The couch in our family room is old. Really old. What used to be a beautiful red couch has faded into some shade of musty pinkish red. If you've followed my blog before now, you may have read about it in my A Volatile Business post.
My husband purchased our couch long before he met me. It is stained and faded and anything but ideal. The two back pillows that came with the couch have become lumpy, contorted trapezoids hardly resembling their original clean-line rectangular shape. If my husband and I sit down on the couch together the corners jut out and block our view of each other. Annoying!
Well, we weren't in the market for a new couch so we needed a solution that would help us work with what we've got. The temporary solution for us has been accent pillows.
Now, if you are cheap like me your jaw hits the floor when you walk down the aisles at Target and see a single pillow marked for $20 or more. If you spend money easily then you have no idea what I am talking about. I am talking to my fellow cheapskates out there. The "overly-thrifty-to-a-fault" people. The people who check the unit prices at the grocery store and literally feel pain when they miss a sale on poultry. I'm talking to you because I can relate.
Sometimes the best way to enhance what you own without breaking the bank means being willing to spend a little of what you do have saved in it.
I ended up buying five new pillows and snagging two extra pillows from our blue couch to replace said lumpy trapezoid cushions. It was hard for me to spend nearly $100 on throw pillows. Really hard.
But let me tell you something--it was only hard at the cash register. Once the pillows were purchased and in my home I never looked back and have only LOVED the value they bring to my home. What once seemed like an extravagant purchase, has proven it's worth over and over again. I feel inspired in my home and much more inclined towards hospitality because of the newfound confidence my updated room provides.
What I am not saying is that our worth, value, or confidence should come from the way our homes look. But I am in the interior design business after all, and I have found that sometimes we label reasonable purchases as frivolous when they are not. Sometimes we need someone to cast a little vision for us before we are able to legitimize a purchase.
It's okay to invest money we have into our lives now and not just save it for the ever elusive future.
I'm not talking about going into debt over throw pillows. As a whole our society is largely materialistic and prone to overspending. This post is not for those people. I'm talking to the people who do have a few extra dollars to spend, but whose personalities scream at them, "Nooooooo! You don't need that!" Sometimes that is true, but sometimes, for cheapskates like me, it is not true.
I recently redesigned a woman's house who home schools her three boys and runs a small business from her home.** In between sessions I went out on a limb and purchased pillows for her and brought them over under the assumption that I could return them if she didn't want to keep them. Once she saw them in her space the $20 price tag per pillow (actually I snagged them for 2 for $30) seemed a little more reasonable. This is the place, after all, where she spends the majority of her time doing the most meaningful thing in the world!
Whoever you are, if you struggle with hoarding money and never spending it, I give you permission to loosen your grip on your wallet and spend a few bucks to help you and your family dwell inspired. I promise you will be happy you did!
**If you want to check out the redesign mentioned in this post head on over to dwellinspired.com and click on the 'Before & After' tab at the top of the page.
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