lovely.
A living room has its purpose as does a dining room,
kitchen, play room, and all the other rooms in a house. A couple’s bedroom,
however, should be unique to the rest! In my opinion, the routine work and some
play done in the rest of your home’s rooms should be kept to a minimum when it
comes to bringing it into your bedroom. Well, unless of course you are making
your sweetie a yummy breakfast-in-bed! J
It seems that we can get so wrapped up in putting emphasis on wanting to make
the exterior or our homes and the places that everyone else sees inside look as
presentable as possible. Why wouldn’t we put those same efforts into making our
personal bedroom presentable, inviting, and desirable for ourselves and our
husband? Think on that for a minute…
I know each couple’s situation is a bit different from
living space dilemmas, to weird unique personal habits. We live in a one
bedroom condo so I definitely understand the storage space issue. Becoming a
hoarder could be a real problem if I didn’t keep myself in check! Nonetheless, I
encourage you to make a concentrated effort to keep your work outside the
bedroom, TVs in other spaces and phones to a minimum use (or not at all!), and
clutter FAR from your secret space. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been a trial and
error process figuring out what we want, don’t want, and everything in between
for our room but it’s worth taking on the challenge together. Haven’t you seen
those home makeover shows that reveal the disastrous master bedroom and it makes
you cringe? What does the designer always do- glams it up and makes it “sexier.”
Have you asked your honey what he thinks about your room? My and Derek’s “areas” tend to look different.
For example, his Type A personality nightstand is pretty much spotless and only
has a framed picture of us set on top. Well, my side has a stack of books and a few
trinkets to add to the… adornment? I’m working on the compromise part to all of
this. Don’t get discouraged, or feel the need to run to your nearest Home
Depot. Make mini changes a few at a time. It’s a work in progress!
Here are a few things that we have chosen to do to keep our
room a place we love to be:
Make the bed in the
morning and tidy up- While I didn’t practice this too well when I was
single, it became a non-negotiable almost immediately for me in our married
life. To see the sheets undone and the pillows hanging off the bed drove me
nuts! Guess what- I found out it stressed Derek out too. Just take an extra few
minutes before you leave the house to put everything back in place and you’ll
come home after work happy that you did! Even if you have to work out a little
schedule between the two of you, make it happen. When I worked, Derek would
make our bed on the mornings that I left before him, and I would pick up on the
days that he left first. Teamwork.
Don’t argue in bed-
I can’t stress this one enough! Your bedroom, and bed, can’t be the place to
have heated disagreements or to bring resentment and bitterness to. The few
times that we did that made coming back to our room later so sad. I am glad
that Derek agrees on this one and has suggested more than once, in the event
that we’ve started to disagree on something big, “Let’s not talk about this in
bed. Let’s take it to the living room.” Your bedroom needs to be a safe place,
not one that elicits fear or intimidation. Listen, change your room around if
you have to if it helps to squash memories of past hurts and arguments in your
special room. This one is a biggie!
Keep the media “noise”
OUT- “To each his own” on this one but in my opinion, I don’t see value in
having a TV in our room. Derek loves his sports stations and favorite TV shows
which I am perfectly OK with. However, I don’t want any media robbing my
spotlight in our room. Understandable,
right? Same goes for cellphones. We have set a time where it’s “phones out”
policy and it’s helped us stay accountable to each other. I will say, allow room to have fun though. For
example, since this was an Olympic year and the events went on late into the
night, we decided to move a smaller TV that we have into our room for the last
week of the games. It was a fun change for a bit! After the games were over we
took it back out of the room- no complaints from either “team.” Make it work
how you see fit, but don’t let it tune out the romance.
Set the mood-
Candles, décor, pictures and more… Make your room as inviting as possible for
you and your honey. I heard a tip one time that when it comes to pictures in
this room, try to keep them to ones of you and your honey. There are enough
places elsewhere to put pictures up of family, friends, and your cute
nieces/nephews. Think about it: you and your spouse are turning up the romance
notch and someone looks over… oh, there’s your sister. Awkward. I do have a few pictures of my family in our room, but
they are “out of sight” by my sink area. We can agree on that!
Talk about it, dream
and envision the changes, do research, and little by little get your special
room right where you want it to be! To name a few, here are my favorite sites
to browse through for ideas: The Nest, HGTV, Pinterest, and Craft Gawker.
Have fun creating the inviting, romantic, desirable bedroom space of
your dreams!
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