only end up stressing yourself out instead of having fun.
Choose Calming Decor
If you want the results of your decorating to help you reduce stress too, you can choose calming decor for your home. There are many ways you can decorate your home to give it a calming effect. Hopefully, it will help to keep you calm when you're carrying out the work too. You can explore a range of calming ideas, from light and bright colours, to plenty of plants and greenery. Think about what helps you to relax and how you can incorporate it into your home. But try not to choose anything that will be too stressful to put into place.
Work Out How to Live Around Larger Projects
Sometimes, you might be planning on a larger project. Perhaps you're redecorating whole rooms or even doing some renovations. When you're taking on something that will take longer to complete, it can disrupt your home. The work might get in the way of your daily life, which can be stressful and inconvenient. However, if you want to avoid this, you simply have to plan well. Think about which rooms might be closed off and for how long, and how you're going to get around it. If your project is particularly large, you might go and stay somewhere else for a while. However, it's often easy to simply move activity from one room to another.
Keep Everything Tidy
In your excitement to decorate, it's not always easy to keep things organised. But if everything turns into a huge mess, it's not going to make you very happy. Tidying up as you go along will prevent the stress from building. You can work methodically and clean things up before you start on a new task. If you have anyone helping you or doing the work for you, you can ensure that they follow the rules and keep things tidy too. Even if you don't tidy up as you go, you can still clean up at the end of the day so that you don't leave a huge mess before you go to bed.
Get Others to Do the Hard Work
You might like planning lots of fun home decor projects, but that doesn't necessarily mean you enjoy carrying them out. If you would prefer to oversee everything without getting your hands dirty, you can get other people to do the work for you. Hire painters and decorators or even an interior designer to take on some of the workload. Not only will it make things less stressful, but you can ensure that everything is done to a higher standard too. Make sure you take your time when you choose a contractor so that you can ensure everything is completed to a level you are happy with.
Give Small Things a Pass
If you want to avoid creating more stress for yourself than is strictly necessary, you have to learn to let go of some things. Decorating your home can be messy sometimes, and you can't always clean up straight away. If there are small issues, like piles of sawdust or drips of paint, you have time to clean them up. If you get stressed over everything, your project could turn into a nightmare. You have to be prepared for things to be a little messy sometimes if you want to achieve the results you're looking for.
Be Relaxed About Changed Plans
Things don't always go to plan when you're making changes to your home. If something doesn't go exactly as you wanted it to, you're going to have to be flexible about what happens next. You could go over your budget, or you might find out it's not possible to do what you originally wanted. A relaxed attitude will help you to roll with the punches.
Don't make decorating your home a stressful experience. It should be a fun project to take on, no matter how big or small.
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This collaborative article was written for WhimMagazine.com.