Stop Waiting Start Decorating

You are the queen of your castle!

You’re single, why should you care what your home looks like? You’re the only one living there and you really don’t mind all the hand-me-down furniture you’ve collected over the years – it was free! And that ugly recliner your ex just had to have and then conveniently left behind? I mean, it’s comfortable. Plus, someone will come along one of these days and then you’ll start your home together. You better just wait for that.

Stop waiting and start decorating!

Girl, please! As single women we tend to do a lot of waiting. Waiting for the right man to come along, waiting to buy a house until that man comes along, waiting to decorate because we’d rather be purchasing things for a home that’s “ours” instead of one that’s “mine.” And what if we don’t have the same taste? Better to wait and see what our style is together rather than jump the gun and fill a home with things he’s not going to like. I did this for years. I would stand there in Crate & Barrel looking at the wall of wine glasses and wondering, “Will he be a white wine drinker or red?” “Will he prefer stemless or stemmed?” “Yikes, what if he doesn’t drink wine at all?!” “I better go look at the tableware patterns instead.” But I’ve always had a home, whether it was an apartment, a townhome or a full-fledged house, I always had a place to call my own. It just took some time before I really started making it my own.

Your whole house is “your room”

The beauty of designing and decorating for yourself is that your entire home is “your room.” And I would know because not only have I been single to one degree or another for a long time, but I’m also a professional interior designer by trade. So I understand how personal a single person’s home is for them. Remember when you were a kid and your room was sacred? It was yours and only yours, and it was the only room in the house that was truly yours, so you wallpapered it with Rob Lowe posters and no one could say a thing about it. Now that you’re a grown-up, if you’re single and living alone, your whole house is one big canvas just waiting for a Rob Lowe treatment. I actually hope you’re over your Rob Lowe phase, but I want you to treat your home with the same respect and care that you once treated your room, and make it truly yours.

Don’t know where to start?

First of all, you have to stop waiting for him to come along and wondering what he’ll like. What do YOU like? What style is truly YOURS and reflects the way YOU live? This also applies to those of you who are divorced and are still living with the same furniture and décor you had when you were married.  It’s time to wash that (ex) man out of your hair and start over with yourself. So, grab your Pinterest boards and home décor magazines, and start envisioning your castle fit for a queen – YOU!