Harold's Renovation Blog: #116: How To Get More Style At Home With Less Stuff

Now that we tested out the process to achieve “Cozy Minimalism” in our house (and loved the result!), we’re taking it straight to the source and talking with Cozy Minimalist Home author Myquillyn Smith about how she realized she could merge these two seemingly opposite ideas to create a step-by-step process for people to follow in their own spaces. She shares how to stop buying the wrong accessories, why there’s a “right” order for decorating a room, and emphatically explains what none of us should ever be buying at Target. Plus, we detail how we’re trying to be smarter about our approach to tiling the duplex (one thing we did this time made it a whole lot easier!) and Sherry may have finally gotten on the autumn train.

You can download this episode from Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn Radio, and Spotify – or listen to it below! Then use this page to check out any links, notes, or photos we referenced. Note: If you’re reading in a feed reader, you may have to click through to the post to see the player.

What’s New

The photo above is from our first weekend of tiling at the duplex (!!!). It was so exciting to see our tile choices start to become a reality. We still have to grout everything and add quarter round around the baseboards – and once we do we’ll share more pictures of how it’s coming along. The mudroom tile above is the one we mentioned went down pretty quickly because of the nice large size of the tile (each one is nearly 1.5 feet by 3 feet!).
This is the upstairs bathroom where we ran out of tile (womp-womp). This tile pattern is more unforgiving than it looks, so we realized quickly that we had to stay very vigilant or we would cut along the wrong edge by accident. The good news is that the rest of the tile we needed has already arrived and should be down in the room by the time you read this.

If you want a peek at some of the other tile we chose for each side, we outlined all of our choices a few weeks ago. Although we did switch a couple around in the end!

Myquillyn Smith – Cozy Minimalist Home

If you missed our earlier discussion about Myquillyn’s book, you can hear how Sherry tested it out in our house back in Episode #111
And the book, Cozy Minimalist Home, comes out this week so you can finally snag a copy.
You can also follow Myquillyn (aka “The Nester”) on her blog The Nesting Place for more info and freebies. We also spoke to her in Episode #58 where we all talk about how much she shares of her children online.
Below is one of the photos from the book (Myquillyn’s kitchen) where you can see some of the principles she described in action – like clear surfaces, large accessories, etc. But there’s tons more in book itself.

And if you want to hear a longer discussion about what to do with home items that have been given to you (that you don’t want to keep – ack, it’s so TRICKY!), we talked about it in more detail way back in Episode #35.

We’re Digging

Here are the fall-adjacent nail colors that are helping to “soften the blow of the season” for Sherry (without the doodly tootlies):
And here’s that Instagram account I’m loving lately by typography artist Becca Clason (@beccaclason). In the photos below she’s working with black beans, pennies, spices, and grains. Can you even imagine having that much patience???

Her work is actually very reminiscent of another Instagrammer I also shouted out a while ago: @kmsalvagedesign.

If you’re looking for something we’ve dug in a past episode, but don’t remember which show notes to click into, here’s a master list of everything we’ve been digging from all of our past episodes. You can also see all the books we’ve recommended on our Book Club page.

And lastly, a big thank you to Revel Woods for sponsoring this episode. Visit RevelWoods.com/YHL to find the right hardwood floor for your home, and don’t forget to enter the code YHL10 at checkout to get $10 off your first sample box!