Budget-Friendly Ideas to Update Your Space

Just like your wardrobe, your home needs a refresh every now and then. However, furniture and home decor are often way more expensive than clothes—meaning it can take a lot of cash to run out and completely redecorate! Luckily, there are quite a few wallet-friendly ways to spice up your space and scratch that redecorating itch when it strikes. Here are a few of our suggestions, 8 budget-friendly ideas to update your space.

PAINT SOMETHING

A fresh coat of paint is an excellent way to give your place a facelift, and depending on the scope of the project, can be completed in an afternoon or a weekend. Try spray painting a knick-knack gold to up the glam factor, or if you’re feeling ambitious, paint a whole accent wall or room!

SWITCH YOUR HARDWARE

Sick of boring rusty cabinet knobs and silver hardware? Switching them out is super easy, and decorative handles and hardware are available at a variety of price points. My recommendation? Always use gold colour to add a ‘luxe’ accent in your home.

FRESHEN UP YOUR GALLERY WALL

There are plenty of affordable art pieces to add new life to a gallery wall. You could also go the DIY route and display pages from favorite magazines or an arrangement of personal photographs. It’s as simple as hanging them on the wall with washi tape or displaying them on a clipboard. Prefer the framed look? IKEA’s Ribba frames are great for gallery walls thanks to their versatility and low price point. Have a favorite hat or necklace? Toss those on your wall too! The possibilities are nearly limitless.

PLANTS IT UP

Since the pandemic started, there are many people has become ‘crazy plants lady’. It’s another way to update your place by adding more greens and live. If you have no commitment to the living plants, settle with pretty faux plants or get low-maintenance plants!

CHANGE YOUR LIGHTING FIXTURE

Light can play a big part in a room’s ambiance. Switch your white-bluish light into warm white or yellow lights. Add a new table or floor lamp to create a more warm and homey ambiance. Even as simple as adding some lights garland for enchanting decor.

LAYER A NEW RUG

Rugs can be a surprisingly affordable way to add a pop of color to a room—even a large area rug! They’re also useful to define areas in smaller spaces or open floor plans, like studio apartments.

REARRANGE YOUR FURNITURE

Don’t like your floorplan? You can easily move furniture and rearrange accordingly. Whether is to swap the side of your tallboy, buffet table, accent chair, and even floor lamp. Try to swap the direction of your bed and bedside tables. But, avoid facing bad Fengshui such as underneath the window or facing the front door and mirror.

BRING IN NEW ACCENTS

If you’re more of a shopper than a gardener, there are plenty of places to score new, budget-friendly accent pieces. Think big-box stores and chains like KMart, Target, and Urban Outfitters, as well as local boutiques and resale stores.

This could be a fun mini project in the new year of 2025! If you are looking for more organisation and cleaning tips, click here. Let’s do this! Tell me, what is your idea for 8 Budget-Friendly Ideas to Update Your Space?

Things You Can Do While Staying Home During This Global Pandemic

Working from home is not something new to me or to most designers and content creators. For some, it could be very boring and annoying. In early January, I was in China for a work project and had to evacuate to Hong Kong, then I had to self-isolate myself for 14 days in Bali! Now that I am back in Jakarta and have cancelled my flight back to Melbourne, I have to practice another form of self-isolation. So let’s just stay calm; I have been here before. Don't panic and buy every toilet paper and food; we could do something simple at home that would be beneficial for us!

Clean space is essential for working from home.

CLEAN YOU ENTIRE HOME + BE ORGANISED

We can start by cleaning our own space. Things that we touched the most and sometimes neglected, for example, our door knobs, keys, every cabinet’s handles, curtain, and door mat We could try to vacuum the bed as well to suck off those dust mites and dead skin cells. Personally, I clean my home every day, and it always makes me feel good about myself. This time around, my cleaning has been more extreme, often with disinfectant products and more anti-bacterial spray all over my house. COVID-19 is a virus, and it won't be prevented by anti-bacterial spray, but hey, we might as well use it and stay clean in our own space during this self-isolation! A clean space equals a clean mind.

Never quit learning! Online tutorials are available everywhere!

LEARN NEW SKILLS

Yes, you read that correctly. Skills as in plural. In this digital era, there are so many things we could learn online! From language apps, new cooking and baking recipes, videography, photography, and even designing! I have used Duolingo to practice my Mandarin for over a year now; it’s free and effective! Some other websites, such as Skillshare and Masterclass, also offer plenty of lessons we could try (but you have to pay for a monthly subscription; it is worth it to invest in ourselves!). Or, Youtube is always the answer for everything free and full of tutorials. I have learned how to apply make-up by watching a lot of YouTube beauty gurus.

