Decorating a New House from Scratch

August 14, 2023 Julia Jorgenson

Our last home was 1100sqft, with some interesting floor plan choices that made some of that space not super useable. Our new home is 2300sqft, with an additional 400sqft bonus room and 200sqft of storage.

We’re not exactly decorating our new house from scratch, but there are a lot of new spaces in our home that are being furnished from scratch. I started imagining layouts and interiors before we even put an offer on the house and am now months into the designing process, so I thought I would outline my process and show you how to decorate your home from scratch, too.

Consider How You Want to Live in the Space

The very first thing you need to do is picture your life in the house, and what sort of spaces you’re looking for. Is entertaining important to you? Do you want to prioritize dining and seating spaces? Do you see yourself reading a book in front of a fireplace? Sipping coffee at a cafe table in a breakfast nook? Lounging on a pit sofa having movie nights with the fam? Kneeling around the coffee table playing board games? Do you need spaces for kids to play? Spaces for work and study?

Decide what’s important to you and what you want to make space for, so that you know what to prioritize in your design.

Look into Different Ways to Lay Out Your Spaces

Before buying furniture for a space, look into different ways to lay out spaces. There are so many different ways to arrange the same space, with different types of furniture.

Here are some floor plans for different types of rooms:

However, you can also study layouts by looking at pictures of different rooms:

Look Into Some Design Basics

This blog post isn’t going to try to turn you into an interior designer, but here’s some essential information that will help you decorate and furnish your home.

Here’s how to choose the right:

And here’s some advice on color:

Figure Out Your Style

Modern farmhouse, cottagecore, mid-century modern, traditional, coastal, there are a lot of different decorating styles out there. Your personal style may not fit one of these exactly, but when looking for furniture ideas and decorating inspiration, it’s useful to use these terms to find items you like that will look good together.

Before starting to design your home’s spaces, try to find a name for a style that most matches your tastes. Then, when you’re looking around for items you can use that in searches, ex. modern farmhouse dining table or mid century modern lamp.

Here are some links to lists and definitions of some popular design styles:

Make an Inspiration Board for Each Room

Once you’ve figured out a style, make a mood board with some rooms you’d like to emulate. You can use style terms to look for inspiration images in online magazines and on websites like Pinterest or apps like Instagram and TikTok. I highly recommend using Pinterest because once you start saving images, the learning algorithm will eventually start showing you ideas you never would have thought to ask for, but are exactly what you want.

Make a Product Board for Each Room

Once you have a couple of different inspiration images and have a rough idea of what you want your room to look like, look at furniture pieces/styles that these rooms have in common: do they all have olive green sofas? are round dining tables features? Do two of them have the exact same rattan-accent nightstand?

Use the room layout ideas to figure out what pieces of furniture your rooms will require. Try to locate some big furniture pieces (sofas, dining tables, bed frames, rugs, curtains) reminiscent of pieces in those rooms. The items you choose for your product boards can be pieces in your budget that you’d like to consider buying or pieces outside of your budget that you plan on either searching for a dupe for or DIYing a dupe for later.

Use tools like Google Lens to help you find both exact matches and similar versions of furniture pieces you really like!

Use a tool like Canva to make a collage of all of your picks. You can even roughly lay them out into how they will fit into the room. Include items you’ll already be bringing into the room into these collages to make sure everything looks good together.

Once your have a product board for each room, look at all of the collages together to make sure everything works together.

Select Your Furniture

Use your product board to start searching for furniture that fits both your budget and your space.

Once you make your selections, I recommend using a spreadsheet to track the type of furniture you want for each space, links to a couple of options you’re interested in for different pieces and—this is unfortunate but—signing up for newsletters for stores you’re pretty sure you’ll be buying from. You’ll want to know about each and every deal. I managed to save $1000 on our sofa by hitting a store’s big 4th of July weekend sale.

Styling Your Furniture & Walls

Once you’ve figured out which major furniture pieces you’ll be shopping for, your last big step in decorating your home will be looking into styling.

Here’s advice on styling various pieces of furniture:

Here’s some advice on how to hang art and some gallery wall ideas.

