Stop Thinking You Have an “Ugly” House
I know the feeling: that nagging thought that you can’t help but think your home is ugly and doesn’t measure up to other people’s home.
Although I’m a DIY blogger who does home improvement and furniture makeovers (check out my Project Gallery), I suffer from this “My house is ugly” syndrome, too.
In fact, whenever people come over to my home, I find myself apologizing about this project that sits unfinished….or that part of my house that has dirty walls because the kids drag their hands all over it when walking past.
Over the years since moving into our old 1973 home, it has taken a lot of time for me to finally get to the point where I feel comfortable with my home.
I’m comfortable with it because it’s finally started to feel warm and cozy (after years of living here). But I still find myself apologizing and making excuses and pointing out its faults before other people can.
In fact, in one of my YouTube videos, I did a house tour for readers and viewers and I apologized and tried to explain away all the little piles of clutter and the unfinished projects and mismatched furniture.
You can watch that video below.
(Keep reading for 3 tips to help you stop thinking your house is ugly).
It’s Not Just You: Lots of People Think Their Home is Ugly
Years ago I happened to get an email from a girl who stumbled upon one of my old posts and she wrote me something so poignant:
I just came across your blog a few weeks ago, while searching for photos of rooms painted in Rainwashed. I wanted to tell you how much I like your blog. It’s so refreshing to see a diy/decorating blog featuring a normal looking house, lol!
Seriously though! I live in a 1,700 square foot house, that was built in 1926. It’s easy to feel inadequate seeing blogs with 5,000+ square foot, brand new mini mansions, that look like something straight out of Better Homes and Gardens. I’d much rather read about someone fixing up an older, average home, on a budget!
Her email hit a nerve.
I decided to respond to her email and share why we shouldn’t be comparing our home to others’ homes.
There is still some part of me that feels like my home isn’t good enough, especially considering that working on my house as a blogger is my full-time job!
But her email ignited something inside of me–a desire for us all to STOP crapping on our houses and simply love it and decorate it for what it is: our place of comfort!
I was inspired to create that short video to inspire all of you beautiful homeowners who sometimes feel inadequate about your house, too. We are just the same: women are want to create a pretty, comfortable, yet affordable home for ourselves and our family.
(P.S. You can see how I’ve been working on turning my house into a home with these projects:
- BEFORE & AFTER: My Pretty Lavender Master Bathroom Makeover
- BEFORE & AFTER: My Colorful Half Bathroom Makeover With a Wall Stencil!
- BEFORE & AFTER: My Kid’s Bathroom Makeover
- BEFORE & AFTER: Boys Blue Accent Wall Bedroom
- BEFORE & AFTER: My Pretty Laundry Room Makeover
You Do NOT Have an “Ugly” House: 3 Tips to Stop Complaining About Your House
Okay…..but maybe you do have an outdated house and you want to do a makeover. Doesn’t that sound better? More positive?
“Outdated” sounds like something easily fixable.
“Ugly” just sounds….hopeless!
And we’re all doing such great jobs on making our houses look fabulous for very little money (and so little time, too!). So let’s stop comparing ourselves and our homes to people in the blogosphere okay?
Keep reading below for some tips we can do to change our attitude our house!
(RESOURCE: Check out this post on how to make an “ugly” home look good with easy decorating tips from the pros).
TIP #1: Be thankful you’ve got housing.
When the wind is whipping and I’m rushing up my walkway to get inside, I’m often struck with the thought, “Thank God I have a house!” More than 500,000 people in the U.S. are homeless, according to this report in 2015. Seriously. Why would we complain when we have money to pay for housing??? Thinking about this alarming fact makes me feel idiotic for even thinking my house is ugly.
TIP #2: Make a plan for decorating your home.
We’re all short on time.
I get it.
But if you plan for the projects and room makeovers you want to do, you’d be surprised how much easier it is to get those projects and makeovers done.
I had put together a free Room Makeover Journal packet that you can download by entering your name and email here:
When you create this DIY journal from scrapbook paper, you’ll have a way to track your progress, list your materials needed, and more.
Soon, your house will feel more put together and not quite as “ugly”!
TIP #3: Take “Before” and “After” pictures of your house along the way.
Homes evolve over time, don’t they?
How your home looked 3 years ago is likely nothing like what it looks like today. Maybe you’ve changed the furniture, had the floors done, changed the paint….
And sometimes we forget the evolution and where we started from!
