I’m an avid HGTV watcher, but I spent my entire high school career being pestered and nagged by my parents to make my bed, put away my clothes, just clean my room in general – you get the gist. Unlike many of my friends, decor, or even just cleanliness, was never something I was all that concerned about. When my friends and I would hang out, we would usually stay at one of my other friend’s houses or just go out to eat and then go our separate ways. Because of this, I never really cared nor had any reason to care about what my room looked like. Yes, I would marvel at the immaculately decorated houses on HGTV’s flip or flop, and I would scroll through Pinterest and admire all the super-chic, well-decorated rooms people posted pictures of, but to me, the effort just wasn’t worth it to create one of my own. As a new college student, that ideology desperately needed to change.
Stop and take a second to picture a ten by twelve room with bare white brick walls, plain white industrial tile, one window, and closets with no doors. Now picture two teenage girls living in that room together for nine months. Sound like fun? It didn’t to me. I was so excited to go away to school this past summer, but I was dreading the idea of having to live in a dorm room. How was I supposed to feel at home in a tiny concrete box with another girl when I couldn’t even make my own bedroom feel homely? Because I was so concerned about how it would work, I decided drastic measures needed to be taken: I actually put some thought and effort into the way my room was going to be set up.
My roommate and I connected before move-in day to discuss how we wanted the room to look. We coordinated the color scheme of our comforters, accent pillows and wall decorations, picked a giant rug to help make our floor feel significantly less like the floor of a supermarket, and even planned to buy curtains to hide the inevitable mess our closets are likely to become during midterms and finals week when we have no time to organize. We decided we would half loft our beds and both got adorable cube storage organizers for underneath them. On move in day, we hung pictures above our window, organized our desk areas, and hung our closet curtains. I’m now a week and a half into college, and dorm life is so much better than I ever could have imagined it would be, largely thanks to the decor of our room. For the first time in my life, I have a room that would fit right in if it ended up on Pinterest. I was dreading dorm life until I actually took the time to plan out and organize how my room would be decorated, and my dorm room now feels more like home than I could ever imagine. As it turns out, the effort it took to successfully decorate a room was well worth it… Especially when it came to turning a tiny college dorm room into a place I am now proud to call home.