Well, friends, it’s finally March, which means the Frugal February Challenge is complete. If you participated as well, I hope you enjoyed it and found it to be both enlightening and rewarding. You can review my approach to this year’s Challenge via my post here. Overall, I’m very glad to have participated this year, as I learned a number of interesting things about my habits and behaviors. I will say that February felt like such a long month, and I’m sure that had something to do with the Challenge taking place.

Before I share my recap, I wanted to say a few words about the Frugal February Challenge this year. After I published my introductory post a few weeks ago, I spent some time thinking about whether it was an appropriate topic to share in light of the ongoing economic impacts of the pandemic. Countless small businesses and entire industries have suffered tremendously during the pandemic, and many will be feeling its effects for years to come. This challenge seemed frivolous in light of all the economic hardship around us. While I don’t consider financial health and security frivolous matters, it did seem frivolous to voluntarily decide to opt out of purchasing home decor items, especially since they are definitely not considered necessities by any stretch of the imagination. By focusing on my main goals for the challenge – to be thoughtful in my approach and to be more intentional with my time and my spending – I came to appreciate that the challenge is still relevant and worth sharing, as living with intention and purpose will always be worthwhile. I hope you feel the same as well.

Frugal February Recap

In my introduction post to the Frugal February Challenge, I described why I chose to eliminate new home decor purchases for the month. Along with eliminating purchases, I aimed to avoid trips to peruse local shops in person as well as limit time spent online perusing shops and social media accounts. My goal was to use that time instead to read more of my design books, create a few handmade decorations for spring, draft my next heirloom felt ornament design, and perfect my gluten-free recipes. There were certainly a few successes along the way, but what I found most valuable were the lessons I learned about my habits. Let’s start first with a few of the successes then move on to the lessons.

Review: Time Spent Perusing Shops in Person

The area where I was most successful in my Frugal February Challenge was in eliminating trips to peruse local home decor shops in person. I did not make a single trip to a local boutique the entire month, which surprised me a little because I used to love perusing shops in person when I had some spare time on the weekends. I even had fun inventing creative solutions to navigate larger stores, which also contained home decor sections, to ensure I avoided those sections completely and wasn’t tempted to just ‘take a peek’. Instead of visiting shops in person on the weekends, I established new routines that involve much more reading, crafting, cooking, and relaxing. I enjoy waking up early on Saturday mornings, and I have loved knowing that I have the entire day to accomplish a long list of items that bring me joy.

My productivity has increased significantly, and I feel like I have so much more clarity and purpose around my weekend activities. I have also found that I’m in a better state of mind on Monday mornings and feel prepared and excited to dive into my work at my day job. I never really thought much about my weekend habits, seeing weekends as a time to relax after a busy work week and not follow a particular schedule or plan. Because of this Challenge, however, I now realize just how much time I had been wasting on the weekends. I’m very proud to have broken a habit that wasn’t serving me particularly well and replaced it with something much more productive and useful. I am eager to continue with my newly-formed weekend habits going forward.

Review: Time Spent Perusing Online Shops & Social Media Accounts

I was relatively successful when it came to reducing the amount of time I spent perusing online shops and home decor social media accounts, but there is still room for improvement in this area. To determine how much my online browsing decreased in February, I first kept track of my habits throughout the month of January to establish a baseline of activity. I always used to read the news and do research for my blog posts on my phone, but in January I switched to doing those things exclusively on my laptop so that I could accurately record the amount of time I spent on my phone browsing online shops and social media accounts. I didn’t make any changes to my phone screen time other than that in January. Once a week, I opened the Screen Time tracker on my phone and simply noted the cumulative times spent on “Social” and “Information & Reading” (and also checked the Apps & Websites to get more detailed information). If it weren’t obvious already, I’m a bit of a numbers nerd, and I really enjoy recording these types of measurements. I jotted down the weekly tallies in a spreadsheet I created in Excel and then simply continued this same tracking each week throughout the month of February while I was trying to be more intentional with my screen time.

I’m pleased to report that I was able to reduce my screen time by a whopping 37 hours in February as compared to January! It’s no wonder February felt like such a long month – I had all this extra time to fill with activities that didn’t involve scrolling through shops and profiles on my phone. I never paid much attention to the weekly Screen Time Reports that pop up on Sunday mornings, and if anyone had asked how much time I spend on my phone each day, I likely would have said an hour or two at most. In reality, I spent 114 hours on my phone in January mindlessly browsing home decor shops and home decor social media profiles. That’s almost 4 hours per day – it’s insane! I’m still amazed at what an eye-opening experience this was, and I highly recommend you try it for yourself. If you’re like me, I think you will be surprised by how much time you spend online. Going forward, my goal is to reduce my screen time by another 15 hours per month, which will get me down to 2 hours per day; I think it’s a very achievable goal. I did find on numerous occasions that I ‘forgot’ that I wasn’t supposed to be perusing shops on my phone, but once I realized it, I immediately put my phone down. Sometimes, though, 15-20 minutes easily passed before I realized what I was doing, so it seems that this is a habit that is more deeply engrained for me than perusing shops in person. Now that I have this increased awareness, I’m in a much better position to address it and to create a plan that is sustainable in the long-term. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing examples of what I did and what I learned (design-wise) during February that was a direct result of being more intentional with my time by eliminating trips to local shops and decreasing my screen time.

Review: New Home Decor Purchases

When it came to not buying new home decor pieces in February, I was the least successful. This doesn’t mean I bought countless items – I actually only bought one – but my perceived lack of success is related both to the particular kind of item I purchased as well as why I purchased it. Allow me to explain.

