By Michelle Slatalla

I'm as nervous as anybody these days about the uncertain economy, the seesaw stock exchange and on-off-on-again tariffs. I get it: This is not the time to spend money on seasonal decor.

But that doesn't mean I don't yearn to summer-ize my house and garden. And if I let financial uncertainty stop me from doing the things I love -- and decorating is one of the things I love best -- that's bad. Right?

"Right," said Ingrid Fetell Lee, a Brooklyn happiness researcher (yes, a thing!) whom I phoned for advice recently. "We're taught that our surroundings don't really matter, that it's frivolous to worry about them -- but that is wrong," said Lee, the author of "Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness."

"I'm so glad I called you," I said.

"You shouldn't feel bad about decorating, because no matter what is happening in the world around you, your life is happening right now," she said. "If you make your home feel joyful, you'll make yourself feel the same way."

And spiffing up doesn't require spending money, she pointed out: "Invest an hour or a day or a weekend in a small project that makes something better out of something you already have."

So I embraced the alchemy of creating something new out of stuff I already own. Here are five ways I spruced up without splashing out.

1 | Divide to Conquer

Instead of making a trip to a plant nursery, I shopped in my own northern California garden. Turns out I have a zillion succulents, with stems I could snap off to create cuttings, which I then rooted in soil in my patio planters. Presto: instant container gardens.

The magic trick works with other plants, too. For instance, those that reproduce on their own, like ferns, or perennials like hostas, which can be split at the roots into planter-sized clumps. The secret of this technique? "All plants have meristematic tissue -- and you can look up whether it's at the juncture of leaves and stem or at the juncture of stem and roots -- and if you divide or split them there, you can replant them," said Debra Lee Baldwin, author of "Designing with Succulents."

2 | Quilt While You're Ahead

How to draw attention to the elegance of my newly potted succulents? "You will enhance the look of a container garden if you create a sympathetic setting for it, using something that complements the color, like a patterned quilt or coverlet," said Lana Williams, author of "The Container Garden Recipe Book."

Her advice for penny pinchers: Raid the linen closet.

I discovered -- hello! -- a bolt of forgotten fabric (Les Indiennes' block-printed Petite Collines, with a black-and-indigo geometric pattern) the size of a quilt.

Draping the fabric over my outdoor daybed created a flattering backdrop to my terracotta planters. Williams shared tips for upcycling fabrics: Smaller-scale or more-traditional patterns like my Les Indiennes print look great juxtaposed against more formal containers, while bold, contemporary patterns work well with simple concrete planters.

3 | Iron Out the Ordinary

While rummaging in my linen closet, I also discovered a stack of wrinkled linen napkins. Reader, I took a brief detour from purely seasonal decorating efforts to iron them, and here's the reason: It makes me feel rich to have a pile of perfectly pressed napkins.

Fetell Lee explained why. "When you elevate an ordinary object by doing something like smoothing out the wrinkles, you're creating a physical, tangible expression of the home you dream of having," she said. "And that makes you feel one step closer to that dream."

Next I might polish a silver-plated spoon and use it to serve supper. Or put a pair of crisp, starched pillowcases on my bed. Or dig out my scratch-repair pens to cover a few gouges in the surface of my kitchen table.

4 | Paint Away

When I was putting my nice napkins in a drawer in my dining room sideboard, I noticed a rickety old wooden side table which is so ugly I generally try to ignore it (even when I am watering the houseplants that sit on top of it).

"Repaint it and put it outdoors as a conversation piece," said Brooklyn landscape architect Liz Pulver.

So I used a can of leftover exterior paint -- the same green shade as the trim on my house -- to transform the table into something glossy. I moved it outdoors, houseplants and all. It looked great! Why? "Painting something the same color as the house unifies the space," Pulver said.

5 | Make Your Entrance

I have an old mirror in the basement. OK, I have three, stacked up in a corner. At least three. So I pressed into service a pretty, circa-1920s shield mirror in an oak frame by hanging it outside my front door beneath an overhang (safely outside the flight paths of the birds in my garden).

And voilà, every time I check my reflection on the way out of the house, I feel like I have an entire new room.

The reason? "It reflects light back from a wall that was dark, and increases the feeling of space when it reflects something green from the surrounding landscape," said Pulver, who likes to perform the same magic by mounting a mirror along a shady side or back wall in a city townhouse garden.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

May 30, 2025 09:00 ET (13:00 GMT)

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