Hi,
I have recently spent HUGE amounts of time on marthastewart.com and Pinterest, looking for ideas for home decorations for fall (and yule/christmas). I know autumn hasn’t officially started yet, but it’s slowly kreeping in.

Here in Croatia we don’t celebrate Halloween, we celebrate All Saints Day. But I celebrate Halloween, at least our version of Halloween. I don’t dress up in costumes, but I prepare the supper and leave a seat and plate for the visiting spirits. I also decorate a bit and in recent years I carve pumpkins. Instead of simply putting the candle in the window I put the carved pumpkin 🙂 .

And as I was scouring through the pages and images I realized that even though it looks nice I can’t afford it. And even the things that I could afford – they take so much space! I would need a huge house with huge storage area. Right now we have problems with our yule/xmas stuff. It’s in one box in our laundry room and it still looks messy. So to have three sets of plates and couple of sets of cutlery is mission impossible. And I would have to have sets of decorations like candles and candle holders and serving plates as well… For me it’s hard enough to keep my house clean. I’m always battling with my attention disorder to finish the chores. I really don’t need the extra stuff in my home. But that doesn’t mean that I won’t decorate my home and prepare the lavish meals. No. I will do all that but on a budget, and without all of the unnecessary stuff.

To be honest, this is the way I planned my home from beginning. For instance I purchased glasses that can be used for water and wine (stemless wine glasses), they can even be used for whiskey. I also bought glasses that are beer glasses and water glasses. The extra glasses that I have are martini glasses, which me and my friend use every occasion we get. And champagne glasses, which are used for special events. I don’t buy any more glasses. If we get glasses from our friends we send them to someone who needs them more then we do. If we don’t need something we pack it and we give it away. This is the only way I can keep up with all of the stuff in the house. So with that mindset there really is no space for much of decorative items. All of our decorations need to be multi-functional. For instance I can have one vase that is also a tumbler that can also be used as candle holder. I can use it for various simple decorations in different occasions. So no need to buy all that extra stuff. But still…

House rules

These are not the rules that anyone else has set for me. I set them up myself. Following these rules makes it easier for me to get on top of house work. But thanks to my lack of attention, my house can and does still get messy. It just gets less messy without all of the extras.

1. Buy things that can be used in various occasions and can switch functionality
2. Don’t buy the unnecessary items because they look good or you saw them online
3. Try to make your decorations as organic as possible, so that when all is done you can compost them or eat them
4. If you need to buy a decoration when you see it. Walk away, then if you still need to buy it, go and buy it. Sometimes it will get sold by the time you come back and you’ll see that you don’t really need it. Other times you will decide that you don’t really need it and never go back. And then there will be occasions when you will definitely decide you need it and buy it a bit later.

I think these rules can be useful to anyone, but they are sometimes hard to follow. Still if you or I manage to follow there rules just a bit, they do make life and cleaning easier.

Maybe my rules help someone or inspire you to make your rules to help yourself in keeping up with all of the stuff in the house. Cause decorations are really unnecessary things that are here only for pleasure. However, if you do have the place and finance to buy them and storage them, and it makes you happy, then go for it. Me, I have to keep it simple.