You don’t have to spend a penny to create a beautiful, cozy home! Here are some of my very favourite ways to decorate for free!
I was so lucky to have been young during the big recession 11 years ago. We had just bought out first house around then and of course we were trying to fix it up and “make it our own”. Many people didn’t have much money to spend at all back then, but of course they still wanted to have comfortable, cozy homes that they loved, so there was a whole lot of creativity going around the internet when it came to home decor. For someone like me who loves to decorate their home and had almost no extra budget to put towards home decor, it was always so exciting when I learned a new trick to decorate for free. And there were a lot of them!
Of course, it’s nice to have a bit of a budget to be able to put towards home improvement and fun home decor these days, but it’s never quite as fun to buy something as it is to figure out a way to get that same look in your home for nothing, or at least next-to-nothing. I love the feeling of using my cleverness and resourcefulness to reach my goals and create a cozy, pretty home for our family, and I think I probably always will.
Here are a few of my favourite ways to decorate my home for free!
How to Decorate for Free: Paint Stuff
It’s amazing what you can do with a can of paint! I think the key to success when you’re trying to decorate frugally with paint is to pick up one single can of paint in an accent color that you’d like to use throughout your home. A really simple way to have success with decorating is to have repeating elements throughout your home, so having several different items in the exact same color will really give you a nice, pulled-together look. Of course, a small can of paint is pretty inexpensive, and you can even get pretty far with a little bottle of craft paint from the dollar store for this purpose, but also look for free cans of paint at recycling centres if you really want to make this decorating project completely spend-free.
I’ve really been enjoying this light blue color lately, so I mixed up a custom color using paints that I already had in my craft supply stash and painted my front door, and a few little mason jars with it. Bam! Instant pulled-together color theme, especially since that colour matches so well with the light blue plates on my plate wall!
As for what to paint with your one can of paint? Think about small pieces of furniture, thrift store finds (like these baskets!), and things you already have in the house that could use a facelift like vases or picture frames.
How to Decorate for Free: Recycle
There are so many ways to decorate your home from the recycling bin, all you need is a little bit of imagination!
Of course, painting spaghetti sauce mason jars is a favourite of mine. I even made one painted mason jar into a natural air freshener for my bathroom!
I’ve made magazine organizers out of cereal boxes…
And storage bins out of shipping boxes!
I even made a wreath once using an old pizza box and some coffee filters!
How to Decorate for Free: Nature
Of course, using natural elements always looks good in our homes, whether we’re trying to keep things budget friendly or not. I love to brighten things up with boxwood clippings throughout out the year, and I use all kinds of evergreen branches during the holidays.
Plain sticks are also great to use in a vase year-round, but I also made these spring blossom branches using all things that I already had around the house and they turned out so well!
So those are a few of my favourite things to decorate for free with. What kinds of clever, budget friendly decorating projects have you discovered?
Don’t forget to pin these ideas for the next time you get the urge to give your home a little refresh for free!
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Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.