But what if I told you indoor plants are easy to look after & keep alive? More importantly, what if I showed and proved to you that if you looked in the right places, made the right selection of plant and followed the correct method of propagation, you could in fact start and expand your indoor plant collection for free, giving you that indoor beauty & fresh air you always dreamed of?

Read on to find out about a few very inexpensive & free ways in which I obtained some of my most prized indoor plants. The method of propagation in almost all these cases, barring one, was propagation by rooting in water.

Stems Damaged In Thunderstorm

Citronella (Pelargonium Citrosum)

The Citronella plant known by a variety of names including  mosquito plant geranium, citrosa geranium & pelargonium citrosum is a well-loved plant that produces lavender blooms in summer and is essentially prized for its citrusy scent, which is thought to have mosquito-repelling properties. This should not be confused with the Citronella Geranium plant that produces citronella oil – the active ingredient in citronella candles.

Truth be told, I bought my original Citronella plant as part of a 3/$10 deal on summer herbs at my local Lowes. It was a cute little size in a 3” pot with large parsley shaped leaves. Since I bought it for its mosquito repelling properties, I placed it as a centerpiece on a bistro table outdoors on my shaded patio. Sadly, 2 weeks later a big and unexpected summer thunderstorm hit and knocked the plant over. The tallest part of the stem with a few leaves broke off in the tumble. Some secondary stems also came apart from the main plant. I didn’t see anyway I could save these since they were just broken pieces of stems without nodes for propagating opportunities.

Just for the sake of the scent though I put them in a small glass bottle with water to keep them fresh and brought this indoors. After a week or so, the arrangement still looked fresh and by the third week, I started to notice small roots emerge! Such a wonderful, unexpected surprise. By week 4, I had replanted this with the original plant in the same pot but you could easily replant in a new pot & place in a new location too, as a second plant!

In summer Citronella makes an ideal plant both indoors in containers or outdoors in flower beds but need to be dug up and taken inside before the first frost.They need an area with well-drained soil and full sun and are hardy in United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) plant hardiness zones 9 through 11.

Floral Centerpiece Decor – Cutting

Purple heart (Tradescantia Pallida ‘Purpurea’)

3 years ago, I was attending a training conferences & at the end of the conference, we played a Q&A game. The prizes were many but one of them included the winner taking home the centerpiece table decoration– a beautiful floral assortment bouquet. A member from my table won one of the rounds and since coming up with the answer was a group activity, she offered to split the prize as well. I came home with a cutting from a robust matured Purple Heart plant.

This evergreen perennial has dark purple foliage that can grow about a foot tall but spreads easily and can grow up to 24 inches wide, so it’s the perfect plant to add a beautiful pop of color to your yard. It’s also an excellent container plant, growing well in hanging baskets on your patio or inside as a houseplant.

I debated rooting my cutting in water or directly in soil. My mother-in-law said the second was hassle free but then again, she admitted she had never done this specifically with a purple heart. So, I went with what the winner & others did with their cuttings – rooted in in water and patiently waited for roots to form. They did and today I have a container full of healthy Purple Hearts. How did I do this? Once rooted, I planted my original cutting in soil, where I let it grow, undisturbed through one whole season. It grew strong but long and leggy. I couldn’t bear the look of it so took a big risk cut off the entire length of the stem down to about a few inches and then redivided this stem into smaller sections, repeated the successful step of rooting in water and then planted these smaller new cuttings spaced out in the container, giving it a wholesome, fuller look as the plants began to grow out through summer.

Not forgetting the person who was generous enough to share her purple heart with me, I recently gifted her a cutting from my established plant since hers sadly did not make it. And so, the circle of kindness comes full circle and it didn’t cost a thing!

On Clearance At Nursery

Pothos (Epipremnum Aureumis)

Anyone who owns a Pothos (and I assume there are quite a few of you, given this is a common, easily available favorite) knows it’s a hassle free, low maintenance but fast growing plant. You can propagate several new plants from just a few cuttings from the original. I started off with a $3 Pothos plant purchased at Walmart 5 years ago, that has now multiplied from cuttings into several new pots. Last I counted I had 4 full bursting containers of Pothos – 2 placed outdoors, 2 indoors. I also have cuttings rooted in water in 2 glass bottles decorating my bathroom that have got many compliments. Maybe you’d like trying this too! All this is in addition to that original mother plant. I grow all of my Pothos plants in containers which are brought indoors in winter.