I can tell you–when we started out in this house, we had wallpaper on nearly every vertical surface…outdated brown paneling…and more.
This is what my family room looked like when we moved in: a dreary 70’s brick fireplace, paneling, and wallpaper over the paneling!
BEFORE
I ended up painting my brick fireplace so that it still looked like brick (which lightened up the room tremendously!), removed the paneling, sewed a pair of cute lined DIY curtains, and decorated the house with affordable thrift store furniture.
Because I took pictures along the way and reviewed those old pictures from time to time, it helps to remind me of how far we’ve come in this house.
Suddenly, it doesn’t seem like such an ugly house. Instead, it feels like a home in transition and it helps me to see that we really have made progress!
So be sure to take lots of pictures of your home and your projects and store them on an external hard drive or on Google Drive (or email them to yourself) and every now and then, click through them to see your progress over time. You’ll be shocked and will feel much less likely to say “My house is ugly.”
AFTER
Again, I know how easy is to think “My house is ugly!” But the truth is that we’re blessed to have housing…we’re blessed to have affordable options for making it look good without spending a lot of money (check out these thrift store tips), and if we remind ourselves of how far we’ve come, we might even start loving our house. 🙂
So have you ever told yourself “My house is ugly”? How did you learn to start loving your house? Leave a comment and let’s talk about it!
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This is so true. It’s time to stop apologizing and just embrace the goodness all around us! We have a house! Isn’t that amazing enough?! Love your thoughts on this.
Awww, thanks for the shoutout! : ) I actually don’t think my house is ugly, and I actually do love old houses. It’s just frustrating that I don’t have the money to fix up my house like I want. And renting it doesn’t help, either, and it really limits what we can do with the house. My husband and I are working on getting our credit ir order so we can hopefully buy the house from our landlords, when our lease is up. They don’t want to rent the house out forever. – they lived in the house until they needed to move to a bigger place.
I really shouldn’t complain – it’s a much nicer house than the one my husband and I rented before this – we were in a 1,200 square foot house before this one, that our landlord didn’t want to maintain, and that had no central air, no dishwasher, and kitchen with literally barely any cabinet or counter space. It still had the original metal kitchen cabinets from when the house was built, in 1949! I don’t know how I survived for nearly 8 years with no dishwasher or central air!
The only thing I really miss about that house is my daughter’s old bedroom – she had a beautiful huge bedroom with wood floors, built in bookcases, and a little nook that was just the right size for a desk. Our old house had all wood floors. This house has wood floors in the dining room, living room, and foyer, and carpet in the bedrooms and family room. My cat is very happy with the carpet, even though I’m not so happy when she barfs on it, (much harder to clean up than on wood) ha, ha!
We got to paint the foyer in our new/current house though – hooray! It’s the only room in the house that was white, and the paint was in bad shape, so the landlords were OK with us painting it and picking the color. I chose Rainwashed, based partly on the photos on your blog – very pretty! I had gotten some paint samples from Sherwin Williams, and tried Rainwashed, Sea Salt, and a couple of brown shades. Rainwashed won out. It’s funny though, it looks almost like a baby blue on my foyer walls, rather than the aqua or blue gray that it looks in many people’s walls online. I still like it though.
But yeah, please ignore my original complaining. I am thankful to be living where I am now, especially since we were able to move to a better neighborhood, much closer to my husband’s job, and with excellent public schools for our kids – no more Catholic school tuition – such a relief)!
Thanks again for the nice post! : )
Hey Blossom! I bet you were surprised to see me writing about you! LOL. You weren’t complaining at all! I hope you don’t mind that I read it in the video (I didn’t use your name!) The email just spoke to me, because it hit home about the fact our houses don’t have to be perfect. And although you don’t think it’s ugly, some people may be calling their homes “ugly.” In fact, I did a video a while back where I was like, “Yeah, I’m painting my foyer today because the color is so UGLY. It’s NASTY!” And hubby heard me filming and came over to tell me, “Hey, why are you talking about our house like that? Just say that you wanted a change. Don’t say that about our house.” And I realized that he’s right. Dissin’ your own house (even if it isn’t the prettiest site) isn’t a good idea, nor is comparing what you got to what everyone else has. Thank you so much for the Saturday night inspiration while I waited on my Little Caesar’s pizza. HAHAHAH!!
