This post is an entry into the Money Supermarket #HomeImprovementHero Competition. They provided me with £50 in order to see if it is possible to change the look, feel and even functionality of a room on a low budget?
I’m sure I am like many parents in that I always put my children first. So when it came to deciding which room to do there wasn’t really a doubt – my boys already have their rooms sorted. But since we moved in, just over a year ago, mine and my husband’s room has become a bit neglected and a bit of a dumping ground. It doesn’t really ‘feel’ like our room at all. As well, if I were any of the other rooms that were to be done up then I’m sure I’d probably spend more than the £50 allocated budget.
The first thing I did was to have a jolly good sort out of all the things we didn’t need. Sometimes you can even make a few pennies back in return for getting rid of things. The obvious choices seem like Ebay, Carboots, Gumtree and Facebook groups seem to be a big way of selling without the added extra of postage.
One of my favourite things is to recycle the clothes with Cash4Clothes – they even come to your house and collect the clothes, then they are weighed and they give you money on the amount.
Another great way for women to save on storage is to ditch the landfill-sanitary-wear
and get themselves a Mooncup – I love mine for all manner of reasons but you can quiet clearly see the difference it takes up in space.
Of course there’s still charity shops and Freecycle – or furniture recycling schemes for bigger items.
Next I made an effort to find the matching bedding, the set that goes with the room, rather than whatever is grabbed from the cupboard. I really feel just a bit of colour co-ordination can make all the difference.
Some things just needed unpacking still but really just didn’t have homes to put them in. It was quiet a nice day, as I took my second oldest son (just turned 10) and my youngest (4 year old) to look around the various shops. We are lucky that in our small town we have a few ‘pound’ shops, and lots of charity shops.
There were all manner of lovely things I could have bought cheaply – but not in the right colour (I’m not about to change my room from red). I was really after storage type things, and anything that would make the room feel more like “our space” and not just an over-flow of junk. So when we came across a shelving unit for £6.95 in a charity shop I thought it would be great for replacing the folding table used to hold our router and telephone on, whilst also providing storage underneath – a home for our “special” teddies. We used to buy each other lots of special things and knickknacks when we first got together and having a place to display these I thought would be nice.
Our walls are just painted white. It was the quickest cheapest way, as our house needed a lot of work. All we have on our wall is a 50” canvas – which is a picture of me and my husband. So I thought that a bit of colour would be nice. We found some lovely 3D glitter heart stickers (£2.99 a pack), and I also thought that these would be quick and easy to put up.
I’m sure we could make a lot of improvements if we had more time (we have all manner of picture frames/mirrors/wall-paper to put up but just no time). Of course they are red too.
I moved things around from other rooms, or moved things to other places (such as we have a sock box, where the socks go before they are sorted into pairs, this has now moved to the airing cupboard. The children help pair up the socks, and now they no longer have the need to come into our room to collect the box). I have 4 matching boxes and one had ended up downstairs – so I retrieved that to return with the set. Now my important paperwork is organised into the boxes.
Then I purchased 2 shelving units – which I thought were £14.99 but at the till it turned out that they were only £9.99/ Originally they were going to be wall-mounted, again this would take time and finding the right wall-plugs/drill bits etc) – so we decided just to have them on the floor. This also means we could use the tops as a storage shelf too. This was ideal for displaying all those school photos just living in a box.
There were still a lot of things that needed storage solutions – I mean have you any idea how much body lotion I have!
So when we found some storage boxes that matched our bedding at Asda at £10 for 3 boxes
They come in 3 different sizes and fit perfectly in the new shelving unit. I was then able to neatly rehome and organise my girlie bits (make-up/creams/hair products etc).
And now our room feels more like a room for us, and not somewhere just to dump boxes/clothes etc.
£6.95 = shelving unit from a charity shop – The Blue Cross
£2.99 x 2 = £5.98 for 3D glitter hearts – B&M
£9.99 x 2 = £19.98 Shelving units – B&M
£10 x 2 = £20 Boxes – Asda.
Total: £52.91
I was financially compensated for this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.