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Today’s blog is with a guest, Katie, also known as @nowthatimamother. You can read highlights from our interview on Cozy Homemaking on a Budget here, or hop over to YouTube and watch the whole thing!
Katie, do you Want to Introduce What you do?
Yeah, absolutely! So, I run a YouTube channel called @Nowthatimamother and it’s just centered around encouraging moms to embrace that joy of motherhood. My husband and I run a blog, podcast, and YouTube channel called @nowthatwereafamily. Basically, it’s just where we want to encourage family because we’re really new to parenthood and marriage ourselves.
I have our third kid on the way right now, and we have two under two. So, our channels are just where we share our journey and what we learn along the way.
Can you tell us About Your Background?
Elisha and I were blessed with really good examples of parents, and I’m the oldest of 11. I feel like people either have a really good experience being in a big family or a very negative on. It’s kind of magnified either way just because of how many people are in the family. But, I loved it.
My parents did a lot of things unconventionally, as I’m sure you heard at the marriage retreat. I just think it gave me a lot of creativity, and out of the box thinking for life in general.
You do a great job at cozy homemaking on a Budget, can you tell us how you do that?
Yeah absolutely! So, when my husband and I got married we had like no money at all. But it was really fun, to like you said to think of outside the box ways like upcycling.
You don’t have to be a DIY-er necessarily, I’m not Pinterest-y at ALL! Just like with Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. You don’t have to take all your time to shop garage sales anymore or thrift stores you can find so many great deals online in a really quick and easy way. I love that!
Where do you Think the Most Important Areas are to Start When you Begin Upcycling?
Yeah, so when you are on a budget you have to be really thoughtful!
For me, it was our living room because that’s where you’re hosting that’s where you’re having people over. So, I wanted that to be a relaxing place and then our bedroom – that’s so important too. Sometimes you go into people’s master bedrooms and there’s just so much stuff, or it’s dirty, or it’s the catch-all. I don’t think that’s how it should be because you want that to be a place of rest.
In Those Rooms are There Certain Items That Made a Huge Difference Once you got Around to Doing Them?
Well, okay… So, painting for me was big because we moved into an apartment and when people come over to our apartment they are like, “you guys were allowed to paint?” and I’m like, “I just painted. I don’t know! Our landlord came over and collected the rent and said it looked good.” So, I probably wouldn’t suggest that, but that said it’s a really cheap easy way to just transform the feel of your home. Especially if it’s a color like our color kind of made me nauseous, it was like an ugly yellow.
Other than that, I think the first thing and biggest thing to do is actually remove stuff honestly. That can make the biggest difference in a home! Is starting by taking the stuff away instead of adding stuff, and you can do that for free. Just take stuff out of your house for free. Actually, I did earn a lot of income from selling old items.
How Easy is it to do These Types of Projects Without Having Special Skill Sets?
Well, different personalities are going to do these different ways. My dad is a perfectionist so I grew up not wanting to work on certain projects for him specifically because he wasn’t going to be restful if he saw something that wasn’t done perfectly. So, I think you have to work with your spouse on this and your own personality. Some personalities just aren’t going to enjoy this.
That said, I kind of do everything in life by the 80-20 principal. That is, you want to put in 20 percent of the work for 80 percent of the outcome. So I just try to slowly upgrade things. So like a chair that I had, it was super stained, super ugly, you could not go wrong trying to reupholster this thing. Okay!
Yeah, I learned a lot of stuff on it because I just went for it. I just wanted to make it 80 percent better, and it is. I learned a lot of stuff along the way, and it’s not perfect but when I go back to make it a second time I want to make it that much better again.
Just having that mindset of getting in there trying to take it up a notch and you can always do better later. You aren’t going to learn unless you start trying.
How do you Find Motivation?
That’s a great question! So, yeah sometimes you just aren’t feeling it. But, one thing I think is super important is to ALWAYS take action when you do feel motivated.
So, for instance, cleaning videos, they’re really popular on YouTube and I know a lot of people will just watch through a cleaning video and you feel that motivation. But then you have to run out the door and go shopping, or go to a friend’s house, or something. It’s the same thing with reading a personal development book. I read a lot of books. But, you’ll get these great concepts in the book and then just set the book down and go about your life.
So, a goal that I set for myself is to never watch or read anything that’s inspirational without taking at least one action afterward.
For instance, I like to watch organizational videos on Youtube. I watched a video of a girl do her pantry organization, and I was just like rearing to go but it was 11 at night and we had no money to buy stuff. I was just going to move on, but then I was like no – I need to take one action.
So, I went downstairs and I cleaned out my pantry. I knew I could start there. I can’t organize it but I can clean it. Throughout that process, I realized that I had tons of canning jars and gallon jars. So, I just started organizing that way, and my pantry looks incredible. A lot of people go and buy all that stuff, to redo their pantry, but it all just came from taking a little bit of action.
Motivation spawns actions. Make sure it always spawns action. Because then that action continues to multiply and you get momentum.
Watch Cozy Homemaking on a Budget
If you liked today’s interview on cozy homemaking on a budget make sure to check out Katie’s channel here.