Tips for Budgeting

Finally, some tips on budgeting:

Create a whole house budget before you start shopping.
Plan for the whole room, but only buy the essential items first.
Keep an eye on Facebook Marketplace and thrift stores.
Sign up for stores’ newsletters to catch sales. (We were able to catch both 4th of July and Prime Day deals, which saved us a sizable chunk of money.)
Use Google Lens and Pinterest to find dupes foe more expensive products.
Try shopping Ebay for coupons and gift cards.
Keep a list of a couple of options for each piece of furniture you need. It’ll double your chance of sales. It’ll also give you some wriggle room if you want to compromise on one piece to splurge on another.

Julia

Moving Tips and Tricks + Printable Checklists!

July 31, 2023 Julia Jorgenson

I shared my moving story in a recent post. Just in case you’re looking to move houses soon too, I thought I’d share all the tips and tricks I learned in the process, plus a couple of printable checklists based on the spreadsheets I made for my move!

Taking Stock of Furniture + Bulky Items

The first step I’d recommend when moving is to make a list of all of the big items in your house. This includes all of your furniture and other bulky decor items like mirrors, lamps, and curtains. Go room-by-room and log all of your big items and what’s happening to them, whether you’re:

Taking them with you to the new house,
Selling them on something like Facebook Marketplace or donating them to a specific location, or
Curbing them, putting them on the street for people to take or for trash pickup.

When we were moving, we sold a few items online and gave a few others to family members, but the vast majority of furniture we weren’t taking were put out on the curb. We lived on a busy street and once people heard we were moving, some people would check back every day to see what was new. Some pieces were picked up by the time I reached the door to go back inside after putting them out.

We were pretty cut-throat about getting rid of furniture, but focused mostly on function than style.

If it wasn’t the prettiest, but was in good shape and would need to be replaced immediately after we moved in, it came with us. I knew we’d be buying a lot of new items that we didn’t already have functional versions of, and I’d rather spend my money on the things that needed to be purchased as soon as possible.

If I liked the piece of furniture, but it wasn’t functioning the way I wanted it to in the old house or if I knew it wouldn’t have a defined, necessary function in the new house, we got rid of it and hoped it went to a new home where it was needed. And, of course, if something was broken or hated, it wasn’t coming with us to the new house.

Decluttering

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” - William Morris

While you’re making decisions about furniture, you can also start decluttering. Decluttering is a deeply personal process, but here are some good questions to ask while you go through your things:

Have I used this in the last year?

The first question to ask for most items is, is this item being used? A good time to give each item is all four seasons, if you didn’t use it this past winter, spring, summer, or fall, you probably won’t use it (or miss it) next spring, summer, or fall.

I’ve found this question is especially helpful for seasonal items like swimsuits and coats, items that usually just sit around for a good portion of the year. If I wore a swimsuit last summer, it stayed. If I hadn’t worn it in two or three summers, I probably wasn’t wearing it again anyway.

Is this expensive to replace?

If an item isn’t used often, but you know that theoretically it is useful, another question to ask yourself is “is this expensive to replace?” Is this item worth the cost of storing and moving it around even if it may be useful one day in the future?

I’ve found this question is useful for things like pens. The thirty promotional pens in that junk drawer may be useful one day. But when that one day comes, wouldn’t you prefer to buy a pack of new pens that you like? Or easy and quick just to start a promotional pen collection from scratch?

Chase’s rule for this was that if it costs less than $20 to replace and was an item of infrequent use, it was tossed or donated.

Can this item be digitized?

Paper clutter is real. When we were moving, I had some sentimental papers taking up space in my desk that didn’t really need to be there. So I made an album in my phone, took pictures of them, and tossed them. I can still look back on them from time to time, but the physical item is no longer taking up space.

Is this item already digitized? Is also useful for items like appliance manuals. You can find just about any manual online and save it to a folder in your computer labeled “Manuals,” so if you ever need it again, you’ll have it even after you throw away the bulky physical item.

Do I even like it?

