make room for what you love + brass lamp makeover

I’m so excited to share a new book from my friend Melissa Michaels of the Inspired Room: Make Room For What You Love.

This is not a “go buy a bunch of containers to organize your stuff”, but a deep look into why we have clutter and disorganization.


I love this book because Melissa is encouraging. Like: you can do this, and I will show you how in a hopeful, optimistic way. She offers lots of tips and lists and asks questions to really help you examine what you let stay in your home.


One of my favorite points that Melissa makes is that
“Clutter is the result of poor decision making. Many faulty decisions will compound, literally piling up like the clutter they create, causing the chaos you live in. So to break that crazy cycle of clutter, we need to begin by being more decisive about what we invite into our home an life and ruthless about what we need to edit out.”

This is truth! My kids had a big fundraiser yard sale with their youth group at church and I found myself having to make a lot of decisions about what to send over to help them earn money or what to keep in the storage room. It was better for me to have to make a quick decision rather than stashing it to think about another day.



I had quite the lamp collection of lamps that I was hoarding to get around to making over one day or saving for a room that we haven’t tackled yet. I was feeling quite decisive that morning and sent most to the yard sale because I knew they probably weren’t going to work or it would take too long for me to do something with them. These ones I kept because I liked the shape of them (remember when I got them back at the Goodwill in Virginia for $1.95 each??) gave myself a deadline that they had to be finished by the end of the week or they would be sent to the sale as well.

So I picked up some Waverly Chalk Paint when I was Walmart – it’s only $6 a bottle and I didn’t have to make an extra trip.

I painted them with the chalk paint, it only took about 1/4 of the bottle for both lamps – it adheres to any surface.

Then I took some dark wax that I had from Miss Mustard Seed’s line – you can use any kind though.


I wiped it on and then wiped it off and this is what it looked like – the top is with just the chalk paint and the bottom is with the wax.


It literally took less than a half an hour to paint both lamps and felt so good to bring them into our bedroom, adding to the order of the space rather than the disorder of the storage room. (Another point Melissa makes on p. 21!) I cleared off the nightstand, dusted it, threw away some mostly empty lotion bottles, and took some pens back to the kitchen. Just doing that felt so much better!

I think you will love this book as much as I have if you feel like you need to be decisive about what you find beautiful so that you can deal with the clutter decisively.



You can buy it here, available in Kindle form too! And today, 27 other bloggers sharing what they did to make room for what they love:

Eleven Gables / Craftberry Bush / At the Picket Fence / Julie Blanner / Beneath My Heart / Thrifty Decor Chick / Emily A. Clark / Reluctant Entertainer / My Sweet Savannah / Domestic Fashionista / At Home In Love / 320 Sycamore / Sunny Side Up / Happy Happy Nester / The White Buffalo Styling Co / Sweet and Simple Home / Finding Home Farms / In My Own Style / Fox Hollow Cottage / The House of Silver Lining / Infarrantly Creative / Fieldstone Hill Design / Shabby Nest / Today's Creative Life / Sarah M. Dorsey Designs / Just A Girl / Southern Hospitality

I wish you the best on your journey to make room for what you love~