As I discussed in THIS post, I am trying to just focus on one area of our home per month to help combat the paralysis that sometimes comes with wanting to do too much. Today I wanted to share the progress we made with the living room in March.
I knew going into this month that I was not going to have a large budget to get new furniture. We are dying to replace the oversized chairs against the wall with a camel leather sofa like THIS or THIS. I have also been on the hunt for the perfect coffee table for years. So far, THIS is the closest one I have found that would fit the bill. Realistically, I knew it was going to have to wait for another time.
As I thought about what needed to accomplish in the room, I knew I wanted it to be more neutral. The pops of color I had were just not working for me. An easy way to neutralize the space is with a change of throw pillows. So that is where I started. I usually get my throw pillow covers from Etsy. They have excellent vendors for pillow covers. To make my choices, I picked out all the ones I liked, and then “virtually” placed them on our sofa until I found my winners. Here’s an example of how I do it:
As a reminder, here is what the room looked like before with the colored pillows:
And here it is swapped out with the neutral pillows. I like how it makes it less busy. More serene. It will look even better when we can swap out the blue ottoman for a nice big square coffee table. Baby steps 🙂
I also changed out some of the colored pieces on the mantel and swapped them out for more neutral accents. Simple.
And one last little change that is not visible to you but still feels good is some good ol’ decluttering. Part of my goal for these monthly projects is to declutter room-by-room. In the living room, all those built-ins house our board games, photo albums and DVD’s. I took everything out, donated or threw out what we didn’t need, and then put it all back again neatly. Ahhh…
This monthly exercise has definitely been a big help. Not easy, but helpful. Slowly but surely, I am training myself to focus on what I can do versus everything I want to do. It’s forcing me to be realistic and prioritize. However, progress is being made! I am excited to share April’s project with you next.
Have you been working on any house projects lately?
