Aim:
To set up your living space and home decor without hiring any help.
Apparatus:
Living place, stable internet connection, decisiveness and time.
Pre-Requisite:
A fair idea of the measurements of the place, purposes the space will be used for and your budget.
Theory:
Coming of age, we realise the freedom that comes with having the dichotomy of our own room. There is this one physical space, dedicated to you and your mess, where your rules are relevant, albeit superseded by your parents’ set of rules.
One of the primitive memories of making a decision I have is of my parents asking me what colour I wanted my room to be. Being the antithesis of a kid that I was, I demanded my entire room be white. I ended up with a blue room, but that’s a story for another day.
Everyone wants their home to be an embodiment of their personalities. And believe me, home decor has never had the plethora of materials and styles it does now. You can go Utopian, Scandinavian or I-can’t-even-pronounce-it-ian. You can have Mahagony, Teak, PVC, laminated sheets or go bonkers with Indian textiles for the upholstery.
Point is, there is a perfect option for everyone out there, you only need to figure out what you want. Easier said than done, I know.
Procedure:
- Try not to lose your head or get overwhelmed with options. Start with a basic idea of the room and it’s flow. Everything you put in that room should add functionality to it, not just eat up space.
- Browse, browse and browse- websites, cafes, social media. Bookmark everything you like. I’d be lying if I said that this has not lead to a storage crunch on my phone. But *sigh*, what to do? ‘Life imitates art.’ after all.
- Talk to your local shopkeepers and craftsmen to get an estimate of what a customised materialisation of your decor needs would cost. Compare with e-commerce catalogues.
- Make a call. What fits in your time and budget constraints? Is it durable? Will you use it 15-20 years down the line? And most importantly, can you stand its sight everyday?
- Once you’ve done the recce, you’re in the position to make purchases and throw a house warming party.
Result:
You end up with a personalised space, built from scratch to suit your tastes. And you got to make some grown up decisions and figured out that the cost of the curtain is proportional to its length.
Precautions:
- Don’t let the furniture bring out your explurgent side.
- Do NOT colour coordinate everything; it’s an eye sore.
- No, you do not need to buy everything at one go.
Image Credits: Pinterest
