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Make next year's
dorm room homey
By Becky Castle
 So
you've paid your $125 room deposit and you've signed up for your
room next year. Maybe you've picked your roommate and maybe you
haven't. Maybe you and your roommate for next year will have the
same decorating tastes and maybe you won't. Beyond the superficial
"I'll bring the phone if you bring the ironing board" chit-chat,
how will you solve the serious issue of taking two people's completely
different tastes and making of them a cohesive dorm decorating scheme?
Here's how two pairs of roommates worked it out.
Freshmen Megan Maarleveld and Mindy O'Mire
This is our first year and we were randomly placed together. We
called each other when we knew we were rooming together and discussed
what we wanted to do. We both wanted it to be nice, and not to be
too much like a dorm room, but instead more comfortable and homey.
I (Mindy) went shopping and bought a new comforter and called Megan
and told her about it. She went to the same store where she lived
and got a matching one. It didn't take long at all for us to decorate-our
families helped us a lot. It was finished between the time we moved
in, and the day we started classes, so maybe four or five days.
When you and your roommate are trying to decide how to decorate,
just find out what you both like and go from there. You don't have
to spend a lot of money, you just have to be creative and work with
what you got.
Junior Kristin Gardner and Senior Hannah Newlin
We decided to room together around March of last year for this school
year. With summer episodes of "Trading Spaces" still fresh in our
minds, we began decorating those first few days of move in. We knew
we wanted a coffee table with bar stools so we started shopping
around and found some great sales. In the process, we found two
sage green coffee mugs and actually built the theme of our room
around those. That same day we found down comforters on sale that
matched our mugs, so we got them!
Since we had an idea of what we wanted, we were able to go out and
get everything in one day. Within a few days we had our room up
and running, all the while feeling like home.
People planning to room together should be creative and think outside
the box. There are many resources available to help you get ideas
for decorating. From "Trading Spaces" to IKEA and Pottery Barn magazines,
you can pretty much duplicate anything for half the price. With
great sales, people blessing us with some things and a little creativity,
we were able to put together a room we enjoy very inexpensively.
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