Anyhow, that’s awesome you were able to paint (and in Rainwashed, too!). It looks baby bluish in my room, too, but I love it. It’s that pretty factor that I love. Very light and airy! 🙂
Thanks for leaving a comment!
Hello there! I just found your blog about a month ago and lovelovelove it!! I started thrifting a looooong time ago as a way to have nice things and be able to keep my son in private school. We also chose to live in a smaller, older home. And then I caught this thing called “social awareness.” Apparently, there is no cure. But I know I don’t use raw materials or contribute to slave labor when I buy from my favorite thrift store. The Safe Harbor thrift store supports the women’s shelter of the same name. A couple others keep my money circulating locally. And I never, ever feel like I am doing without. I love the thrill of finding a vintage – or new! – piece that is just the perfect thing, be it clothing, things for the house, or items to repurpose. Why would you live any other way? Keep inspiring us, you wonderful creature!
Hey Ischade! So glad that you found my blog! I feel the same as you–when I find something at the thrift store, it’s such a thrill! And it really is helping the environment and our wallets! I mean, our thrift diving affect stuff like childrens’ schooling! That’s IMPORTANT! 🙂
Thanks for being a reader!!! I appreciate it!
Great post! I soo needed this! This week we have been working on our house. It is a big house, but it is older and we keep coming across some issue. I want to do this to the house and cant etc. So this post was great to read and a def. need for me to read! Thanks!
Glad I could help keep things in perspective! 🙂 Thanks so much for commenting!
i love the part about be inspired but make your home your own idea & feel
Thanks, Arod! 🙂
Haha, what caught my attention was your casual reference to Little Caesar’s! There’s one about 5 blocks away, and we ate it AT LEAST once a week for the 10 months or so that we were kitchen-less. I’m still not sick of it.
Thank you for this post, and thank you for the email in which you referred to my kitchen as “done.” It inspired this impromptu post, late on a Friday night….yes, I really do love blogging.
xo
Sarah
Girl, I LOVE me some Little Caesars! Do you get the deep dish? It’s so good. The kids like the $5 hot-and-ready the best, but it’s the deep dish that is DA BOMB! 🙂 And I’m so glad that I could inspire your latest post! It’s funny how posts just come out of the blue, huh? All because of one little thing someone says! LOL
Wow! Thanks for addressing comparison issue! With the advent of blogging and pinterest, it’s becoming more and more of a problem. It’s funny, I do live in a beautiful home, my dream home actually. A house that we built 13 years ago, and since then I have patiently re-done to take out all the builder-grade stuff and customize it for our family. It is lovely, and really, my absolute favorite place on earth to be, but there at so many times I look at the beautiful blog pictures or pinterest pics and feel so inadequate. So inadequate! I get so down on myself and I shouldn’t.
You hit the nail on the head. We need to stop comparing. When you compare, someone always is a loser. Its so tough to actually into practice, but so necessary. Embrace what we have, hold our head up high and find the loveliness in our surroundings.
Incidentally, I furnished our house with treasures from garage sales, flea markets, thrift stores and dumpster dives. You CAN do beautiful with little or no money. It’s the comparison that kills us!
Thanks for the great video!
I started reading your blog because I LOVE thrift stores. Pleasantly surprised to see your home & how you’re putting everything together with thrifted treasures. Slowly getting our home in order & comfortable for us. My mom used to say that folks came to see her, not her house!
Hi, Laurie! Glad to have you here at the blog! I try to think that way, too, that if anyone comes by, it’s to see us and not the house. I still feel like I have to at least have the dirty socks picked up before anyone comes! LOL
i’m just happy to have a house xx
Me too, Chris! This house was a big jump up from where we used to live, in terms of size. It’s in a better school district. To even be able to live here, we’re fortunate, regardless of the “old” factor of the house!
we recently went bigger from a small 978 sq foot house to a whopping 1200 sq ft. Both of them complete remodels. I remind myself every day that these houses are why I can afford the vacations I wants, car I want and the current one is on 6 acres (the privacy I want) and that I will be able to retire-when I want because of these labors of love. and they are mine, everything chosen by me, and don’t look like anyone else’s house. Keep up the good work on the blog.
Exactly!! I remember when we were in our condo, we could afford WAAAAYYY more than we can now! Must smaller space = much smaller bills (we also had hardly any kids and now we’re up to our elbows in “BOY”! lol). You’re making a smart decision with your house, and because of it, you’re getting a lot more opportunities that others can’t get! 🙂 Love that!