DECORATING | Talking finishing touches as the Spring 2020 One Room Challenge (ORC) nears its end.

Whelp. This is it. The end is nigh! The One Room Challenge (ORC)  is drawing to a close and here we are in the final week. (Here’s a link to this week’s guest posts!)

I’ll be honest with you: I’ve been BASICALLY done for awhile. I mean, it’s a LITTLE bathroom. So for the past month I’ve just been fussing with the details. Interestingly, this is the most difficult bit of decorating for me. I think design is a lot easier when you’re starting from scratch, but with no renovating and almost no shopping, there are so many moving pieces. It’s a chess game of sorts.

I said last week that I bought and then returned a shower curtain, right?

The shower curtain I returned.

That experience is so illustrative of why this final stage is difficult. I loved that shower curtain! I stayed up late and purchased it online in the middle of the night, after fussing around with wall colour renderings and obsessive comparisons. It worked! But then as I started to layer in the decor I wanted … it didn’t work. And I decided a different piece of decor (the one which magically made the new shower curtain look like butt, a piece which I have been moving around my house for weeks), was more important than the shower curtain. So back the curtain went. And anyway, I already had THREE other non-returnable (thrifted) curtains in storage.

Funnily enough, I have actually decided to go with the curtain I wanted in the first place, before I ever started the project. But I tried the other three (including the one I returned) at different steps along the way. That’s just my stupid, time-wasting process I guess.

Every decision is complicated by its ripple effect.

Another curtain I tried from my stash, but ultimately did not use.

And as I choose what to use in any one space at any given moment, I am also thinking of my whole house, every other piece, what I have in storage, what is for sale in my shop, and weighing how much I like each thing, how much it cost, how much its worth to me emotionally, where will it be safest, where will it be most appreciated, and and and and. I don’t think a lot of people understand this. It’s what keeps me from spending money on things like reupholstery. Because … what if I don’t like it!? Or what if it doesn’t work because of X, Y, Z, or some previously unimagined clause A1Bx32? And then I’m out $1000+ that could have gone to something a lot more important (more on that later). Decorating with second-hand finds, when you’re anal like I am, is a little tricky.

Have I mentioned that I have a sponsor now?

Well, not exactly, but I do have friends, and some of those friends have very generously helped me out by sending me a piece I was coveting. I was trolling Instagram the other night, and Margaret Kelley of Round Plump Apple + Round Apple Vintage posted this weird little ceramic cup and I just … WANTED IT. Bad. It was very fairly priced, don’t get me wrong. I am a seller too, so I know how complicated pricing is, but I am also a absolute cheapskate. I hate to spend money on ANYTHING (see above). And I just knew buying this piece would be a mistake. What if my kid or my goofy husbutt broke it!? What if it didn’t work in the space thanks to invisible clause 459abiii?! Sigh. It was not to be. And anyway, someone else bought it immediately. Margaret told me so.

And then. AND THEN! Another vintage seller, my friend Caroline Wilder of Phineas Street Vintage got all SNEAKY and AMAZING because it turned out SHE BOUGHT IT … FOR ME!

Bitch, I have officially been sponsored.

Vintage ceramic cup by Margaret Kelley of Round Apple Vintage. Gifted by Caroline Wilder of Phineas Street Vintage. Thanks for, ahem, lending a hand.

Seriously, though? The past few weeks have been tough, emotionally, but I have been carried along by the kindness of my friends, many of whom I’ve never even met in real life. Things have been going on behind the scenes. I am not a real community organizer, but I do inhabit a little niche as as community helper and low-key leader, at least online, and have been raising money for two different women I know who were each in a bind. In both cases, it has gone so well. The way my friends and acquaintances and community (mostly, but not all women) have come together to help on the basis of my word alone has been heartbreaking and gratifying and I thank you. I thank all of you.

It’s so funny. The people who have the most to spare have been the cheapest, meanest, most suspicious, and the least helpful, prioritizing one more take-out meal, one more vacation, one more expensive piece of mass-produced garbage they don’t even need, I guess. Meanwhile, the people who have the least, have been the most generous. Amazingly generous. Like, the woman I did the first fundraiser for, DONATED BACK TO THE SECOND FUNDRAISER. Some people are good people. I don’t know why I’m surprised.

Friendship is a fraught thing for me. Some unfortunate bad experiences have made me the sort of person who doesn’t trust easily, but times like this remind me that there are so many good folks out there. And I love each and every damn one of you.

Anyway! PINK BATHROOM! See y’all next week for the final reveal.