There are a variety of pothos cultivars that offer diverse colors and patterns on heart-shaped leaves. Although they do not have a bloom they rapidly transform in shape, starting off as  a small cluster of leaves and then bursting into dazzlingly long vines of verdant green that are hardy and nearly indestructible making them suitable for a variety of home décor & design ideas.

Neighbor’s Yard Sale

Spider Plant (Chlorophytum)

This is by far one of the favorites from my collection, not only because of its beauty and limited seasonal availability but because of the sentiment surrounding the circumstances by which it found its way to me. An elderly couple in my neighborhood was having a yard sale. When we got to the house, we discovered the couple was actually selling their house to move into a smaller apartment by the end of the month. I looked around at the beautifully landscaped yard and spic and span house. I hoped that the couple didn’t have to move, having spent these many years caring for this home. After making a few purchases, the old lady told me the apartment location they were moving into did not allow plants & would I be interested in taking and looking after her pair of indoor spider plants, each in an almost 16 inch/ 10 gallon set of flower pots. This was an unexpected request and I didn’t know what to do with them, but she spoke so fondly of them, I didn’t have the heart to say no.  So, I hauled them away, plants, planters, plant stands, caring instructions (I made as much metal notes as possible) and all and it was the best decision ever.

Spider plants can tolerate a wide range of conditions, but they prefer moderate to bright indirect light, with temperatures above 50oF and moderate humidity.  You should water them liberally through the summer and mist them occasionally. During winter, cut watering back. Established, container & root bound, spider plants produce baby spider plantlets throughout summer that root easily & quickly in water when detached from the mother plant.

I have propagated several pots of spider plants (I’ve noticed they do better in outdoor hanging baskets in shade)  and given them away as gifts to family, friends, colleagues and school teachers as end of year appreciation gifts.   I am also a Catechist at my 4^th Grade Sunday School at church. Every summer I distribute these baby spider plantlets among my students and help them to root, plant and take home as part of a nurturing activity to teach them human beings are responsible for nature and caring for our Earth. The kids have fun and the lesson is well received. Last year I added a variegated version of the spider plant to my collection and the 2 fit together perfectly.

My Local Gym

Striped Wondering Jew (T. Zebrina)

The term ‘Wandering Jew’ is used for several different plant species within the Tradescantia genus which includes at least 75 different herbaceous perennial species, including the spider wort & Purple Heart plant I mentioned earlier in this blog post.

The Striped Wondering Jew is native to Mexico and gets its name from its zebra-like leaves. Its leaves are paired, creamy white in the middle of each half, and silvery green on the edges. The leaves develop a purple patch on the upper surface and underneath and are asymmetrical at the base. The plant has a trailing habit and looks best grown in hanging baskets, window boxes, containers placed on high shelves.

These plants are not easy to come by. After looking around for a while, I was forced to look to eBay and ordered about 5 cuttings online. The cuttings arrived a few days later and while they were healthy when I first got them, they didn’t root vey well. Having had success with the root-in-water method, I thought this would work for this plant too. But the stalk is so terribly tender it started to rot.

I quicky removed them from water and discovered when I researched online that a Wandering Jew clipping root better in soil. I followed instruction on how to do this and while I had lost half the cuttings from water rot, the 2 that survived seemed to do well in the soil filled starter pots. After a week, I began to see new growth and the leaves took on a healthy look with the required glittery surface. Success!

Not long after, by a stroke of luck, I noticed my local gym had acquired a full basket of trailing Wandering Jew of their own, proudly displayed on the front-customer desk. I shamelessly asked if I could have a clipping or 2 and the staff member on duty said ‘sure, help yourself!’…. music to my ears. Today I too have a pretty red planter bursting with trailing wandering Jew which I proudly display at the entrance of my patio.