#socialdistancing with the world but not with the e-world!

BINGE-WATCHING / READING / PODCASTING

Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO, Apple TV, you name it! Working from home means we could fit a lot of TV shows or new movies into our schedule. I’m not a big book reader; I have stopped reading since I was in high school because I spent too much money on fiction novels and, of course, manga. But if you are a big reader, there are plenty of book recommendations out there from your favourite influencers. Podcasting is another thing to binge on, and the fun part of podcasting is that you can do it anytime while multitasking. Perhaps we could do podcasting while cleaning the house? Hell yeah!

Connect with your peers!

DIGITAL CATCH UP

There are so many platforms we can use to reach out to anyone! Let’s do catch up by calling those friends you haven’t heard from. I texted and DM quite a lot of friends in the past weeks, just to make sure they are okay and healthy wherever they are. Check-in with some facts and situations in their country or city too. A friend in Tonga is very well because there is no case there, some friends are furious with their PM in the UK, and some friends back in Melbourne are frustrated to even get toilet paper in the grocery store. P.S., Do not text your exes!

Move that body!

WORK OUT + EATING HEALTHY

If we only do eating and cooking, surely we would all gain some weight and invest in bad habit. A light exercise is very recommended. Why light exercise? Because we can’t risk any injury to actually go and get the treatment. We can start looking at those Youtube’s videos of exercise and some training images are available on Instagram as well. For those of you who doesn’t like to do exercise, we can start from a basic 10,000 steps a day. I used to go to the gym 5 times a week for 18 months until I found out a thing or two about my metabolism and gym doesn’t help much. I decided to stop to going to the gym, and not only it saves me money every month but also gives me freedom to choose the right exercise for my type of metabolism. Eating healthy is one way to do it. I avoid junk foods and never was a fan of soft drink but I do love cakes and pies which are some of the dangerous things to eat. Know your body type and your nutrition intake while keep doing light exercise. For me, I lost 3 kg just by giving up rice for 1 month!

One of the heroes!

SUPPORT LOCAL BUSINESS

Thank God for food delivery! While staying at home and cook our own food, we would definitely craving something. In my case, I was craving sticky date pudding. It’s very easy to make but kind of hard to find dates in the supermarket. Luckily, some of the local cafe has sticky date pudding and they have food delivery! During this uncertain time, local restaurants, cafe and other small businesses are struggling. So keep in mind to help them while we can, we could order food from them but we need to make sure they have applied the health protocol in their outlets. Simply check their website or Instagram account to see if they have made any announcement regarding the health protocol. To make sure none of their kitchen staff is sick or has any flu symptoms. Not only that we help them to still able to run their business, but we also help those online driver couriers to deliver our order.

Wash your hands!

I could write more of what we could do while staying at home during this global pandemic. From things that related to meditation, spiritual practice, sexual health activities or even doing side hustle to maintain passive income. But for the time being, let’s just focus on those things above! Stay healthy and stay calm! Don’t forget to wash your hands for at least 20 seconds as often as you can!

Thank you for Rawpixel with all of these beautiful photos!

How to Style a Shelfie

Have you heard the term Shelfie before? It’s a pretty picture of an organised shelf! According to Urban Dictionary, a Shelfie is a common term to describe a portrait of beautiful and organised bookshelf and kitchen shelf or pantry. Not to be confused with selfie (self-portrait).

In this article, I’m gonna show you how to style a stunning wall shelf or bookshelf that would be an Instagram worthy photo! We will learn how to mix and match texture and ornaments. Let’s get started!

Typical Harriet & Co ‘s studio shelfie

Obviously, my Harriet & Co’s shelf is full of my own brass and gold products. I chose a wall shelf because it looks clean and simple, and also doesn’t take much of floor space as my design studio is quite small. The elements play an important role in here, play around with textures and colours to add a personality to your shelf. I added faux plants for the greenery, some copper decor, glass dome, marble coasters, marble clock, and earthy tones like rattan basket with pine cones in it. I also like a little bit of colour so I put faux pink roses, pink jade stone and blue hydrangeas.

Start with the Books

If you are a book reader or just like to collect them, try to gather all of your books of the same size or organised them in specific colours. Some people don't like to see the title of the book because sometimes it looks messy or if none of your books has the same match colours - what you can do is simply turn them around to show just the pages. Play around with the placement of the books and consider mix and match with horizontal lining and vertical lining.

