On the 30th of November, I turned 48; my blog turned 12. Both numbers seem impossible. For the first time that I can remember, I set birthday goals: love my family BIG, become a better/less lazy photographer (use my DSLR, for starters), save money for a big goal, and reboot The William Morris Project.
Years ago, shortly after I started The William Morris Project, someone asked me how I kept the family on board. I admitted they weren’t always as excited about my changes around the house. Sometimes people put things back in place, and other times they didn’t. Some of my projects worked, and others were failures.
Don’t lose hope. I didn’t expect that my eldest son would encourage me to rethink our home and how we live in it years later, but he did. Mikey is now an environmentally conscious sixteen-year-old, and the reason I am restarting and reimagining The William Morris Project for the first time since 2015. He thinks about overconsumption, sustainable practices, and the impact of a throwaway culture. If you ask him, he says he likes old stuff, like the red armchair we picked up at an estate sale. That may be true, but I am proud of him, and watching him develop into a young adult with convictions has been a wonder.
I gave myself until January to plan this new interpretation of The William Morris Project. It may not look the same as it once did, but that’s okay because we aren’t the same as we once were. What are you looking for, if anything, from WMP? Do you have goals for 2021?
New Thrifted Decor
Today, I’m having fun sharing “old stuff” we picked up at local estate sales. The first is a glass and brass coffee table that weighs just under two tons. My husband found the coffee table while I was in the hospital with my mom and surprised me. I want a wider table for this space, but for the price of a fast-food meal, I am happy for now. This bookmarked coffee table costs considerably more.
The second picture is my new favorite #cottagecore lamp/table combo, which I get some grief about on Instagram. I don’t care; I love that fussy light, and it gave the room the inviting feel Oscar de la Renta predicted. I’m posting it to show off the original pleated lampshade in the perfect shade of peachy-pink. I need to replace the lampshade because the tatters really are beyond repair.
My big goal for 2021 is to install the sheetrock in the basement. We have the sheetrock, we have the screws, it’s truly just lacking motivation bit it irks me every time I go downstairs.
Smaller goals:
* straighten hallway closet (did this during your 2015 WMP and it’s out of control again)
* arrange cat room to house my hobbies and be my “space”
Sheetrock (drywall here in CA) is a big job but makes such a difference! That was my husband’s job as a teenager. His stepdad had a drywalling business. Everything I did in 2015 is now back in disarray, so now is a great time for us all to start up again. I’m excited to do this with you! :)
We won’t be mudding or painting until summer but it will be nice just to have walls up again. We had torn them all out last year after a flood & then also tore out the ceiling for a rewire. We bought the drywall even though we weren’t intending to install it just because we had a rental truck at that moment anyway and figured, might as well save the money of renting it again, lol
We just picked up another old floor lamp for $25 for my living room. It has a big agate glass base and three fancy brass curlicue arms. Today, my grand daughter found a baby picture of me with my mom, grandma, and great grandma, and in the background of the picture, a lamp that is eerily like the one we just brought home. The granny chic decor runs deep!
That’s amazing! I’m off to google using your description of the lamp. I’m so curious to see what one looks like!
Ah…good ol’ WMP. I’ve missed you. :) And 2021…well who in the world knows what it will hold?! I keep chuckling as I see all these people talk about how they’re ready for 2020 to be over. Um, last I checked there isn’t actually a “reset” button you can click on New Years Eve that sets everything back to an earlier time. Unfortunately. So while I am looking forward to another year – as I always do – it’s more about how I can change, personally, and grow, spiritually, and make a difference in my immediate little corner of the world with the 6 people I live with and the 5 of them that God has given me to raise.
As for WMP…despite the fact that I’ve made regular trips to Goodwill over the last few months, I’m blown away by how much STUFF we still have in this house. It’s a daily battle. I’m looking for encouragement to live in the space you have. We’d love to build a garage…for the Hubs to have somewhere to work on our cars, and give us a little extra living space on top…but I suspect it would end up getting all of the junk that’s currently packed into our basement. {sigh} And with my income essentially gone (thank you, COVID) and most of my time taken up with homeschooling 5 kids (again, thanks, COVID), I think WMP for me this time around would really be about the focus on using up what you have, making do, and doing without…but with JOY. It could be worse. And I sometimes wonder if it’s going to get worse. The industry that my husband works in is slowing down a lot (aviation), and I would like to be a little more financially prepared for whatever 2021 may hold.
I agree with you. I’m still considering what I want this version of WMP to be about, and I keep coming back to stewardship. It’s less about having a pristine home or or organized cupboards and more about how I am using both.