Broken stems found in a Grocery Cart

Speedy Jenny OR Baby Bunny Bellies (Tradescantia Chrysophylla)

I must warn you that this is a seasonally grown plant and found around Easter time (March-April) and not very easily available. Like the striped Wandering Jew, this belongs to the Tradescantia  family. It looks a lot like the Wandering Jew with smaller leaves. Where the defining factor of the Wandering Jew is the shiny glittering look of the leaves, what defines the bunny bellies plant is the soft fuzzy surface of its foliage that feels like a rabbit’s belly!

This plant was my most recent conquest and happened literally by accident because I found a couple of broken stalks left behind in a shopping cart, I picked up on one of my grocery runs. I knew I recognized the plant and looked around the garden section for a basket I could buy because here was the evidence it does exist! But I sadly couldn’t find any left. They were all sold out even before they got there. The tragedy!

Luckily the broken off stalk was quite long. So, like I did for my Purple Heart stem, I was able to divide it into multiple smaller cuttings. I repeated the same propagation process by rooting in soil that I had followed for my striped Wandering Jew and it seemed to work even better for this plant since the stem was not too tender & I could really stick it into the soil. I noticed new growth in a couple of days. Once established, I quickly placed it outdoors with better access to sunlight than my sunny kitchen window and it really took off. Each time the stem got too leggy I cut it back and re-rooted these clippings in soil so that a few months later, I now have quite a full trailing basket of little bunny bellies. A true Easter Miracle that taught me that nature is beautiful and resilient if looked after in the right way with love and care!

Ending Thoughts

So, there you have it –6 different ways you could obtain indoor plants & grow and expand your houseplant collection inexpensively, virtually free of cost! Exchanging cuttings with friends, and finding plants in natures are another inexpensive & smart ways to build your collection. But irrespective of the cost, Indoor houseplants are easy to care for and I hope this will encourage you to take the dive and start your own collection soon! If you have other ideas or suggestions on how to inexpensively obtain house plants, please comment on this post, I’d love to hear them.

The post Inexpensive Ways To Start & Expand Your Indoor Plant Collection For Free! appeared first on InstantELLA.

We enjoyed being outside with the family on those hot days, playing sports and just being together. To really increase your fun this next summer, try creating your own personalized games. By using old, run-down wood and other recycled materials you are one step closer to bringing fun and games to the next level. BiologiQ, a manufacturer of eco-friendly plastic with plastic resin pellets, has put together this great list of ways to recycle old wood.

Try out these creative ways to turn old materials into something brilliant and exciting!

Corn Toss Game

How to Build a Cornhole Toss Set

Who wouldn’t want a Corn Toss game in the backyard? This simple and easy game has been one of the most famous wood games around. Whenever you go to the fair or a carnival, there is always a Corn Toss game somewhere. Create a fun and unique game that the kids and even the older ones will love. Start by creating the board to fit any desire or imagination you want, plus involve the little ones on how it should look. Use this idea to have a start on your board. To make this project even more creative and fun create the bean bags yourself and fill them using plastic pellets. There are plenty of designs and ways to create the bags, you will also become a pro at sewing.

Connect 4

The classic game of four in a row has been bringing fun and smiles for many years. A competitive game of quick wit and skill that can bring out the master in you. Try taking this classic game to another level by revolutionizing it to fit your outdoor needs. Looking around the house, and especially grandpa’s house where you’ll find old wood pallets that can be used to make the board. Get creative when building your game or follow this example.

Shooting Range

Last but certainly not least, a homemade shooting range. Grab your old Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle and take to your backyard. You already have a Connect Four and Corn Toss game for the kids, but you also should have your own fun. Creating a homemade shooting range is easy, but be careful not to shoot your eye out. Find an old pallet board, print off some targets and pin them or glue them to the board. It is that easy! Take the experience of other posts on our blog, use them as a way to find inspiration!

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For folks like us, workspace becomes critical to our productivity. Both my husband and are very ordered and organized. We cannot work in clutter and need our space to be creative. More importantly our space has to bear our personality whether it be artsy, elegant yet minimalistic like me or hardcore, reflective and precise like him.

Keeping all of this in mind. We decided we needed to re-decorate the office. The clincher was to do it on a low budget, making use of what was already in the house as much as possible.  And that’s where creativity, resourcefulness and confidence comes in. Here are a few ideas we put into reality and which we hope will inspire you when you decide to re-decorate and re-organize your workspace. Remember to get all your electrical grounding checked if doing any proper DIY to prevent house fires and stop electrical faults happening. 

