Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Get Inspired and Turn Trash to Treasure today!!!! | Clutterbug Podcast # 14

Episode Date: June 14, 2016

A big part of my job as a SAHM and Housewife is to make my house a home.  One of my favourite ways to give my decor more meaning is to add a few DIY pieces here and there. It is those pieces that I have found in the trash and fixed up or got for a dime at a yard sale that I truly treasure the most!   So get inspired and upcycle something for your home today! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. Today I wanted to talk about junk, just absolute trash, and my love for transforming something that is considered trash or junk into treasure. And I've been doing this for a long time, and I think it started out in the beginning as necessity. I didn't have a lot of money. I left home young. And so when furnishing my home, I had to find things really inexpensively. And I remember baking up dressers, even a kitchen table, and coffee tables, those type of things from the side of the road, giving it a good scrub and a couple of coats of paint. And I was hooked on transforming things that were free or really small price into something really beautiful. And I think all of those pieces I can think of. I still have things in my home today,

even though we could afford to replace them, like the dresser in my son's bedroom, a night, you know, an end table, like a nightstand in my daughter's room, different things that are at my home, a light fixture in my bedroom, things that were found either in the garbage or, you know, for under $10 at a yard sale that I fixed up. And those are the things that have, you know, a story attached, they have meaning and they're really, really special to me. so I want to encourage you to do the same thing and you don't need you know talent to fix something up you don't need to be you know some crafting expert um usually it's just a can of spray paint a can of spray paint can literally transform anything and as a housewife I think this is a really big important

part of making my house a home is giving things that sentimental value that really you know if something can have sentimental value because it's special to you, but things are special to you if you've fixed it up yourself. And, you know, maybe your spouse, your family's got involved in that process, then you've created something really, really special that is going to have a story attached and memories attached and be special to you. But the best part is it's on a really small budget and it's something really functional for your home. So in my home, I have a fireplace. If you looked at any of my home tour videos or you watched basically any mantle update video, you'll see that fireplace in my living room.

That was a project my husband and I did. I went to a local hardware store, actually. It was like a Home Depot. And it was a display model. It was all banged up. It looked absolutely like garbage. They were asking $200 for it. It was regular $1,000.

And I said to the manager, I asked to speak to the manager. and I didn't have a lot of money at the time. I really wanted a fireplace. I think I had like $75 in my checking account. It was pretty bad. But I offered him $75 for it. And I had never done anything like that before. I had never like haggled, you know, in a big box store.

It was so embarrassing. But it was in such rough shape. He said no. And I said, you know what? You can either sell it to me for $75 or I can pick it up from the garbage behind, you know, when nobody else buys it. you guys throw it out at the end. And he sort of laughed and said, all right, fine, you can have it for $75. And I remember just like, I strapped it to the roof of our van and I peeled out of there like

I had stole the thing. I was so proud and took it home, you know, painted it and I still love and cherish it to this day. So that's sort of the first thing that, you know, I remember fixing up with my husband when we first bought our home that I was like, this is awesome. And I still love it today. and after that, you know, it's just things you've found here and there are chandeliers or dressers in the garbage and those are the most cherished things in my home. And I know that might sound silly, but I wouldn't recommend having your whole house filled with things from the trash or things that have fixed up. But it is those small things, you know, that you can add to your home that you've done yourself that are going to give your home that feeling, you know, that loved and cherished

and those sweet memories. So recently, I was at my nephew's birthday party. He lives about an hour away. And when getting back in the car, on the side of the road, you guys, I found an outdoor fireplace. It was all rusted out and rotten. But it was so cool, and it's actually almost identical to the one that I've been eyeing at Canadian Tire local store that was about $1,000.

I mean, it's pretty much identical. So I was like, I must have this. My husband's like, no way. I begged my parents and they drove it here to my house in their truck. I fixed it up for about $25 and I love it. I just, it's so pretty. It's not exactly what I wanted, but I think it's even more special because I took the time to, you know, fix it up myself. And it's a story attached. You know, you find something in the garbage and you fix it up. you have people over, you have guests, and they're like, oh, you know, I love that. Where did you get it? And you can say, from the garbage, I fixed it up myself. It just makes for a really cool story. And when items have a story attached, it makes me just that much more special. So I have a buffet in my dining room, you know,

that I found for $65 and fixed it up and I get so many compliments, you know, where did you find this old piece? And I love saying that I found it for $65 at a yard stale. It makes it, you know, it just gives it that little bit of a cool story attached to it. So the whole point of this very long podcast today talking about junk is to hopefully inspire you. And a really, really easy project that you can do on a super small budget is spray painting a light fixture. So either an old lamp or an old chandelier, just taking it outside, spray painting it, some bold, crazy color, you can use it outdoors for your patio. And a really cool lamp idea for a patio is to take an old lamp. I have a few that I've purchased for like a dollar at a yard sale.

They're hideous, you guys, like brass, horrible hideous. Spray bait them a fun, bright color and then put in a solar light where the light bulb would go and then put the lampshade back on or buy a new lampshade. And voila, you have, you have, you know, you know, an outdoor lamp that could cost, you know, a dollar or two to make. You can even get the solar power, you know, lights from the dollar store. Just take off the base that sticks in the ground and stick it in like a light bulb. And for a chandelier, what we did was found a really old, yucky, horrible chandelier. I gave it a pretty blue spray paint.

And we hung it in our gazebo. And, you know, outdoor chandeliers are so, so expensive. We just wrapped all of it in electrical tape to make sure it was really good and waterproof. And we hang it up and it's been rained on and it's held up great. We plug it in outside. So we have a beautiful, brightly colored outdoor chandelier for, I think it was $10, as opposed to the hundreds of dollars you can spend at, you know, Home Depot or these other outdoor stores. So that is what I want to encourage you guys to consider doing.

you know, if you wanted a new something in your house, consider finding something secondhand and giving it a little love with some paint. My mom recently got a new kitchen table. She replaced that old, you know, oak farm table that everyone had from the 90s. And she had the matching China cabinet that went with it. And she loved it, but it was, you know, that golden oak that she's getting away from and everybody's sort of getting away from. So I convinced her, She tried selling it on an online site. You know, she was asking $50. Nobody wanted it.

She didn't want to just donate and throw it out. She'd spend like, you know, a couple thousand dollars on it in the 90s, so it broke her heart to just get rid of it. So I convinced her to chalk paint it this aqua turquoisey blue. And I said, what if you have to lose, Mom? You literally have nothing to lose but your time. And I bought her the paint and she did it. It looks amazing and she's so proud of herself.

This is really her first DIY fix-up project. Chalk paint makes it so easy. I think she was scared, but with a little prodding and saying, you know, you don't want to keep this as is. You're just going to donate it anyways. Why not try to, you know, make it fit in your decor and she could not be more thrilled. So I think it's scary the first time you take on a project like that. I know my mother-in-law has this same big farm oak table. It doesn't fit in her decor that's really modern now.

I'm trying to convince her to take the plunge and to chalk paint it so it fits her decor. Nobody wants these tables. Nobody wants these old pieces of furniture. Give them new life. Spend a little bit of your time, a fraction of what it would cost to replace it and money to fix it up. And you'll be surprised. You will love that piece way more. than you would ever love something that you bought at a store brand new

because it'll have that special meaning to you. So get inspired, get motivated, and turn some trash into treasure or some old junk into a special sentimental find for your home today. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.