The Mishap: You love that hutch—and your kitchen—but when you get home, you realize your new find doesn’t really work with the style of the rest of the room.
How It Can Help You: The hutch reveals another side of your taste (very few of us are 100 percent traditional or modern, Wingard says), and it challenges you to find a new space—or purpose—for the item, without redoing the whole room. In the hutch’s case, Wingard added rollout drawers and turned it into a handbag and shoe organizer for the bedroom.
The Mishap: You’ve never met a porcelain bird you didn’t like. Or a Sherlock-worthy magnifying glass. Or a Freshly-Cut-Grass-on-a-Dewy-Morning-scented candle.
How It Can Help You: Myquillyn Smith, author of The Nesting Place, suggests “quieting the room”—taking an afternoon to remove every accessory and small piece of furniture, hiding them from sight for 24 hours. For the next day, evaluate what you do—and don’t—like about the bare space. This can help you see if you’re buying a bunch of extras to overcompensate for something bigger, like dated furniture or the yellowed-teeth shade of your “off-white” walls. Identifying the big problem that’s now exposed can help you cut back on adding more clutter—and make the real change that will help you fall in love with the room all over again.
The Mishap: You decided to redecorate, you picked up all of the things you’ve been pinning (a dream come true!), and now your house looks erratic—that blown-glass lamp doesn’t quite go with the rustic farm table, and those wildly printed pillows just seem out of place with your tufted leather sofa.
How It Can Help You: What feels like a mishmash is actually a chance to stop pinning other people’s decor and be your own decorator. Improvise. Move things around. Snap a few photos with your phone, Smith recommends, and take a lunch break away from the house. After an hour away, take a look at the photos—in an image, it can be easier to pick out similarities. Often, a few coordinating colors throughout the room can tie everything together: Maybe the lamp’s pale blue tint brings out the cerulean in the pillows, making it a perfect fit for the side table next to the sofa. A few touches of blue elsewhere in the room, and suddenly, your mishmash is Etsy-meets-Ace-Hotel cool—exactly what you were going for.
The Mishap: You love the look of a sisal rug when you first noticed it in catalogs, but now you’ve seen it so many times you can’t help but feel like your home is as generic as page 37 (or 24, or 52 or…). Ditto for any other super-trendy item: stainless steel fridges, white subway tile, wicker balls, chevron print pillows, mason jar anything.
How It Can Help You: It teaches you to give yourself a cool-down period, so you can take in each new trend without rushing to the store. If you still love it after three months, it’s more than a trend; it’s your taste. And for the formerly “it” items you already own, this is your chance to stamp your personality on them and give them new life. A rug, for example, can be layered with another one, embellished with a large stencil, hung on the wall or used to cover an ottoman, Smith says. Even a change that doesn’t actually affect the rug, like painting the concrete floor underneath it to outline it, can make it feel one of a kind.
