Home Tour & 12 Tips To Decorate Your Short-Term Home

OUR FIRST HOME

This is our first home ever. My husband and I bought it in 2016. My family and I moved into it after our posting in Mumbai, India in 2016. Believe it or not, we bought this condominium sight unseen while living abroad in India. If you are curious about the process, click below for my post.

Buying A Home Sight Unseen

We loved our first humble home in Virginia where we spent 2 years prior to moving to Manila, Philippines, our current home. It may have not looked magazine-worthy, but it was our happy and safe place. It was our one and only sanctuary.

YOUR SHORT-TERM HOME CAN BE YOUR SANCTUARY

As home DIY’s and renovations dominate social media feeds, it’s hard for those of us who pursue a nomadic lifestyle to feel relevant. Unless you move into a house for the purpose of flipping it, a task to make changes in a home is daunting and costly. There aren’t many resources out there for easy decorating solutions for people who move frequently.

In fluid lifestyle of moving from one rental home to another, the concept of renovation or DIY’s isn’t always on our side. More importantly it’s hard to feel motivated to keep repeating the process of painting rooms and decorating home, knowing that you will have to dismantle and make the condition of a home back to where it started in a few years. However, having a space you can call home is a blessing. You want that space to speak to you and represent who you are.

My goal here is to provide some ideas for those who live in a home for a short period of time, let’s say between 2 to 3 years, and move on. It is possible to make your home the place you feel proud of whether you own or rent. Hopefully this post will provide some ideas about what you can do to make your home feel updated or upgraded without breaking a bank or tearing down walls.

KITCHEN

1. KEEP IT SIMPLE IN THE KITCHEN

One key element of decorating a kitchen to me is to keep it simple. I keep the counter space as open and clean as possible. With exceptions of kitchen appliances that you use on a daily basis, try to put away your appliances in a cupboard or pantry and bring them out when you need them. Having more counter space with fewer appliances in sight will create a cleaner look. I usually keep a coffee maker, toaster, blender and one or two max on a counter. You don’t have enough space to store your appliances in the kitchen? Maybe time to purge. Ask yourself if you really need to own all the gadgets you have and if it is suitable for your lifestyle.

2. PLANTS OR FLOWERS IN THE KITCHEN

Have some potted plants or flowers in your kitchen. This, however, wouldn’t work well unless your kitchen is clutter free. If your counter is overflown with kitchen appliances and other kitchen tools, having a potted plant would simply add to the clutter. Clear up your counter space and let a plant or potted flowers get a spotlight in the space. It will make the space look fresh.

This following is a side story of our home decorating. I painted kitchen cabinets myself. I almost had a nervous breakdown, but I completed it. Having gone through the experience, I learned that I don’t love painting cabinets. However, seeing the white cabinets every single day made every sweat for painting the cabinets worthwhile. Having said that, I would love it if I never have to do it again.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BJtXDi6gvj0/

Would you care to see before and after of the kitchen cabinets? Below blog post has some photos of the kitchen’s before & after state.

Tips For Decorating A Small Home

I know that white cabinets are overdone. However, white cabinets make the dark and small kitchen look brighter and more spacious than it actually is.

3. ALL ABOUT ACCESSORIES IN A VANITY

You see so many beautiful bathroom renovation ideas out there that it’s hard not to get bathroom envy. There are many great ideas and ways to decorate vanities without drilling, though. A mirror, a frame, a wall shelf, a candle or diffuser, a small piece of decoration, a nice looking trash can, a good quality towel in a color that goes with the space, a nice soap and a pretty rug on the floor will be good enough. Try to place nice things in the vanity which will upgrade the space.

For more ideas to decorate a vanity, please refer to the blog post below.

Easy Guest Bathroom Makeover

DINING ROOM

I like to keep my dining room clutter free. To be honest, it wasn’t (and still isn’t) easy with 3 kids. It is their place to eat, draw, do crafts and homework and more.

4. A PRACTICAL STORAGE SYSTEM IS A SOLUTION FOR A NEAT DINING ROOM

One thing that helped me keep this dining table clutter free was to have a shelf with baskets in the same room. Since we didn’t have a mudroom, having a shelf with baskets was a helpful alternative. I assigned each of my kids one basket and I dumped any of my kids’ belongings left out on the table in their respective baskets. At the end of the day, I asked them to put away the items they found in the basket.

LIVING ROOM

5. POWER OF PAINTING WALLS

Having grown up in Japan where most homes have walls with wallpaper, I learned the concept of painting walls much later in my life. Now I totally believe in the power of wall colors. It makes such a big difference. However, I still love white walls the best. It has to be the right tone of white, though.

