RE-Arranging the Bedroom

Lately, Ben and I love to dream of having our own house, with our own spacious backyard, on a city street with lots of neighbors, and old floors and "bones" to work with. On our walks through the city, we love to pick out houses we would love to own someday, and dream of all the things we could do there: raise chickens, grow veggies, plant flowers, grow grapes (well, maybe those are more of my dreams...but you get the idea). Don't get me wrong - we love where we live! It's just so fun to dream of what we one day will get to invest in.

I also love to look at other peoples' kitchens. I loved the kitchen we had at our house in Maine the past week: high ceilings, open cabinets, and a center island with gas range and hanging pots and pans everywhere. Not uber-chic and glamorous, but it has such a great feel!

Cooking range (with my brother working hard...what a guy!); Bar stool seats at the island; and in true Maine style, lobster and wine glasses, side by side:

a

A kitchen like this just isn't in the cards for us yet - as students, twenty-somethings, and in transition - we know this is a dream for the future. But I still love to dream! Earlier this week I went to the library and got a stack of books about making your own beauty products, organizing your home, and making soap (a project I'm hoping to get to...eventually). While paging through a home organization/simplification book, I kept reading how important to sleep and peace of mind it is to have a calming bedroom.

(Source:Amazon.com)

When thinking of our bedroom, I usually think of it as a place where we crash at the end of a busy day, plunk down our books, computers, etc., and leave clothes and discarded outfit options around the floor. Not quite the picture of a calm, serene environment...

So I set to rearranging our bedroom. The first step: rearranging furniture (something I am terrible at!). I enlisted the help of my selfless husband to experiment with moving our furniture to find a new order. Second step: moving wardrobe dressers, laundry baskets, and bedside tables to face on opposite sides of the room to make "his and hers" areas of the room. Amazingly, this has already simplified our getting ready for bed and getting ready for the morning processes to have everything of our own right where we can get to it, and to discard our laundry in our own baskets at the end of the night. Third, decorations to hang, that have been sitting for quite awhile amidst the clutter. So now we have our engagement picture up, Ben's favorite Phillies caps, and the beautiful quilt hanging we received for our wedding, all up!

So, well I can't work in that dream kitchen/house quite yet, I'll be content working in the one we are fortunate to have.

Here are some pictures of our before and after bedroom arrangement (sorry, the before pictures don't give a good sense of how it looked!):

Before

After