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I received a question this morning about how I practically decorate on a budget. My husband and I don’t have “home” as a line item on our budget, but we do each have a monthly “fun budget”. If I want to go to a thrift store or buy something off of Facebook marketplace, I take it out of my “fun budget”. So when I use the words “budget decorating”, what I really mean is “decorating and furnishing your home for as CHEAP as possible”. Cheap doesn’t mean you have to skimp on quality though. ✨ Here is my number one tip for small decorating budgets (we’re talking “not even a line item” here). If you are looking for a specific piece of furniture or decor, I’d recommend NOT buying the first new thing you see. If you’re patient, determined, and keep your eyes open, you can probably find something secondhand that is higher quality and a lower price. Example: this leather ottoman I got yesterday. I wanted one for functionality and looks for this chair, but couldn’t afford a new one. The new ones I could maaaybe save up for were still $100+, and probably wouldn’t have been real leather. I waited and waited and searched, and got lucky to find a real leather ottoman on Facebook marketplace for $20! Is it super modern/trendy/perfect? Nope. Is it a leather ottoman that has the same general aesthetic as the fancy high end ones for a fraction of the cost? You bet! ✨ We’ve taken this approach for most of the furniture in our home. A handful of our furnishings were purchased brand new, but we saved so much money overall by waiting to find the right pieces secondhand. Our tiny home budget couldn’t have afforded anything fancy if we bought everything new, but we’ve found a few high quality pieces for a fraction of what buying new furniture costs. If you have a general idea of what you’re looking for, and the patience to not impulse buy the first thing you see at Target or HomeGoods, you can decorate and furnish your home with pieces that will last (and won’t break the bank.) The key to decorating on a budget is not buying cheap junk- it is being thoughtful about the purchases you want to make and then having patience for the right piece to come along. Do you shop secondhand?

One of my favorite FREE decor ideas I’ve had: using old books as an earring holder. I bet you already have books in your home that could be used for this purpose. Here on Holland Avenue Home, I like to share ideas and inspiration for resourceful decorating. You won’t see much advertising, and I can rarely give sources for my photos because 90% of my home is secondhand. This could be frustrating in a time where you can literally shop your Instagram feed. Every day, we are inundated with posts that tell us to buy more things so we can have pretty homes, wardrobes, photos, and lives. But I want to offer a different perspective. I think that if you really evaluated your heart, you don’t want more stuff. You don’t want a new couch or more stylish clothes or a trendier living room. I would submit that what you really crave is contentment. You want to be content with your surroundings and your circumstances. And in our culture of advertising, a thousand voices a day tell you that you will be content on the other side of a card swipe. I think that you are being lied to. I think that true contentment comes from realizing that you are already enough. You have enough. You do enough. I think you can love your home today. Maybe you need to make some tweaks through thoughtful editing. That’s what I’m here for. To serve you and your heart with ideas and inspiration for your real-life, average, everyday home. Will that mission give me a paycheck? Probably not. But your heart and your contentment are more important to me than making profit at your expense. Holland Avenue Home is your invitation to pursue thoughtful homemaking. I don’t fill my home with cookie cutter decor, so the inspiration you find here can’t be exactly recreated. But I don’t think it should be. I want your home to tell your story, and you are the only one capable of writing it. My mission is to help you see the beauty of your own uniqueness, and to give you the tools and skills to create a home that makes you smile. I’m so thankful that you’ve chosen to follow along, and sharing my thoughts with you is a privilege I don’t take lightly. Let this be your Monday reminder that contentment is all we truly need.💛

(I never put text over my photos but I’m making an exception for a very special post!) If you found my profile from the @betterhomesandgardens share this morning, welcome! I’m Avery, and I live in rural Iowa with my husband, Ben, and our pup, Louie. I updated my kitchen with @anniesloanhome chalk paint in 2017, and it has been shared thousands of times from sources like @betterhomesandgardens , @apartmenttherapy , @todayshow , @buzzfeed , @countrylivingmag , @popsugar , and others! I published a blog post last night with my honest 2 year update on how the cabinets are holding up, and the answers to a ton of frequently asked questions about my sources and process. You can find it (and the crazy “before” photos) through the link in my profile! Thanks for following along with me! 💛

Old house. Crooked floors. Small dog. Big ears.

When I moved in to this house after we got married, we didn’t have routines yet. We didn’t really know where to put things, so we just found spots for all of our wedding gifts and that is where they lived. After a while, we developed our routines and figured out how to share this home. But all of our stuff just stayed where we put it when I moved in (even if that wasn’t the place that made the most sense). In the last few months, I’ve made it my mission to reevaluate how our spaces function. I’ve made SO many small changes that really add up. For example, we kept our camping stuff in the closet by our back door in the mudroom. But we didn’t have anywhere to put our coats and winter gear! Why was I storing camping stuff in the mudroom closet when we only use it once a year, but our winter gear that we need for HALF the year just got thrown on the floor of the mudroom? The answer is that I put it there and didn’t think about whether or not that was the best place for it! The closet was full, so winter gear didn’t have a home. I realized how impractical this was, so our camping stuff went to the basement and our winter gear now has a home by the door! Another example is these two shelves in our kitchen. I put all of our paper plates and napkins (for hosting Bible study) on the bottom shelf, and then the only place left for our heavy stock pot was the top shelf. I struggled to take down the pot every time we used it, but that’s just where it lived! I was looking at these shelves the other day and realized I could just switch them 😂 I no longer struggle with the heavy pot, and I grab a chair when we need plastic forks for a party. I’m making these little changes all over the house, and it has made a HUGE difference in our ability to keep things tidy. I’m putting together a blog post with tips for making your home more functional, and I’d love to help with any specific problem areas in your home! Do you have any spaces in your home that you wish were more functional?

I’m not hip with the lingo, but I think this is what the kids are calling a “glow up” (that’s the same cabinet, by the way)✨ Sometimes I forget how many projects I’ve done around our home because 75% of them are just paint. But then I remember just how transformative paint can be for making a space your own. Don’t despair if you can’t tackle big renovations or knock out walls or totally change your home. Paint the walls, work with what you’ve got, and call it good. (And maybe replace a light fixture here and there) My husband is a pastor and this home is the church’s parsonage. They own it and we are lucky enough to live here! It also means I can’t do any “renovating”. Just updates here and there. And most of those updates have involved a paintbrush! So if you are a renter or you just don’t have the budget for renovations, don’t feel like you can’t have your “dream home”. Work within your means and find ways to bring out the character of your home through little updates and tweaks instead of trying to make it something it isn’t. I’d love to have a home with white trim one day, but for now I get to live in this BEAUTIFUL 1910 craftsman with wood trim. I’ve learned to tweak my style to work with the dark wood everywhere instead of trying to fight it, and now I love it! What is something in your home that you’ve learned to work with?

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