Personal Touches

Improving your space doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg. In fact, in today's economy with so many people in debt, there aren't a lot of extra arms and legs to go around. Not as many women have the kind of Port Credit homes where they can knock down walls and add and subtract rooms anyway. These days, improving your space is less about changing the confines of the space itself than it is about adding personal touches that make it suit your personality better. If you'd like some ideas on personal touches you can use to brighten up your existing living and working spaces, this article is for you.

Every TV network, home magazine and Cabbagetown blog has decorating hints these days, but their generic designs are meant to appeal to as many people as possible. Rather than copying the stripes fad or gluing hay to your ceilings in order to look stylish to others, focus on your personal style. Do you like polka dots? Animal prints? Bright colors? Pastels? Fuzzy animals? In order to make your space your own, your accents should appeal to you, so stop worrying about what others will think and decorate your room so that it makes you happy.

For instance, if you like travel, you can design a room around that theme. Perhaps you can use a steamer trunk with travel stickers on it as a coffee table or add a throw blanket with a map pattern sewn into it. A neat idea for wall decorations would be to find a cheap postcard printing place where you can get postcards for your favorite destinations and turn them into a collage display. Similarly, if you were fond of animal prints, you don't have to replace your whole sofa upholstery (which would be kind of expensive) rather, add a few patterned throw pillow as accents.

Work spaces are a particular place that can benefit from personal touches, whether it be a home office, work cubicle, or the cab of an 18 wheeler. Decorating your work space helps you feel more at home there and gives your co-workers a place to start when opening conversations. This doesn't just refer to posters of waterfalls, Hello Kitty mouse pads, and doggie-shaped bobble-heads either. You can even spice up your leave-behinds. For an environmental firm, why not have backgrounds of mountains in Oregon business cards?

Babies' rooms shouldn't be spared from personal touches, especially if you're a stay-at-home-mom and you spend most of your time there. Add a crib mobile of your favorite animal, hang a poster of your favorite cartoon, or paint the walls an appealing color. Not only will it relieve the monotony for you, it will stimulate your baby. Cloth diapers don't have to be purely associated with sticking your hand in the toilet. With iron-on transfers, you can turn them into cute little ducky farms or jumping frog ponds.

Obviously not every suggestion here speaks to everyone, so as a piece of parting advice, we suggest that if you're dissatisfied with your space, look at every item in it and ask yourself: how can I change this to make it more appealing?