I Think I’m a Cozy Minimalist

I have always been a nester. I spent a lot of happy time the summer before high school started planning how I would organize and decorate my first, very own locker. The summers before each year of college my mom and I would plan out how I’d decorate my dorm room (think gauzy curtains pinned to the ceiling, a hand-painted mural on a grass mat, and twinkle lights–hey, it was college). There is just something about making my space beautiful that really speaks to my soul.

I’ve just been struggling to figure out how to do that and make it look like grown-ups live here.

As I’ve gotten older, my palette has grown exponentially from a tiny dorm room to an entire house. But instead of being excited about having a whole building to make our own, I’ve mostly felt overwhelmed by it. There is just so much. And when your budget is limited and the gap between your know-how and your dream-result is massive, the idea of taking on a couple thousand feet worth of decorating space can be daunting.

Enter this little piece of home-creating magic, The Nesting Place. Written by my new home-decor hero Myquillyn Smith, this sweet little book was part devotional, part instruction manual, and it read like a conversation over pastries with a good friend. (I laughed aloud a couple times, and I’m not really the type to do that when I’m alone!)

I read a library copy and loved it so much that my mother-in-law bought it for me, so I can read it and mark it and devour it again. Which I have been doing. 🙂 I’ve also been empowered (dramatic word choice?) to do things that I’d been (embarrassingly!) hesitant to do. I’ve put more nail holes in the walls. I hung a curtain rod by myself. I’ve started using the things I’d been “saving,” like the “fancy” soaps and the “good” candles. I even made a gallery wall on a diagonal! I’ve always been totally terrified to hang more than a handful of pictures together (or at all).

While this helped me bridge the gap between empty walls and some personality, I still wished I could get moving a little faster. There was still so much I didn’t know. In April, the Nesting Place newsletter advertised an online course Myquillyn was putting on to help kickstart anyone who was searching for ways to bring their style to life on a serious budget. I was tempted… but it was almost $100. 🙁 A few weeks later another email showed up–she’d set up a simplified, self-study course for only $39, or only $29 if I was referred by someone who had taken the course. (Scroll down to the bottom and I’ll show you how to get that discount, too!)

So I jumped on it!

It’s been quite a faith exercise so far. 🙂 For example, here is my room last week:

Here’s what it looks like today:

Pretty naked, huh?

The first lesson went over a lot of basics, and concluded with a handful of assignments. One of them was to “quiet the room,” which is Nester speak for clear everything that is not absolutely necessary out. It was really uncomfortable, and I felt a little defensive about taking down the things I had finally geared myself up to hang on the walls. But I pulled down the artwork, put away the side table, and hid all my knick-knacks away in the closet and my dresser drawer.

(p.s. If you are ever feeling like your bedroom is not classy, bookmark this page because see this colorful cluttered mess on my dresser?

Yeah, there are TWO bottles of stomach meds on there, which we took when we traveled out of the country and then I put up here when I unpacked. And just left them there. For, like, ever. Also the tag from the store has been on that turquoise candle since I bought it, and I don’t know how long ago that was. Also, there are absolutely clothes all over the bathroom floor and a huge mess of stuff I didn’t put away after we got back from the aforementioned vacation. And scroll back up to see two purple post-its stuck randomly to the wall which the hubs put up for a project a while back and which I am too short to get down.

All this to say, classy is as classy does. Right?)

Anyway after I put away all the everything our room was naked. Steve (hubs) was a very good sport about this, even when I then proceeded to move all the furniture to new places in the room. (A while ago I also took his bedside lamp away to use downstairs and he didn’t even grouse about it. I probably would have groused.)

So this is phase one. Bare room, fresh start. It’s giving me that top-of-the-roller-coaster feeling, like I’m about to dive in to something that might push me to my limits. But in a fun-scary way. 🙂

If you want to join in the fun, you can get $10 off the usual $39 price by taking these steps:

1. Click on this friends-only link: Cozy Minimalist Self-Study,
2. Click the “Enroll” button, and then
3. Enter Jamie Walton in the “Who referred you?” space at the bottom of the checkout and you’ll get the course for only $29! Yay!

Do you have a room that you can’t seem to get right? This room is definitely mine–I’ll keep you posted on the progress!