As the school year wraps up, I have thought about the many ways my roommate and I have moved our room around this year. Our floor teases us all the time about how many times we have rearranged our room. Trust me, if there was an award, we would win it hands-down.
I have never been able to rearrange my room before, so I like the ability to change the furniture around and the fresh atmosphere of a new room. It’s just a nice feeling, a refreshing feeling. And once it gets into my head, I can’t ignore it. More than once our Saturday “cleaning days” have turned into “moving day”. It’s nothing for the people on our floor to look down our hall and see our stuff overflowing from our room as we brainstorm yet another way that we can arrange the furniture.
Usually, we measure to see how everything will fit, like the responsible adults we are, before we move the heavy stuff. We always enlist the help of our reluctant friends, most of whom grudgingly agree as we drag them from their late-night studying and/or Netflix.
We have tested and tried just about everything we could think of, and so I bring to you a few tips that we have learned and some of our favorite setups to keep in mind for next year.
1. When we first moved in back in September, we decided to arrange the beds into an L-shape.
By doing this, we had the other half of the room to put the futon and the desks, which we really liked. If one of us wanted to go to bed, the other could easily be in the other half of the room with a lamp on.
We could rearrange the other half of the room however we wanted.
2. Next, we decided on half-lofted beds with our dressers under them.
This picture was taken around Christmas time. I just thought I’d throw it in for you all to appreciate our cute little tree :)
3. After fall semester, we tried lofted beds with the futon underneath.
4. One tip to keep in mind:
This rearranging furniture is a dangerous business. Have a first-aid kit nearby. And always bully your friends into helping you. My roommate broke her toe trying to move her bed. And once, a shelf almost fell on me. We had three stacked on top of each other, and the tower almost reached the ceiling. I was climbing off my bed and, being the clumsy person I am, I lost my balance and reached out to catch myself. The problem is, I tried to catch myself on the shelves, which due to lack of foresight were not pegged into each other. The top one easily shifted off the others when I fell into it. Thankfully, it fell in the opposite direction of where I fell. We also had a mattress laying on the floor in front of the shelves that helped break its fall. The moral of the story: Peg your furniture and avoid potential disaster!
5. We ended the year off with both beds on the floor.
I haven’t had a bed on the floor since I was four, and I have enjoyed it these last few weeks. It’s easy to get in and out of, there’s no climbing, and we don’t have to move them back on move-out day.
Which setup is my favorite, you ask? All of them. Upon finishing, I always pronounce this my favorite and talk about how much I love it… until I get bored of it in a few weeks and we move it again. It's okay, because I think moving our room around is one of the things that has made my roommate and I such good friends.
And now because we have tried so many different things, I can share all of them with you! I hope I have given you some good ideas for next year!