Perfect example by @apartment34

Mix and Match with Textures Ornaments

As I mentioned before, play around with different textures, it could be an earthy element or choose your favourite texture to display. Some like it brass and gold, some like its natural colour like woods and simple white marble. I’m going to show you one of the shelves that I adore by Shay Cochrane below. Not only that she uses geometric gold and brass ornaments (which I love! it’s so Harriet!), she also uses an earthy element like that odd-looking artistic wood, granite book-end, greenery plants, some memorabilia of her family’s portrait, a hint of black colour from the frames, and inside-out book covers.

Lovely shelfie that I adore so much by @shaycochrane

Colour Coordinated your Bookshelf

If you’re not a fan of brass and gold colours, try to keep it monotone and stay in the neutral coloured items. You can even make a colour coordinate shelf by using the same colour palette throughout. Here is an example of Ambers Interiors and she 's done it! The colour palettes she uses were black, white, earthy warm tones like brown, cream and green. Yes, always put greenery! Whether it is faux plants or real, it's up to your lifestyle and how you can keep the plants alive. I like the way she put the blue cover book inside-out so she still managed to have the same coloured palettes throughout her shelf.

Colour Coordinated Shelfie with earthy tones and neutral colours by @amberinteriors

Add your own Personality

How to add a personality to your shelf? Easy! Just pick any unique object or your own interest to the shelf. An item that you like whether you found it on your travelling, flea market, or Etsy or your own handmade creation. Consider various shapes and colours that represent you, this could be a vase, a vintage camera, handmade pottery or your childhood toys/dolls. Another example of a colour coordinate shelf by Glitter Guide, not only that she keep the blue colour around the shelf, she added her own unique objects like wooden shoes, sheep figurines and artistic vases.

Another example of personality shelf by @glitterguide

There you go! I hope these tips and examples will help you to rearrange your shelf! Have fun decorating!

Workspace Organisation featuring Gold Accents

April is almost end! Have you stuck with your New Year resolution to keep your desk tidy and organised? One of my pet peeves is a messy desk, I try my best to keep it together so I have this calmness during my brainstorming time or when I am working on my laptop.

Here’s are my favourites must have workspace organiser that Harriet has or used to have since most of it already sold out! But, don’t worry; there are some that I would restock based on their popularity. And yes of course it’s always gold!

1 & 2. Wire Magazine / Book Organiser

If you are like me, then you would have some of your favourites magazine. Whether is an interior design magazine or fashion book that you would like to organise it just beside your workspace. In other case, the Magazine Holder number 01 is perfect to put in the living room as well.

3 & 4. Wire Pen Cup Holder

This is definitely a must! There were times where we were just using an unused glass or plastic tube, it’s a no no! Upgrade to gold accent as a pop up colour on your desk! Harriet has 2 different shapes, one is round and also the square shape. Personally, I like the square one better because the gap is much smaller.

5 & 6. File / Letter Holder

Ahh,.. this is the place where I usually put on my billings envelope or contract files. It’s chic and so multifunction too. I have one customer that use Letter Holder number 06 as her eye shadow storage! As for me, I also used File Holder number 05 as a wall art display when I had my pop up store.

7 & 8. Paper Clip

Paper clip is one of the essentials piece as workspace organiser. We need these cuties as our binder, separator, memo hanger and in some case as our flatlay attributes. Whether you like Novelty Paper clips like number 07 or just a simple Bulldog Paper clip like number 08. Both serves its purpose and pretty to look at.

9 & 10. Memo Grid Board

As a designer, having a Memo Grid Board is not a must because most of us would prefer to have a giant foam board to create a mood design board. But this particular board is so cute that I couldn’t resist it to put it on my wall. The shape it self is not a boring rectangular or square; the round shape & hexagonal shape could be an art on display. With a help of Bulldog Paper clip, we could hang any memo or colour palette sample beautifully on our wall for inspiration board.

11 & 12. Wire Rubbish Bin

Don’t get me started with lining this rubbish bin with plastic bag! These beauties should stand alone and only for paper rubbish. It comes with two models, one is Rose Gold Wire Rubbish Bin (number 11) with no base but comes with gold colour as well, second is Gold Round Base Wire Rubbish Bin with just gold colour.

13 , 14 & 15. Wire Document Tray

Unlike Magazine Holder and File Holder, these trays has a different function. Number 13 & 15 are the same when it comes to purpose, it’s only for us to put whatever we want on top of our table to make it nicer and separated from clutters. Number 14 on the other hand, is stackable. So you can stack more trays on top of it and it would serve like an open drawer on your desk. For me, I used this to store my books and blank paper for print. Some of my customers use Document Tray number 15 as their stationery storage or make up storage inside their vanity drawer.

That’s it for Harriet’s Workspace Organiser! I hope this would inspire you to have a pretty workspace! Leave a comment in my Instagram’s DM to let me know which one is your favourites and if I should restock them as soon as possible?