Facing Limited Budgets and High Costs [Part 1]

Getting Unstuck at Home #002

When you’re feeling stuck between what you want and what you can afford.

Me in my almost entirely thrifted apartment, 2013

When I asked Instagram what overwhelms them about decorating their home right now, one of the most repeated answers was about limited budgets and high costs. That’s what we’re tackling this week!

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There are necessary concessions we all make when creating a home. For example: ceiling fans. I inherited one when we moved in. The kind with fake wood blades and brassy detailing, like the ones you see when picking up a pizza. It was in our bedroom when we moved in (see photo evidence here), and I wanted it gone. But there was always something more pressing—taxes, a leaky basement, the children—so the fan stayed, and I seethed.

Then one day, I had a photoshoot scheduled. Nothing major—just a few stills for a story I was writing. But I knew that fan would end up in the background, and I felt… conflicted. Because at this point, I had come to appreciate what good air circulation does for quality sleep. But who takes decorating advice from someone with a ceiling fan from 1992 hanging in their bedroom? It felt wrong to admit I had become a ceiling fan person.

I went online to find a replacement. And then, of course, I found a light fixture. A custom scalloped basket-shaped pendant that looked like it belonged in a quaint French cottage. I loved it. With no price tag listed on the website, I knew I couldn’t afford it. I inquired anyway. It cost $12,000. Aghast, but undeterred, I found a similar style in my price range, and immediately, I felt cheated. The proportions were odd, resembling a large wicker breast. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

Now I’d need an electrician. And a drywall patch. And while we were at it, maybe I should repaint the ceiling. Which meant choosing a new color for the walls. Then wallpaper. And once the walls changed, the bed frame really didn’t make sense anymore.

By 10 p.m., I had a spreadsheet going and a total budget of $7,000 for a light that I wasn’t sure I even liked.

All because I didn’t want the internet to see my ceiling fan.

The Urgency Trap

My brain’s default mode is black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking. I move quickly and break things along the way—this approach has paid off, and it’s cost me a lot, too. There is always a moment where it feels like you only have two choices: Go into debt (be it time or money) trying to fix what’s wrong, or throw your hands up and feel bad for yourself. It’s not that I didn’t like how our bedroom updates turned out. It’s that I didn’t like being driven by false urgency and a sense of inadequacy that wasn’t even mine.

But what I’ve learned (slowly, and not always gracefully) is that there’s usually a third option waiting.

When I let myself ride the wave of those emotional tantrums without judgment, I start to see it differently. Limitations, although inconvenient, have brought out my resourceful side. They’ve brought me closer to the truth of what I really want and need.

Money can indeed buy happiness. But if you don’t know what makes you happy, more storage might just mean more things to manage. Bigger closets can sometimes mean less freedom. So I think it’s a little more nuanced than just having a big budget to work with. The work is in defining what kind of happiness you’re looking for. It can’t be found in worrying about what people are going to think about your ugly ceiling fan.

The Overwhelm of Limited Budgets

You’re not the only one feeling this way. Everything’s expensive right now, and it makes total sense to want your space to feel done. If you appreciate beauty and love design, you know this plight intimately. My tastes have always exceeded my means, and I’ve wondered if the kind of hunger I felt for not being able to sate my own longings was key in fueling my creative fire. And fire must be managed skillfully. Desire can be a doorway into your soul or a drive that pulls you into a loop that keeps your truth at arm’s length.

When there are loose ends in our homes, when we can see the potential of a space but have no clear way to reach it, it’s hard to relax. Me? I obsess, ideate, and come up with all sorts of ideas. Not expressing them feels like sitting in front of a big bowl of pasta on an empty stomach. It’s hard to know we may never fulfill our appetite for creation.

But to want this transformation in our spaces… it’s not frivolous. It means we care about how we feel at home. It means we’re in touch with creative fire and our agency to create it into reality. But here’s the hard part: Even though our feelings are valid, it doesn’t mean we have to stretch beyond what we can afford, be it based on financial, time, or life constraints. But we often do. We’re so determined to make it a reality that we forget that reality contains solutions that whisper, rather than burn.

Because even if we don’t spend the money chasing perfection, we pay in other ways, like worry and rumination, and never feeling quite at home in a room's imperfection. And that tension? It’s brutal. Because when point B feels out of reach, point A starts to feel like failure.

I believe this tension is a form of disappointment. When we blast over the alarm telling us we’re going beyond our boundaries (money and time) or wallow in the unfairness of unexpressed creative energy, we’re engaging in a kind of self-sabotage. So what do we do about it?

Stay tuned for part two of Getting Unstuck at Home: Limited Budgets and High Costs.

In the next dispatch, this Thursday (available to supporting subscribers), I’ll be sharing a few ways I’ve maintained creative momentum without spending money.

I’ll walk through:

• How I find the creative playground within limitations.

• How I trick myself into feeling inspired by spaces I used to resent.

• A few of my favorite free (or nearly free) design moves.

• The mindset shift that helped me see waiting as a powerful design phase, not just dead time.