When I first started this blog I had just moved into this house with multiple rooms to try to furnish. If some of you are new to my blog which means you have been following me less than a year, you recall my story. If not I will do a quick refresher. My family basically went from an income of over 100000 a year to almost half of that with hopes of zeroing in on what we deemed as most important which was family.

We didn’t really downsize in the house because we couldn’t, but we had to find a cheaper way of decorating the house. We moved into this house about 1 year and four months ago. At that time we had 3.5 empty rooms which would need to be furnished at some point in the future. This is how we managed to update our house on a budget using sales and The Dollar General. We took three major areas inside our house and turned them into purpose driven rooms.

Due to the house being so large, finding furniture was a really big issue. Now that we were on a tighter budget we would have to pay special attention to sales and stores. One of the big reasons I gave up my job was because I wanted to be there for the girls. As an investigator I spent hours away from home which resulted in many 16 to 18 hour days. So, we decided that we would create a room for fun time. The room would be a central location or like a mini hub within the house.

The person in the corner is able to look into the kitchen and keep an eye on my 13 yr old’s door while the person on the other side is able to keep an eye on the area my 17 yr old would be emerging from. I like to pay attention to faces. If someone isn’t in a good mood, I want to be the first one to notice it. One of the big issues I ran into when I was an investigator was not being able to notice the simple stuff with my children because I was never home. The girls were miserable because they had an absent mom. I tried to push expensive phones and trips ever so often their way, but it didn’t really help. It didn’t hit home just how miserable they were until I found out that my 13 yr old was self mutilating. So, now that I am home, my main focus is on my girls.

With all of that said, we call this location the hub area of our home. We are still looking to upgrade the table. Finding the perfect computer table isn’t easy when there are three computers in the house. We do not believe in computers being in the rooms, so until we can find a table, the dining table is the temporary home.

So, for those of you who might be thinking oh my gosh she traded her eating table for computers! Never fear, here’s the table, right here! We managed to get it on sale from a local furniture store. I like the idea of pubs and this table kind of reminds me of Obrien’s Irish Pub down the street. So, I managed to capture it for my home!

Take notice of the dog gate because it is awesome. I needed something large enough and long enough to keep my dogs out of the guest entertaining area. It was embarrassing having to always explain tears and rips caused by my four legged babies, so when we got new furniture I had to hit Amazon up for a dog gate. Heck, I didn’t even know that gates came in any size other than for a small door, so when I found there were gates large enough to protect two doorways, I did a major happy dance. This means I do not have to explain anything else, or deal with stains on my carpet. Carpet keeps odors in so keep that in mind if you are thinking about getting a new place to live and you are a pet owner.

This shows a better picture of the dog gate. It even matches my furniture. It is large enough to keep my middle size dog from climbing over, but it isn’t 100 percent perfection. He has knocked it over once because it wasn’t positioned the right way. I do not think you can ever really protect yourself against future bathroom incidents involving pets, but certain materials make it easier to clean up. So, we do not do cloth fabric sofas. We like the idea of being able to wipe things off just in case the unthinkable becomes a reality! When it comes to carpets we go really cheap, I am talking Walmart’s 50 bucks cheap! It is much easier to replace a 50 dollar carpet than a 350 dollar carpet. Remember you are trying to have a home you can enjoy, but you are also trying to have a home that will not make you cry if something happens like an accident on the carpet.

We took three areas and turned them into safe areas for my children and pets. If you live like us, you can’t afford to be replacing stuff every year. While our pets are part of our family, we still want to entertain others who might not like the idea of our furry babies getting so up close and personal. So, the gate really does help to section off where they can roam. All of this was done under 4k.