Budgeting, organisation and willpower.

Before you rush into frugal decorating come up with a figure you'd like to spend on your house. As it's frugal you don't want to spend in excess of £1000, that would be silly. We set a loose budget to decorate our whole house on £500. Now, we don't use credit cards, never have never will and we also don't make use of hire purchasing because Mr Frugal Witch and I have both been laid off twice during this long recession so we have little faith in long term financial commitments.

Because we don't use credit cards we gave ourselves a monthly decorating budget. You want to be realistic to your income, DON'T sacrifice things that you really need. Instead, focus on what you don't need. We thought long and hard and we decided that we could easily sacrifices nights out which totalled to about £35 each a month giving us a budget of a flexible £70 a month to decorate with. We also decided not to spend money on the house at Christmas and in the months March and May with which our disposable income greatly reduces making it impossible to do Christmas and birthdays as well as spend money on the house. Remember that this is YOUR budget so if you have only £10 to spend a month there is absolutely no shame in spending a few months saving up for a specific piece, but equally, spending £10 on Etsy wall art is incredibly doable.

Plan your decor around you.

We have six rooms in our house and we want each room to reflect our loves, passions and hobbies. Sit down and write a list of  these to see if any themes jump out at you. Our list comprised of:

Fairies, Goblins, Nature, Magick, Unicorns, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Taxidermy, Portal 2, Nintendo, Legend of Zelda, Tim Burton, Gothic, Purple, Bram Stoker, A Perfect Circle, Xbox, Internet humour.

One room at a time is what you should aim for. Preferably, start off with the room you spend the most time in. It'll be tempting to rush out and buy loads of things for the sake of it but don't! You'll regret it. The beauty of monthly decorating is that you spend time really thinking "Do I want this?" and by the time you have your allowance for the month, you'll be able to answer that question without guilt.

Also, spend your allowance as a lump sum. This will discourage you from spending a little here and a little there on impulses. Spending as a lump sum enables you to keep track of how much you're really spending.
Don't feel guilty about having one or two luxury items in a room. By luxury I mean spending almost a whole months budget on one or even two items. If you truly believe that a piece belongs in your house that totals to or goes above your monthly budget, then but it. We have one or two luxury items that have totaled to our budget and we've saved up to purchase them. Often, Etsy sellers can and will reserve an item for you and many Etsyers will happily take a down payment on a piece you are afraid could be snapped up by somebody else.

I'll say this now but, it is wiser to buy rugs, throws and bedding outside of Etsy. Etsy is incredibly expensive for these and this, along with stuff we already own is why this is almost entirely Etsy stuff.

So without further ado, let's get on to show and tell