Finally, ask yourself if you actually like the item. Marie Kondo asks “does it bring joy?” Emily Ley asks if it’s “the best, the favorite, or necessary?” William Morris, as quoted previously, said “have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

Give yourself permission to get rid of the things that you don’t take any enjoyment or pleasure from. If you have the room, eventually, that choice may give you the opportunity to replace that item with something you do love.

Figure Out Storage

Once you’ve started to figure out what’s coming with you, figure out a storage solution for while you’re moving. Packing can take a long time, especially if you’re doing it all yourself. This may mean putting boxes in a guest bedroom or attic.

For us, it meant renting a storage unit. If you’re moving and not planning on keeping the unit long term, a lot of storage rental places offer deals for the first couple of months that can make using them pretty cost effective for the convenience of not living in a forest of boxes for an unknown amount of time.

Start Packing

Once you’re ready to start packing, some of the best advice I can give is to:

Buy boxes. It may seem tempting to reuse Amazon boxes, but having boxes of uniform shape and size is very useful.
Invest in more smaller boxes. We bought mostly medium and small boxes instead of throwing as much as we could in larger boxes. They’re easier to carry, easier to organize, and you’ll appreciate the choice in the long run.
Pack items that aren’t currently in use ASAP. The moment you decide to move, start packing. You have more stuff and the process will take you longer than you ever thought. When you’re on a time crunch and trying to finish packing the last rooms as quickly as possible, you’ll be thankful that you started as soon as you did.
Think about permanent storage. When buying boxes, think about buying permanent storage solutions as well. Out-of-season clothing, linens, seasonal decor, craft supplies, tools, hobby supplies, and more are all items that may not need to be unpacked and would do better in storage options they can stay in long after the move. Take this chance, invest a little more, and you may discover an organizational opportunity that will help you for decades to come.
Label everything. We hired movers to help with our move. When things were labeled, they could bring them to the area they needed to go. When things weren’t labeled, they had to stop and ask me where they needed to go. Sometimes I didn’t know, so I ended up with a miscellaneous pile in the living room, and had to take them where they needed to go myself later on. It can be hard to label everything, especially when the new house may not have rooms that directly correlate to rooms in the old house, but try your best and you’ll be grateful for the effort.
Use towels, dish cloths, and napkins to wrap delicate items. Don’t throw any bathroom or kitchen towels into their own box! At least not before packing all of your dishes, vases, and other fragile items.

Some of the items we purchased to move…

Tips for Hiring Movers

Ask friends and family for recommendations for moving services they’ve used and trust.
Schedule ASAP, especially if moving in the summer busy season.
Have cash ready to tip movers (20%).
If you need to move twice (if you’ll be staying someplace temporarily in-between moves) ask if they can give you a discount on the second move.
Again, label everything so they know where to take things when moving you in!

Checklists for Everything Else

There are so many little odds and ends when it comes to moving. Have you made arrangements with both locations for the power company? Registered to vote at the new address? Changed the address on your drivers’ license? Notified Aunt Mildred so she doesn’t send her Christmas card to the wrong address?

I’ve taken everything on my spreadsheet (plus a few things I didn’t realize I needed to do until I had an “oops” moment!) and created a checklist.

I’ve separated them into an “Old” House Checklist and a “New” House Checklist.

“Old” House

Before Move-Out Date is Set

Buy moving boxes + supplies.
Make a list of furniture and whether it's coming or not.
Declutter and donate items in "old" home.
Rent storage unit (if necessary).
Pack and store non-essential items.

After Move-Out Date is Set

Schedule movers.
Get cash to tip movers from bank
Schedule end of service date for utilities.
(water, gas, electricity, cable, internet)
Pack essential items.
Schedule cleaning service for day before property transfer
Remove delivery address on online retail websites.
(Amazon, PayPal, Apple Pay, Target, Walmart)
Stop subscriptions and services.
Remove smart devices from your account.
(cameras, thermostats, locks, etc.)

“New” House

Before Moving-In

Make list of essential furniture to purchase.
Watch for sales at furniture retailers.
Schedule utilities start dates.
(water, gas, electricity, cable, internet)
Schedule moving company.
Get cash to tip movers from bank.
Add delivery address to online retail websites.
Schedule deep clean (if necessary).
Write down addresses for essential services nearby.
(nearest pharmacy, bank, grocery store, vet, ER, etc.)
Learn trash/recycling pick up schedules.
Buy and ship essentials for moving in. (After closing only)

After Moving-in

Forward mail at USPS
Change your voter registration
Change driver's license address
Change address at: work, banks, hospital
Change locks.
Send "we moved!" notices (if you want people to know).