The Saturday before Frugal February began, I went to Target to stock up on paper products and toiletries like I normally do every few weeks. I prefer to shop only from my list, thinking I’m much less likely to buy excess items if I confine myself to only those items on my list. I’m usually pretty good with that, but I also like to estimate whether I need a carriage or basket based on my list, and 9 times out of 10, I conclude I don’t need one and can carry everything in my arms. I’m almost always wrong, because my arms clearly aren’t as long as I think they are. That Saturday, I estimated I could easily carry everything I needed to purchase. Once I had picked up the items from my list, I decided to swing through the home decor section in the back of the store where they display the new Studio Magee line. There is a white scalloped bowl that I had seen everywhere on social media and was pretty sure it would be sold out already since it seemed to be very popular. Surprisingly, they had one left in stock, and I took that as a sign that it was meant for me. I didn’t stop to consider whether I actually needed it because I felt a pressure to scoop it up before it was gone. I did realize, however, there was no way I could carry it along with my other purchases without dropping something, so I went to the front of the store to get a carriage. As luck would have it, I was greeted by a clerk who had an open check-out line, and she invited me to check out immediately. This never happens at Target anymore, especially on a Saturday, and I was so surprised that I forgot all about the scalloped bowl, purchased my items, and then left the store.

I didn’t think about the bowl again until the morning of February 1, which actually was a Tuesday. Yes, I should have taken the fact that the bowl didn’t cross my mind for two and a half days as my first clue that I didn’t actually need it as much as I thought I did. But on Tuesday morning, I happened to spot it in someone’s social media post from that morning and immediately remembered the whole ordeal I just laid out for you above. I easily convinced myself that it was absolutely fine to purchase it on the first day of the Frugal February Challenge because I meant to purchase it on Saturday but simply got distracted. It’s amazing how easily I convinced myself it was ok to break the Challenge before 7 a.m. on Day 1. I promised myself that it would be my only home decor purchase for the month, and I’m relieved to say I was able to keep that promise.

Biggest Learnings

Now you may be wondering why I thought it was such a big deal to have bought this one item, especially because I did say in my introductory post to not get discouraged if you make a mistake, but to simply give yourself grace and try again the next day. I probably should call this post “The Saga of the Scalloped Bowl”, because my biggest learning and most valuable lesson from participating in the Frugal February Challenge came from the purchase of this bowl. It’s a beautiful bowl – I love the color, size, and depth of it – but it’s also a mass-produced, trendy item from a big-box store that I’m rarely in a rush to purchase. I have written many times on this site and in my social media posts that I prioritize shopping from small, independent boutiques and prefer to buy handmade items whenever possible. There are plenty of artisans who make beautiful handmade white scalloped bowls, and I easily could have found something similar and supported their small business. Instead, I got wrapped up in the race to shop, spend, and compare instead of being true to myself and what I hold dear.

Over the course of February, I noticed that I was much more anxious to purchase home decor pieces than I normally am, and I thought it was simply related to the fact that I was restricting my spending that month. I came to realize, however, that it had much more to do with the types of accounts I was following. In addition to following the social media accounts of favorite shops, I was also following numerous home decor ‘influencers’ who also happened to write some of my favorite blogs. I’ve been reading their blogs for years because I enjoy interesting and informative content, and if you remember my comment from last week’s post, I’m a busy body who loves to see how people decorate their homes. I never minded the occasional ad or affiliate link within the blog posts, because I fully appreciate that bloggers deserve to earn income from their work. (Note: I do not have any ads or affiliate links on my site at this time.) Unfortunately, these same accounts, and their corresponding blogs, are no longer full of blog content, but rather are merely advertisements for their Amazon or Like to Know It store fronts. Their entire goal, it now seems, is to sell products to their followers. Perhaps I’m finally just figuring out what it means to be an influencer.

I’m sure they have completely valid reasons for changing the scope of their posts, so I don’t want to sound too critical of them. It simply made me remember that I have a choice in who I follow and what type of content I’d like to see each day. I don’t want to be bombarded with images and links encouraging me to shop, buy, and spend – many times on things I normally wouldn’t consider purchasing for my wardrobe or home. In watching Instagram Stories and reading blog posts, I want to be inspired and encouraged, not left to feel like I don’t have enough or that I need to buy the things they are advertising in order to be ‘as successful’ or ‘as happy’ as they portray themselves to be. I found that I had to have the courage to do my own thing and not worry so much about what anyone else is doing. We hear the phrase “stay in your lane” a lot, and I think it might be the best advice I’ve heard in a while. So, I spent a few hours this past weekend cleaning my Instagram account and unfollowing many of the shops, influencers, and any accounts that had design styles vastly different from my own. I figured that if I’m going to be ‘influenced’ to purchase things, I want to ensure I’m purchasing things that are aligned with my design aesthetics and beliefs.

I already notice a huge difference when logging in to Instagram – I no longer feel like I’m being sucked into the dreaded comparison game like I used to. I also feel more content looking around my own home – it’s not trendy or hip, but it does contain a carefully curated mix of items that I truly love. I’m thankful for the shift in my perspective that came about as a result of the Frugal February Challenge, and I’m reminded of a favorite quote that I have shared before: “Gratitude turns what we have into enough.” I hope you have found my experiences to be valuable, and I’d love to know how the Frugal February Challenge was for you.

xo, Tiffany