Bedroom: Before

The second section of my book on organization talks about making your bedroom into a sanctuary-- a "sexy, comforting, nurturing, inspiring, cozy, elegant, sophisticated, homey, fun, joyful" sanctuary. Apparently I'm supposed to do this in February. But then I was supposed to do the kitchen in January, so here we are. I'm going to move forward in the order of the book chapters, rather than the corresponding months.

Anyhow, my bedroom. I believe I may have mentioned that my apartment is rather strangely laid out-- it has a kitchen/hallway instead of a separate kitchen so that there could actually be separate bedroom nook in my 300 square feet of space. So my bedroom is tiny. You would think there wouldn't be much room for it to be messy or cluttered. You would be wrong.

The book invites you to consider your bedroom as it is now-- What do you like about it? What do you not like? Any quick, easy fixes you could do to improve it? Do you feel like the space truly reflects you? Is it full of things from your past that don't have as much meaning now? Are there old habits or tastes you still incorporate?

Picture your bedroom sanctuary in your mind, the book says. What does it look like?

I can tell you what my imaginary bedroom sanctuary does NOT look like. This:

The weird, too-short-built-in unusable desk/inconvenient shelf area:


A closer look at the desk and the drawers I have crammed underneath it. Also, my purse crate:


Those are all the boxes of childhood and random things that I brought from the storage room at my parents' house. I was planning to unpack and organize them. Yeah.

My bedside table:

Do you spy the book?

I do like that this table doesn't have drawers, because I think I would just cram stuff into them and pretend it isn't there. Also, I LOVE that lamp. It was in my bedroom at my grandmother's house when I was a little girl, then it was in the garage and didn't have a shade for a long time so nobody used it. Then, I, the genius, figured out that you could go out and buy a new shade.

My bed:


I LOVE my bed. I bought that fluffy blankie at Target at the beginning of the school year because I am ALWAYS cold, especially at night, especially in winter. And then I bought those jersey knit pillowcases. My bed is lovely and cloud-like and I love it.

I have a month to create a bedroom sanctuary. I'm thinking I might give myself a little extra time, due to extenuating circumstances. And that's okay because some of the book sections involve things like "Get your kids on board!" which I don't have or "Organize that cluttered garage!" which would involve me going down the my assigned parking space and giving it a thumbs up. But I'm excited. I had fun zenning my kitchen and it really seems like it worked. So maybe, hopefully in a month and change I will have a fabulous zen bedroom to show you.