Why I Stopped Posting About Home Decor

I have wanted to write this post for awhile, but I have a hard time articulating what I am going to say. I started this blog 3 years ago as a place to write about home decor and my condo, as at the time I really fell in love with many other home decor bloggers. However, over the past 3 years I have noticed quite a shift in this area of blogging- I don't follow many of those bloggers any more.

Here is why: When I started following them, I loved that they were real people with real lives just trying to make a beautiful home. I loved following them in real time through the ups and downs of large renovations or small crafts. I loved feeling like I had a glimpse into all these private homes. But then those bloggers got big (or probably already were big but I was blissfully ignorant of all the signs). All of a sudden they were moving from their beautiful, cozy finished homes to large McMansions. Their funny posts about budgeting and DIY were turning into sponsored posts or blatant ads more and more. They started making design choices that would appeal to a larger audience and all bloggers seemed to be doing the same things to their homes. And they were censoring their natural voice and replacing it with SEO and their sponsor's wording and it slowly started to feel like I was watching commercials and a fake reality show, instead of the glimpse of a real home. I stopped feeling like I could relate at all to them.

I don't pretend to be a perfect person who has eschewed these ways and has bucked all home decor trends. I also won't pretend that a couple of times I didn't do a sponsored post. I guess I just started to look at my own blog and question whether I wanted to still talk about these things. Whether decorating/blogging about decorating was actually a priority in my life. And the answer was no. I am still making upgrades and decorating, but it is more for resale and for my own comfort than for blogging. So I am doing less projects less often and therefore simply have less to blog about. I am saving up for a future where I will have a family and my priorities have changed. I don't want to keep blowing my money on throw pillows and knick-knacks.

I see bloggers who post every day and EVERY DAY it involves something they spent money on. Sometimes it is a craft you never see in their home again. Or they are redoing something that they already did. Even $1 purchases add up! And to afford to do that, I wouldn't even have money for big projects- which would mean things would come off as cheap looking in real life. I don't want a home full of cheap, rushed, projects. I don't want to spend my precious time on them as well.

I never really made any money off this blog, and while a large part of that is because it was too overwhelming to figure out, a little part of that I think is because I was worried about losing my voice. I was worried about the blog becoming more like work and less like fun. I was concerned I would start blogging for my readers, instead of for myself. I still want to share posts about updates to my condo, but they will just come naturally as I complete things in my own time. In the meantime, I am still trying to figure out what else I want to write about. Running? Finances? Life? I am still trying to find my new voice, but you will see me here whenever I can find it!