Utility is key!

Get rid of the clutter. Make sure you only have what you absolutely need taking up space in your home office. Utility means functionality to me, and that’s where I think a lot of us make trade-offs, having to sacrifice creativity and art to functionality. But I didn’t and here’s how:

• • Desk: For us, this meant having just one desk instead of 2. The way to get around seating issues is to find a desk that allows for leg space on at least 2 sides if not all the way around. (aha! Now you get it.)
  • Calendars: The world may have gone digital, but I still use the traditional calendar. It’s convenient and taking up wall space is always better than taking up desk space when you already have a small desk to begin with. It’s also artsy. What do I mean? Have you ever tried taking a Video Gamer’s calendar (in our case it was Halo that blended perfectly well with the rest of the office theme) and hanging it to look like a poster? Try it. High chance you’ll love it!

• Coasters: I get through my day with at least 3 caffeine breaks so instead of having dull boring coasters, I picked up a set of 4 Star Wars’ coasters at Target (on clearance) with a black and white Storm Trooper theme to match the black and white casing of my husband’s gaming PC in the office. Needless to say the coaster is theme appropriate, does it’s job and when it’s not, it still makes for an interesting piece of art!

Space & Color

Ours is a small workspace. I discovered however, that if you invest in white furniture and add some mirrors to the mix, it can do wonders. That’s why we chose an unused 3.5 ft X 2 ft vanity mirror to add a sense of space and depth to the room.

If you have to have color, stick to 1 or 2 only and play around with shades of the same color rather than use a third. For us this was red and blue and the theme runs through the posters and wall art in the office.

Be sure to pick up pieces from reputable places such as Weaver Furniture Barn. No matter what ideas you have floating around in your head you don’t want subpar pieces in your office. It should be a cozy space that fosters productivity, so when selecting pieces it is important to bear this in mind.

The biggest value add to the office however, has been this sturdy white storage cube organizer we recently purchased online at Walmart. It is not only useful, acting as a bookshelf, curio display shelf and storage (for all the ugly stuff in the office people don’t want you to see. Lol) but lends modernity to the room. Ours may look like one piece but is actually 2 single cubes (bought separately) and mounted on the lower 3- piece cube. I went a step further and added a white magazine/file holder (which had I lying around the house) to the ensemble which may not even be noticeable because it blends in so well. Here’s another tip: everything is art. Be attentive to odds and ends around the house , which if paired well with other items can turn into a beautiful utility and would definitely save you a trip to the store.

Lighting, like mirrors can add beauty and space to a room. A workspace definitely needs this. But ceiling lights can be harsh sometimes, kill the aesthetics of the room and be very unnerving for people trying to work. A soft light on the other hand can be relaxing, help your focus and give you that much needed break to meet deadlines. We added medium voltage contemporary, light-weight lamps to the room. I also put together a decorative light bowl, using a spare glass bowl, LED lights and some old potpourri fill ups I no longer need. If you don’t have potpourri, you can use candles, decorative stones or shells. Run with your imagination here

Reflect your personality

This is undoubtedly the most important part of decorating your home office. It’s your office and must reflect your personality. As a child, like most boys, my husband collected many action figures from Star Trek, Spawn, Pokemon, GI Joe, etc. So it was no surprise that when I came across a ton of them in the basement and began to organize his collection, he suggested we use a few to mount in the office. If action figures was his thing, the light bowls were mine and what goes better with light than greenery, so I added a few (fake) indoor table plants. It makes the room more aesthetics. And who doesn’t have stickers and cutouts, too interesting to get rid of, but also too small to do anything meaningful with? I just took a few interesting high quality curated stickers a client had given my husband to sample, mounted them on white paper (kind of like a collage) and framed them in a small desk frame. My husband loves it and says it motivates him to ‘do more’ and ‘keep it simple’ at work because that’s exactly what the stickers say.

My husband and I are proud of our new home office and the short time we took to get it done. It’s our space and one of the prettiest rooms in the house, decorated on a low-cost budget. Breathing new life into old space isn’t difficult to do and if we can do it, so could you!

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