We picked light grey (it’s not blue) for the interior of our first home. I needed to add some character to the space. You can see how our condominium transformed in the post below. (I already shared the same link above to show the kitchen transformation.) You’ll see a distinctive contrast in the dining and living rooms with orange walls.

BEFORE & AFTER PAINTING WALLS

For our homes abroad, I usually don’t paint as much as we did for our home in the U.S. Why? I would have to paint everything back to white before we leave our home overseas. It’s too costly and too much work for a short period of time. I recommend accent walls. You can see some accent wall examples in the post below.

Painting Walls & Finding A Painter In Manila

You can’t paint walls of your rental home? There are removable decals and wallpapers. Below link shows two ideas on how to decorate a big white walls.

Easy Room Transformation ☆ Medallion Tapestry To Bohemian Room

6. LET THE SPACE DECIDE HOW MUCH YOU DECORATE

In a life where you relocate frequently due to job assignments, you move from a big home to a small home, then to a medium size home to a big home again. It’s okay to keep some decorations tucked away in your closet if you don’t have enough space. There is so much your space can take.

If you moved to a smaller home, decorate as much as the space allows. On the other hand, moving into a bigger house doesn’t mean that you have to fill every space and wall. Blank walls send your eyes to the walls with decorations.

Before you decide to hide it in an attic or storage, think about them again, though. I would say store away only the items you know you love. Try not to send items to a storage because that’s an easy solution.

UPSTAIRS

BATHROOMS

7. A SHOWER CURTAIN IS A STATEMENT

You may notice that I didn’t paint the bathroom cabinets. Unfortunately, I totally ran out of my juice after having painted our kitchen cabinets. Without painting the cabinets, I found the way to distract the eyes: shower curtains. If you have a rail for a shower curtain, invest in one. It’s worth the money. Other ways to update your bathroom are a rug, a trash can, plants and towels. Have some flower pots or greenery in the bathroom. It freshens up the space.

For more bathroom decorating inspirations, please refer to my blog post below.

7 Ideas To Decorate A Rental Bathroom

KIDS ROOM

8. TRY STRING LIGHTS

I’m a big fan of decorative lights in any room especially in a kid’s room. I used outdoor string lights in warm yellow for this kid’s room. They are great for mood lighting. The soft lighting at night helped my kids relax and calm down before the bed time.

9. DISPLAY NICE TOYS & BOOKS

I have always selected some good looking toys that I would like to display in the kids’ room when I decorated it. Some toys that my kids picked sneaked in sometimes, but for the most part, my kids always knew where certain toys were assigned to go to be displayed. Thus, it helped the tidying up process every day as well.

10. A STORAGE SOLUTION THAT MAKES SENSE TO KIDS

A good storage solution in kids room is the one that makes sense to kids. It helps them pick up their rooms easily. It is a way to keep a kids’ room tidy. The IKEA Kallax shelf unit with storage boxes has been my favorite to have in my kid’s room.

We kept a train set in a study/TV room (next room) to separate the set from other toys in the kid’s room to make it easier to tidy up for my son when he gets it out.

STUDY, TV ROOOM & GUEST ROOM

11. A SOFA AS A ROOM DIVIDER

Using a sofa to create 2 separate areas in one room is one of my favorite tactics in home decorating. This room was used as a study, TV room and guest room at different times. You can also hide some clutter behind the sofa. Many years ago, I used this tactic to hide toys in a living room in an apartment we lived in Virginia many years ago.

DURING THE DAY

AT NIGHT WITH A HOUSE GUEST

MASTER BEDROOM

12. INVEST IN BEDDINGS & PILLOWS ON THE BED

Bed linens and decorative pillows on beds make an impression of bedrooms more than headboards. Decorate your bedroom around the design you pick for your bedding and pillows. If a boxspring is exposed under the mattress, make sure you get a bedskirt to hide the box spring. If you would like to know how different colors in your bedroom affect your sleep, I’d like to leave you with a few helpful articles to find the right color for your bedroom.

The Very Best Colors for Bed Sheets | The Sleep Judge

Best Bedroom Colors for Sleep | Our Sleep Guide

AN IDEA FOR EARTHQUAKE-PRONE CITIES: A WREATH ABOVE YOUR HEADBOARD

There are many fabulous ideas about decorating a wall above headboards on Pinterest and Instagram. If you live in a city where earthquakes happen such as Manila and Tokyo, for example, decorating with anything heavy or with sharp edges that could fall on your head isn’t a good idea. A wreath, on the other hand, is a safe way to decorate and looks nice.

That’s all for this post.

Thank you for reading my blog all the way to the end!

I hope that these pieces of advice will be helpful for you in order to decorate your home. Home is where your heart is.