Here are the download-ables, so you can print them for convenience:

If you’re getting ready for a big move, I hope this advice and these checklists help make the process smoother and less stressful for you.

If you have any other moving tips, let me know in the comments!

Julia

House Hunting Checklist & Notes Downloadables!

July 24, 2023 Julia Jorgenson

Some fun freebies!

I am always just a tad too organized.

When we were house hunting, I gave my real estate agent a 17-slide presentation with information about our budget, what our essentials in a new house were, what our wishlist included, dealbreakers, and even some of our thoughts on houses currently on the market.

It was… a lot.

If you want to be just the right amount of impressively organized, however, I’ve created two downloadable for you!

The first is a New House Wishlist, where you can write down everything you’re looking for in a new house.

The second is a House Tour Notes page, where you can keep track of your thoughts in any houses you tour while house shopping.

Enjoy!

Love,

Julia

Our Moving Story

July 17, 2023 Julia Jorgenson

As of this weekend, we are officially moved into our new home. There are still (quite a few) unpacked boxes, but we packed up one house, moved all of our belongings to a second house, and have unpacked a second house so that it’s in a livable condition.

It wasn’t the easiest process, so I thought I’d share everything I’d learned, plus a few extra tips and tricks I picked up along the way, but first, I wanted to share the story of our move.

All last year, we worked with architects not to move, but to add an addition onto our old house. Inflation soared. So did interest rates. By the time our plans were complete and contractor bids were in, adding onto our house no longer made financial sense.

It was such a difficult decision to abandon those plans. We’d spent so much time, energy, and money on them. We’d attended a half dozen in person meetings, sent hundreds of emails, picked out dozens of finishes. It was hard to let go of the project, but the quotes from the contractors were literally $100k over budget before work started and it just couldn’t realistically be done.

So, in April, we made the decision to sell.

Because our house was inherited, we reached out to family before putting our house on the market. Immediately someone said they wanted to buy it and by the next day, we agreed on a price. Another family member with a real estate license agreed to mediate the deal. We were so privileged to not have to list our house and the private sale saved us so much money, effort, and stress. If you want some advice on selling, however, I recommend Young House Love’s Podcast and their staging advice.

While my family member prepared their house for sale we started work on moving.

On the “New House” side we made a plan and figured out a couple of different things:

What we were looking for in a new house. Square footage, # of bedrooms, # of bathrooms, etc. Our necessary item list included two living spaces, 3+ bedrooms on the same floor, 1 extra study/bedroom, a small yard, and a driveway. Our wishlist included a specific layout (which our new home has), an extra study/bedroom space (which our new house has), lots of storage (yup), and a fireplace (which is the one major item we didn’t get).
What locations we wanted to buy in. We singled out a couple of locations in a few different areas that we liked.
Our max monthly budget. In real estate apps, we didn’t focus as much on the sale price, because taxes and insurance weren’t standard across the locations we were looking at and changed what was “affordable” or not in different locations.
The current state of the market. We looked at what kinds of houses were for sale for what prices in various locations and at past houses that had sold recently and how long they’d been on the market.

On the “Old House” side, we also took care of a number of tasks:

We made a list of all of our major furniture items and marked whether we were keeping or curbing them (we didn’t have the energy to marketplace them, and our neighborhood got a lot of traffic so anything good that we curbed found a new home instead of going to the dump, sometimes before we got back inside!!)
We rented a storage unit. We knew we would be selling our home before moving into a new place, so we thought a storage unit would make things easier. If you’re only planning on using one for a short time, a lot of units have great deals. We utilized both a 50% off for 3 months deal (on a unit we had for 2 1/2 months) and a first-month-free deal (on a second unit we had for less than a month).
We started decluttering and donating. We went through our wardrobes and storage areas and ruthlessly decluttering so that we didn’t pack items that didn’t, as the great Marie Kondo would put it, “bring us joy.” It was both freeing and emotionally taxing, but worth it once we’d finished.
We started moving items not currently in use into the storage unit. This included out-of-season clothes, holiday decorations, books, board games, and more.

