My apartment--the good, the bad, and the ugly

This year has been---uh---interesting in terms of my living situation. My roommates have lied to me about housing saying it was fine to have their boyfriend live in the apartment for 6 weeks, had passive-aggresive freak outs, I've woken up to their boyfriends hawking loogeys into my shower at 5 am, and one even brought flour bugs (which we thought were gone until, you know, they were swimming in my cereal yesterday morning).

That's the edited internet version, of course...but you get the idea. I have been miserable. It kills me that I have cool friends all over the country and world, and I am stuck living with people I don't know and I never see these other people that I love. The other thing that I have come to realize is that this lack of control is turning me into a crazy control freak in terms of how I want my life to be...it's stupid and over-compensatory, but I see myself over-reacting (if not out loud most definitely in my head) to things that really aren't a big deal. And yes, I resent it. And I'm trying to just chill out about things, but nothing difficult in life really comes that easily.

But, through all of these annoyances, I've been trying to make my bedroom a beautiful place to be (or retreat to, I suppose). I submitted my room for critique to a blog called Apartment Therapy this January. Their site is dedicated to improving the relationship between you and your apartment. They deal with cleaning, decorating, architecture, gardening...the whole nine yards. They are one of my must-reads, and they have given me a ton of ideas for my room and my future apartment. They offered a lot of great advice this January and they request that you send "after" pictures to see what you've done---and here they are:



Before you look at the pictures, it may help to orient yourself to my room: I'm in "Bedroom B" (136 square feet) below. I got lucky---not only is my room smaller, but it has less usable space due to the mini-hallway that the door opens into.



Taken from the door:

Angling to the right to see the bed/desk:

Looking straight on at the desk:

Looking at the armoire and my chest of drawers (and yeah, I know the toiletries stuff is ugly. But sometimes knowing your stuff isn't being used by other people is worth it):

Looking towards the doorish from the middle of the room:

Looking out the door (shoes and wine!):

Turning back to see the low chest of drawers:

I declined to spend a lot of money on bedding, window treatments or anything really expensive as I will be moving and want to save my money until then. The only things I bought are:

--Blue vintage suitcases ($10 at Goodwill)
--Naked binders ($80 for 8 binders...very expensive. But sustainable and beautiful. They pretty much make that part of my desk)
--multi-colored glass vases above the desk ($30 at some of the thrift stores here)
--Fun orange fractal tree-thing ($2 at Goodwill)

Some of the posters got a bit upset that a "dorm room" was on Apartment Therapy. However, the crux of the issue is that there are other college and graduate students looking to make little changes in their lives starting in their pre-furnished rooms - things that are doable on our time and budget. Going through this process encourages the realization of what we need, what we don't, and what makes us happy.

It really isn't the status quo to feature this sort of room on Apartment Therapy, but trying to make do with what is there (or hand-me-down furniture in general) is something most people have to deal with at one time in their life or another...which is why I'm glad I decided to send in my room in the first place.

Well, for better or for worse, I will only be in my apartment for six more weeks...so close!