I’m excited to see how your project and goals show up on the blog this next year. We spent some time and energy turning our dining room into a functioning work station for virtual school and while I know 2021 won’t be a magic reset button, I am looking forward to the dining room returning to the dining room (except with a bar cart for often used games and puzzles). I’d also love to get my office system in place that doesn’t leave it a mess two weeks later as the family drop spot (or require me to be the only one to home the dropped things).
I’m looking forward to things at least improving in 2021. Perhaps not in January 2021, but I refuse to believe it will always be like this. I know the Pandemic of 1918 took two years, but…no. Not willing to accept this will take as long. With my husband back home, it looks like we will have to do some reshuffling again. When everything is back to normal our home is going to feel like a mansion!
I love this project. Thrifting and sustainability is important to me too. Can’t wait to follow along.
Yay! Please join in. The more, the merrier.
As a perpetual thrifter whose home is almost all second-hand objects picked lovingly from the ash-heap of forgotten items (at estate sales or trash bins) I love this and commend your vision and purpose. Keep on, friend! You will fall more and more in love with your space as time moves on. It’s a special way to make a house a home.
I love your slow decorating style and have learned a lot from your patience when it comes to thrifting and making a home.
As a ~millennial~ who cares deeply about the environment, I say three cheers for vintage/secondhand stuff! It’s the main way I’ve decorated my home, both due to thrift and to my commitment to keeping stuff out of the landfill, and I think it is the best way to make a space unique and special. Once I started working from home I realized I needed a better desk, and began scouring Craiglist for the perfect piece. A few months later I finally found it–a solid wood 1940s double pedestal teacher’s desk that had been refinished in a warm brown tone. I rented a cargo van and trucked out to the middle of nowhere to pick it up and the guy was so tickled at how excited I was about the piece that he gave it to me for free (instead of the $50 he had it listed for). It is probably my happiest Craiglist story to date, and not anything I would have gotten from clicking “buy” on a particleboard desk from Wayfair, that’s for sure. Plus, it’s truly a one-of-a-kind piece, and I adore it.
Please share pictures! I love stories like this. (And, yes, thinking of landfills stresses me out.)
I love your blog but especially love your William Morris posts. I’ve always found them inspiring. I can’t wait to see what you do in 2021.
By the way, your table/lamp combo is adorable.
Thank you! I’m hoping I can live up to the ideas in my head. :)
I’m excited to do the WMP again. I did it back in 2015, but my home definitely needs a reboot in this area. I like William Morris because while it causes me to look intentionally at everything and keep only what is useful and beautiful, it is a softer and gentler way to only do this than the newer version by another author (I won’t name names). I found the second de-cluttering method a little harsher (for me anyway) and harder to follow through on.
I know who you are talking about and I agree!
2021 will be the beginning of the real planning to leave the large home we now live in. With a 20 and a 17 year old at home, they are close to moving out and we will be ready to downsize. I read a long time ago that if you expect to downsize to start working on it as early as you can-emptying out rooms and cupboards and shelves that won’t fit into your new square footage. i’ve been doing that over the last couple of years, slowly getting rid of the “easy stuff” and now it’s onto the harder things. I’d love to get my photos and photo books/yearbooks digital for instance. I’d also like to take a realistic look at all the craft, diy etc. project “stuff” I have around and make real decisions about whether I intend to get them done and if not out they need to go! My daughter and I have been selling a lot of her stuff on Mercari and it’s brought in a nice little savings for her and it’s nice to get it out of our lives.
I’m plan to make monthly realist SMART goals for the above in 2021 and perhaps some of what your project turns into will inspire me in a way I hadn’t thought of before! Looking forward to getting started!
I’m interested to see what your ultimate goals will be in this next year. I’m struggling to figure out how to make everything fit… I look at people’s houses and pictures on the internet and go where is your stuff? We are homeschoolers (pre-pandemic ones) and yes I do own hundreds of books which came in really handy when the libraries were closed and no I am not getting rid of them, nor am I getting rid of our admittedly large collection of games and puzzles (which again came in handy this year especially) nor am I getting rid of the scads of art supplies which range from a sewing machine to watercolors to chalk pastels to play-doh. This how we live our lives. We read a lot. We play a lot. We get creative a lot and well according to modern sources apparently you are supposed to live and be happy with nothing. So now how do I fit that into a modest 1960s ranch… thats the rub.
Their stuff is outside the frame of the camera. ;) Who says you have to get rid of anything? Some random person on the internet who doesn’t live with you? Pfft. Homes have to work for their inhabitants, so what is in the home varies based on the needs of the family. The home I had when the boys were little is not the same home we have now. The room I’m sitting in now to reply to this comment used to be a playroom! I have a modest 1950s ranch so I get what you’re saying. My goal (now really undetermined since my mom fell) is to keep a home that works for us and worry a whole lot less about what self-titled experts think I should do.