My 2025 DIY Resolution Is to Do the Little Things Myself
This year, I want to lean into the small stuff and repair my things without spending (much) money.
This year, I want to lean into the small stuff and repair my things without spending (much) money.
Some years seem tailor-made for ambitious DIY projects, like everything in the universe is conspiring to convince you to turn a pile of Ikea into a beautiful, Instagram-ready wall of built-in bookshelves. Some years are...not that. And the 2025 forecast for me personally is looking like the latter.
That doesn’t mean no DIY goals, though. Instead, I’m entering the new year with a dream that is simple but ambitious in its own way: I want to do a bunch of small stuff that improves my home—fixing sad little corners and low-grade annoyances—while spending as little money as possible, and without turning to crummy, dirt-cheap fast-fashion solutions.
The mission I’ve set for myself is that I’m going to take full advantage of my local thrift stores, Buy Nothing group, and friends and neighbors with decluttering impulses. That’s partly because I’m feeling budget-conscious, like the rest of America. But it’s also because it’s harder and harder to ignore the sustainability case for using the perfectly good things that are all around us, and maybe just need a little tweaking. All you need is a willingness to do a little legwork.
This mission started with a single item: a small wooden shelf. Like many millennials who encountered the one-two punch of the drafty New England farmhouse in A Wrinkle in Time and the American Girl franchise at a formative moment, I have a weakness for, well, bicentennial style. Hence, I activated step one of my beg/borrow/steal decor strategy: while visiting family, I mentioned that I was on the hunt for a wooden wall shelving unit—just a couple of shelves, to add some storage and warm up my white walls—and my husband’s lovely aunt promptly turned up with one.
My plan is to paint it blue with some leftover mineral paint from a handy friend and use it to solve the fact that there’s not enough toilet paper storage in the bathroom, something that routinely annoys me as the member of the household who works from home and therefore always gets stuck replacing it. Is it an urgent problem? No. Is it going to make my life just a little bit better? Sure is.
It turns out that once you start looking around, all kinds of useful objects appear. While I was refinishing a dresser in my driveway one day, my neighbor walked over with a small flip-top cabinet that he was planning to get rid of. It’s been well-loved; there’s a piece of chewing gum stuck to the bottom by one of his now-grown kids. But it’s perfectly good, with plenty of life left in it, as soon as I chisel off the gum.
From there, my ambition knows no end. I want a castle and/or display rack for my kid’s fantasy figurines and assorted unicorns; unfortunately, it seems you can’t just get a generic toy castle anymore without paying a fortune, buying cardboard, or settling for something tied to existing IP. I want to try painting and stenciling a trunk, thereby achieving a lifelong goal of owning a piece of the American Girl Kirsten’s beautiful furniture collection. I’m hoping for another wall shelf, maybe a maple this time. One day I’ll score a bookcase with a dollhouse outline that I can paint in more detail. We’ll just have to see what the thrift gods bring me.
Top photo courtesy Getty Images
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Social Media Convinced Me to Refinish a Dresser. I Lived to Tell the Tale
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