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1 In Home Reno & Decor

Design Dilemmas, Chaos, and The Thoughts of an Indecisive Mama.

Sometimes everything around here runs smoothly, and then the very next day we will have full on chaos here. 
You know those days?? 
When no one in the family has clean socks and you suddenly spot that mountain of laundry. When the dog eats diapers and shakes them all over the house which catapults a frenzy of cleaning and reorganizing, while you simultaneously beg your hubby to complete one task which then turns into starting a million forgotten tasks. 
Ya, that has been us lately.
This $15 dollar rattan chair has been one of the main reasons the laundry piled up quicker this week and the reason why we have had to eat on the floor since our dining room table is piled high with home decor accessories.
I am momentarily having a brain freeze.
The kind where you can’t make a decision so you start from the very beginning.
Starting for left to right, top to bottom, here is the story about this Rattan chair.
  1. This beauty came with big square cushions that needed some loving. I immediately pictured the chair a glossy colour with a very graphic pattern. (I have learned with having three sticky fingered children, that outdoor material stands up to their abuse. Which either limited or expanded my search, I am not sure which yet.)
  2. I showed this second picture on my IG account, knowing I could get a quick response from some interior enthusiast like myself. The material in that picture shows the ones I was most interested in. 
  3. The third picture is the material I ended up buying. I waited a week and a bit till it all went on sale and than hurried in with my kids, waving goodbye to the laundry and hello to two tortuous hours with my kids in a fabric store.
  4.  The next picture is of some material I already had in my stash, that at one point had pulled me in, and was too well priced to pass up. (I tried out the muted colour pallet on the chair and pictured the rattan painted a glossy muted aqua tone, and loved the feeling the material gave to the space).
  5. The fifth picture is of the material my mom and I liked the most when we initially went shopping for this chair (read: thorn in my side). If you look really closely at the picture you can see that the material looks almost stitched. The pretty colors also made me think that I could introduce some new summer colors into our very neutral living room decor. (And what girl can say no to pink??) BUT, then I got it home and draped it over the chair and realized that the pattern was SO graphic that it looked cartoon like. UGG. Not the look I was going for.
  6. The red-orange based material I was going to use for some out door pillows, but once I tried that one on the chair it brought some new life into my space. It still has lots of neutral tones and some blues (my fav) it also seemed to make our yellowish wood floor look intentional with the yellows being echoed in the fabric.
  7. And then, ultimately, I wasn’t sure about any of the choices or what I was thinking anymore. So I did what any normal person would do, and I pulled down every accessory within eye shooting distance of the room and piled it all on the dining room table. (read: Picnic lunches on the floor for a week)
  8. Then, I thought, maybe I just needed to change the whole room around again. (Though I did this last week). So, our big china cabinet sat in the middle of the room for a while as I pictured it in different potential places.
  9. Finally, I moved it into a spot, yet couldn’t figure out if it could stay in that spot if I wasn’t able to style the top of it (read: awful bulk head in the way)
I did all this while neglecting the house chores and we may have eaten pizza in lieu of dinner one night (and for breakfast) because my mind is too consumed with the reorganizing, organizing and messes everywhere.
Did I mention the other million half finished tasks were doing around here??? They include building shelving for the salon, and stalking it with colour, moving out all of our storage room to run cable cords in the ceiling to a television that will be in the future salon and running back and forth to the colour distributor? 
Please tell me I am not the only one who hangs up her cape sometimes and runs around like a crazy person and feels like I’m not getting anywhere except for deeper into a big ole mess! I hope I’m not the only one who sits and stares at a room and swatches of material for longer than I would ever like to admit.
How do you choose what to change and what to keep in your spaces?? 
As you can see, I need help…and a house cleaner, and a laundry assistant, and maybe someone to watch the kids for a bit so I can stare at these swatches for a few minutes in peace. 
Because, heck, my name is Bethany… and I am an indecisive Mama.

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  • Carol
    April 23, 2013 at 11:18 am

    Hi Bethany. I just subscribed to your blog and really enjoy it. You have a beautiful family. My husband and I also have three little amigos. In response to your question, how do you decide what to get rid of? My thoughts on that are, if I don't absolutely love something, it doesn't come into my house. I have begun to purge a lot of my stuff. Perfectly good stuff, but I'm done with clutter. I actually loved the brown fabric with white coral type design. I think it would look beautiful on that chair. Looking forward to seeing what you choose.