Layered interiors take time

A lesson I’ve learned this year is that interiors take time. You can’t buy an entire ‘look’ in one weekend’s expensive shopping trip and expect it to work. I’ve made many mistakes by being impatient. I’m the worst when I move into a new place and last year I moved twice. In six months. This threw me completely. I’d just got everything perfect in one place when we had to move (let’s not go into that story…). Of course, nothing from the old place ‘worked’ in the new place. And I was running out of cash. Cue major frustration. Do you ever have those days when you hate everything about your home and want to start again? Yeah, that was me. It was all wrong, wrong, wrong. A bit like looking at an overflowing wardrobe and screaming “I have nothing to wear!” But rather than sitting, in tears, surrounded by inside-out clothes, I’m sitting in a pile of cushions, throws and frames that I loved a few months ago and wondering where it all went wrong.

So what did I do? Rush out and buy more new stuff that would work in the new place of course! Will I never learn? In my impatience I bought a cheap coffee table that I hated within weeks. I bought at least three lots of co-ordinated cushions and throws in haste, not to mention two rugs and countless accessories. And you wonder why I try and sneak new homewares purchases past my boyfriend (“Oh this old thing? We’ve had it for ages, I just dragged it out of the back of the cupboard!”)

Anyway, to cut a very long story short, there was a time when I sat up and realised that I needed to calm the f**k down and stop buying stuff! I took a homewares chill pill. And in that time I realised the cowhide was meant to be under the dining table, not in front of the couch, I won a vintage marble-topped coffee table on eBay that I’m in love with (and only cost $85), found the perfect white quilt for our bedroom, re-styled the spare room/office with some of those accessories that no longer worked in the living room, and my stylist friend Emma came over and worked out my book case and wine rack needed swapping around. Genius!

At Darren Palmer’s session at Coco Republic Design School he told us to have a consistent, considered and cohesive approach to interiors and to spend a long time planning before you even part with any cash. Similarly, stylist Jason Grant once told me your home is never really finished and should always be a work in progress. I tend to agree.

It’s all feeling a lot calmer chez Interiors Addict these days. And this week, when I read this blog post by Anna Spiro where she talks about layered interiors taking a long time, I found myself nodding in agreement! I still want a new dining table and chairs but it’s not a race. And I’m okay with waiting to see if the flamingo cushions I’ve ordered are going to be the right shade of pink before I make a definite decision! I can’t promise I’ll never rush into a bad purchase again but like all addicts, I have the best intentions!