Dorms and Decor

Dorms and Decor....

O goodness.

We moved Miss Bunny into her dorm last week.

Who knew dorm decorating was a competitive sport?

Certainly not me. At least not until I arrived at the Ole Miss campus.   I should have gotten a heads up when Bunny showed me this article regarding...yep...an Ole Miss dorm room.  Here's the room from the article:

A beautiful coordinated dorm room.

Photo by Lindy Goodson, one half of the dorm design duo

and here's the article link.  The two girls did what, it appeared, every other girl in the dorm that Bunny moved into did. They met, they discussed what they wanted their room to look like and then they ordered and planned and shopped.
Bunny and her roommate also met on social media (and then in person) and have been discussing furniture and fabrics since last March. Things slowly started accumulating in the dining room, waiting for school to start. Orders for sheets and comforters (PB Teen)  and headboards (WalMart) were placed, HomeGoods was scouted.  Not a whole bunch of money was spent but the end result was fabulous.

And let me tell you. These dorms need a dose of fabulous.

I confess. I never lived in a dorm during my gazillion years of college attendance.

I'd only been inside one or two-ever- and certainly not an empty one.

When I walked into Bunny's empty dorm room last Wednesday morning all I could think was "This is the most depressing little dungeon I have ever been in."

Before

Peeling and water stained wood cabinets. (Bonus! There was an empty beer bottle in one of the drawers. Were these rooms even cleaned???) Cinder block walls.  Two plastic chairs that cannot be removed from the room.   And bunk beds. (Not bunked, but they could be)

It's a 13'x10' room. With two tiny closets. For two people. For nine months. 

Double the depression.

Honestly. I would have called in a designer if the girls hadn't already done their own thing.


And where will Bunny be calling home?

The finished room.

Not over the top but mighty cute and

a HUGE improvement on the "before" pic.

The Bunny Eye view from the bed.

Not quite done but almost.

And let me say, the girls in the viral photo have gotten a lot of flak about over achieving, going overboard, etc. but guess what? Their room is nothing compared to some of the rooms we saw during move in. A quick survey of maybe 15 rooms on one floor of one dorm on one campus revealed some of the most gorgeous, Pinterest worthy rooms I have ever seen- inside a dorm or out. The viral room above had nothing on most of the other rooms. 

All of the rooms had coordinating headboards, coordinating dust ruffles, coordinating pillows and in many cases, coordinating girls. Quite a few said they had bought their room stuff from last year's residents. Creativity was the order of the day and it was amazing to see how and where refrigerators, microwaves and clothes were all stashed in these tiny tiny rooms. (Bunny's roommate has the fridge stashed underneath her bed.) Most girls mentioned HomeGoods/TJ Maxx as the main source of their decorative items. I.e. These rooms were done on budgets.

So let's think about this.  If these girls can figure out all this before they've ever even spent one night in a room together, think how prepared they are for negotiating the rest of their lives. Bunny lived in Texas. The room mate lived right outside of St. Louis, Missouri. (Albeit actually in Illinois.)   They met briefly for the first time in March when they both went to Mississippi for ONE weekend. But some how, some way, they coordinated an entire room online, showed up on the appointed day with the coordinated stuff and the only duplication they had was TWO microwaves. Unfortunately neither one of those microwaves fit in the intended space even though Bunny swore she had measured, but whatever. The roommate's kind daddy found one that would fit. And I don't know about the roommate, but I do know Bunny spent quite a bit of her own hard earned money for this room decor.

So what's the problem with having a nice room? 

Dorm decorating. Maybe it's a competition but you know what? It's also a life lesson. Think of the negotiating skills! The budgeting knowledge! Problem solving!  

(We ran into a problem with the beds being too low for the fridge to be under one and still open. A trip to WalMart solved that...bed risers.  Then the shelf between the two beds was too low after the beds had been raised. A trip to Home Depot for new legs and a bit of paint solved THAT problem. How do you hang a curtain rod on a cinder block wall? Command strips. There were a lot of critical skills used that day.) 

O!   And best of all? School started Monday and I got a "first day of college" pic.

Look! That room is already a mess.