I swapped my coffee table for a footstool – and it's made my living room feel so much better

Content creator Lucy Kalice is one of Ideal Home's Open House contributors, sharing her thoughts on cleaning, home decor and making the most of small spaces. See the rest of her articles here.

Nothing makes me happier than adding little home upgrades to our house. I’m a homeware girl through and through. Bags or shoes? Not bothered. New placemats or cushions? I fall in love in an instant!

And because of this you would think my home would be furnished and finished right? Wrong! I think Lucy 5 years ago would be shocked too.

When we first bought our house I thought it would take us approximately 5-6 weeks to decorate and furnish it all. Yep, every single room in our 3 bed 2 bath house was going to be completed within 6 weeks! Hilarious how naive I was. But almost five years later I haven’t finished furnishing a single room and I think I’m only just starting to find my style. I have grand plans for some rooms that probably won’t happen for a few years…and I’m not in any rush!

These things take time and money so often if you rush the process, you end up decorating and buying things twice. I also have a theory that a house is never finished. There’s always new knick-knacks being bought, rooms being redecorated and furnishings being changed. It’s what keeps a house fun and fresh!

In four years we’ve gone through two coffee tables for our kitchen/lounge area and only now have we finally found something that works for us. The first coffee table was a hand-me down from my parents. It was this beautiful huge wooden table which was too big and grand for our space. But we needed furniture and it served a purpose whilst we got an idea of how we wanted the space.

Our second coffee table cost us £40 from a furniture outlet store. I remember buying it and feeling so chuffed that the vision for our kitchen/lounge area was coming together. We went with a glass table so that it made our space feel bigger. It was totally in-offensive, collected dust like it was going out of fashion but it did the job! We had it for about three or four years in total, until recently when we changed it AGAIN.

Only this time we didn’t get a coffee table, we got a footstool! It’s a small change but it has made the biggest difference to us. We were constantly putting our feet up on the coffee table and it just ended up being another place to gather ‘stuff’. I already have a problem with leaving ‘stuff’ laying around so I didn’t need another surface for this.

It was quite an impulsive decision. One day I had a vision for a striped footstool and a couple of days later I was clicking check out and pay on DUSK. But here we are, four and a half years later and we’ve finally found something that works for us. And I love it!

It’s the most gorgeous cream fabric that has a navy stripe running though it. The navy matches the paint colour we have in that room and so it’s a lot more cohesive.

The next change we want to do is replace the sofa cushions as what we have isn’t the look we are going for anymore. And you know what? Changing the furnishings is fun! Tastes change and you can’t expect to always like the same thing.

Who knows, maybe in a couple of years I’ll change my mind again on the footstool. But I have a pretty good feeling about this one.