Creative - Even though you were not “born creative”

I was determined to move out of my parents’ home when I completed high school and so I did. However, what I didn’t expect was that the next ten years would be very nomadic years. I traveled to many states across two countries and lived with a diverse group of people in different kinds of living situations. In fact, I lived in a total of 15 homes over the past 10-11 years.

When you’re moving as frequently as I did, you cannot really settle down and create roots and you certainly cannot make your house a home in the conventional sense. Some places I lived in for such short periods that it didn’t even make sense to buy a used nightstand and so I just used a cardboard box.

Below are few tricks I learnt to make your house a home no matter how long you plan to stay there:

1. Find a pretty tablecloth you love! That way you can cover broken down used tables, cardboard boxes, etc. This tablecloth I had made me feel like I had a beautiful dining table at one point, nightstand at another.
   
   
2. Baskets are a great way to organize your belongings! Initially, I used foldable baskets that I could easily pack away but now even when I live in a home I own, I use many baskets to categorize and organize my belongings.

Spray paint is a magical tool for anyone to use! If you find an old beat-up nightstand, an ugly vase, ugly photo frames - whatever it may be - spray paint can take anything and make it beautiful! I love finding items at thrift stores and just spray painting them to give it a whole new life like the ugly vase and night stand that I transformed in the below picture!

That’s pretty much how I survived my nomadic years. However, in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, I finally got to live with my husband (long distance till then), and I was finally able to create some roots! I never expected to really get into DIY but moving to a new city in the middle of the pandemic gave me a lot of lonely days and slowly I started a little by little. Each project gave me such an adrenaline rush and I was just amazed that a girl like me, with no aptitude for crafts, could take something so bland and make it come alive! I learnt almost everything I know from Instagram and just randomly searching on the internet. Creativity is like a muscle - the more you work at it, the better you become, and I truly believe anyone can do it!

                    

If you’re looking for an easy, high impact project to start working on, painting is almost always the answer. Whether it’s painting a nightstand, painting a wall or a door, paint creates such an impact without a ton of effort!

I recently fell in love with painting doors. Find a door you don’t like and try these below steps!

1. Figure out what color you want to paint the door and buy it in the semi-gloss sheen. This way it’s easy to clean.
2. Clean the door!!! You don’t want paint sticking to all the dirt.
3. Sand the door with 120 grit sandpaper
4. Prime the door. Usually, people say you can skip this step, but I find that when you prime, the paint lasts longer.
5. Then give it a light sand with either a brown paper bag or 220 grit sandpaper.
6. Paint the door in the directions shown in the below image. First coats are always ugly, so don’t worry!
7. Light sand with brown paper bag or 220 grit sandpaper.
8. Paint the second coat and you are done!!!

This is something you can do in 2 nap times. I love quick, high impact projects! Just remember, you can do it too, no matter how creative or able you think you are!

Painted my boring white door this beautiful warm color

Follow Miriam @Miriam.musings to follow her journey of redesigning her builder grade home in NC with simple budget DIYs -small and big makeovers that you can do too!