Our original plan was to wait for my family member’s house to sell so he could buy our house, sell our house, and live in my parents’ mother-in-law apartment while we comfortably house shopped while our money from the sale grew in a high-yield savings account.

In late May, however, we decided we were in love with a house that had been on the market for over a month and were getting worried about it selling before we were ready to buy.

So we abandoned the smart plan and put in a contingent offer.

From there, events moved fast.

On May 27th, we toured the house and put in an offer, contingent on the sale of my family member’s house, so he could buy our house.
On June 1st, after a few counter offers, everything was accepted by both parties.
On June 5th, my family member’s house was listed for sale.
On June 6th, my family member’s house sold. That week, the new house was inspected and we renegotiated the sale price a tiny bit so we could fix some items the investigation found.
On June 10th, we held Charlie’s 1st birthday party on his birthday.
On June 11th, we moved out of our house into my parents’ apartment. We spend a week finishing packing our house, taking off of work some days and packing late into the evenings on others.
On June 14th, I turned 30. Not that it’s relevant. But it still felt like a big part of a big month.
On June 17th, movers moved our big furniture into our storage units.
On June 21st, we finished packing everything up at the old house (clearing out the back shed and packing the kitchen took the longest).
On June 22nd, we had our old house deep cleaned .
On June 23rd, we closed and officially sold our house about two months after the decision to move.
On June 30th, we closed on the new house after a strange but relaxing week where we were no longer home owners. Immediately after closing, I placed orders on a large number of furniture items I’d been eyeing all month.
On July 1st, movers moved everything from our two storage units into our new house. We spent the rest of the day unpacking into the night.

For the past two weeks, we’ve continued setting up the house, unpacking boxes, getting furniture delivered, putting together furniture pieces, placing orders for more furniture, etc. etc. Two weeks after closing, on July 15th, we officially moved into the new house and it is a dream come true.

Love,

Julia

We Moved!!

July 13, 2023 Julia Jorgenson

I have a big life change to announce—we’ve moved!

Our last home was not only a family home, which belonged to my great-grandparents and then to my grandfather, but also my first post-college home, where I spent the majority of my 20s, met my husband, buried my childhood pet, got married, and had a baby. I’d put a lot of love and work into our last home, which you can see some of in the nursery reveal I posted less than a year ago.

It was hard to say goodbye—at times, I had to pause packing because I was crying so hard—but I took comfort in reminding myself that it was just a house. The only special, magical element in it was love. The love I put into it and the love for the people who lived there. When we left, we took that with us and brought it to the new house, and it may not be as mature a love yet, but those seeds will grow and blossom again.

Already, it’s obvious that the move was exactly the right choice for our family. There’s enough space for me to get an office again, so I can write and paint and craft. For a play area for Charlie. For our piano to rest fully against a wall and not out into the hallway. For Chase to finally buy a rowing machine. For a big, cozy pit sofa. Our bedroom is actually big enough for our bed. Our kitchen window looks out into our own backyard, not our neighbor’s. I get a two-story home with stairs, something I’ve dreamed about my entire life.

I’ll be Instagramming about the house on a new IG handle: @magnoliaarchhome so I can share pictures publicly (my personal IG has gone private so I can share pictures and videos of Charlie with trusted friends and family).

Good things are ahead of us.

Which brings me to another big life change…

I’m leaving my job to stay at home!

For the next few years, I plan to focus on parenting my son, taking care of my family’s new home, and pursuing creative passions. I’m in an extremely privileged position where this is something I’m able to do, and I don’t plan on wasting a single day of this opportunity.

I’ll update again soon (maybe with moving tips?), but I’ve been watching a lot of Winnie the Pooh with Charlie lately, so all I have left to say for now is T-T-F-N. Ta-ta for now!

Love,

Julia

P.S. if you know me in real life, send me a message on the contact page and I’ll let you know the new address!