Add a Room to Your Home for Nineteen Dollars or Less

One morning you will wake up and realize that your bedroom does, in fact, look like this:It's not like you weren't aware of it for quite some time. You know that it's not pretty--that's why you keep the door closed when people come over. It's not a lovely thing at all. Despite the effort that you've put into other rooms in your home, making them lovely and homey and into places that make visitors inevitably say, "it's so cute!" You're not being arrogant--it's a fact. That's what everyone says when they walk into your home. Grown-ass men have used the word "cute". And you don't mind because you tried to make them say that. For the most part. You don't have a huge attention to detail at all so nothing's really straight and there are dust bunnies in the corners. All in all it's "cute" though. Despite the rest of the apartment, your bedroom happens to be a room that houses your bed and your laundry (primarily dirty) and you decide that today is the day that you're going to assess the bedroom situation. So you start cleaning.

You start cleaning but that gets boring really quickly. Cleaning is not fun. And even though you're cleaning and a clean room is nicer than a gross room but you still are not pleased with a lot of the things happening. You bought your bedspread 2 years ago at a garage sale. You never really loved it but it was in excellent condition and a reasonable price so you bought it and tried to live with a pink, flowered bedspread. You are a girl but you are not a terribly "pink, floral" type of girl. But it worked. Until just this moment. So instead of cleaning, you're determined to make your room much more neat. You head to the thrift store and to Walmart.

Nineteen dollars and 12 hours later and you have a totally different space. "Totally" is a little bit excessive but it is different. You remember that you have a cream colored duvet cover that you haven't used in years. It takes a while for you to find it and when you do, you remember that it was intended for a twin bed. But you have a full. You decide to go with it and in the end you're actually really pleased with the way it looks.

At Walmart, you buy two tension rods, one bag of curtain clips and five dollars worth of navy blue sheer fabric. With the help of a friend, you put them all together and perch them in the windows. Borrow a hammer and hang some of the art that until now, you've always wondered how you will hang without a hammer. Bring in a different lamp, the one from the living room, and a rocking chair that no one ever sits in and voila. You have a new bedroom.


The four pictures on the wall are a series of greeting cards that your boss gave to you after she fired you from your first grown-up job in South Dakota. As much frustration that you still taste for that period of your life, you still really love those cards. They feature prints of Native American artwork that was drawn on, essentially, scrap paper from what appears to be an accountant's office. Each of those picture frames cost $.95.
You don't want to hang out in any other room, all of a sudden.
In the morning you will bring your breakfast into your bedroom and eat it while you blog.
You can eat your breakfast in bed because you are a grown up.
You can eat pink cake for breakfast in bed because you are a grown up.