When I came to uni what bothered me most was how impersonal my room was. It looked like every other room in my accommodation, there was nothing that marked it out as my room. So I decorated. Making my room unique to me made it a lot more comforting; my room was my own space, rather than somewhere I was just living in for a year.
This can be a little hard when you’re only in a room for a year, there are a lot of limitations. Obviously you can’t paint walls or change the curtains, but you also can’t use blue tac so other ways of attaching things to walls needs to be found. Last year I used Command strips and hooks – which can be found in Sainsbury’s along the stationary aisle and also on Amazon – but these aren’t the cheapest, so this year I’m using masking tape I ‘borrowed’ from my dad. I’ve popped up a poster and some photographs, as well as some fairy lights, and these help mark my room out as belonging to me.
Another little thing which makes my room more relaxing to be in is that on the pin board above my desk I don’t have anything work related. It’s all old tickets and photographs. When I’m doing work I don’t want to look up and see more work and deadlines, so I put any uni-related stuff on the second pin board I have, which I can’t see from my desk.
If you find yourself lacking things to fill your walls with, there’s a poster sale in Alex Square throughout the year, so you can always pop along to that to find a poster. If you want one a bit sooner, have a look online – there are a tonne of websites which sell a variety of posters. Alex Square sometimes has a plant sale as well, and plants are something which really fill up empty spots in your room. They don’t sell pots, so you’ll have to look elsewhere for one of those, but be careful: I measured my plant wrong and managed to get a pot way too big for it.
There’s not really a set way to make your room feel more like a home, it’s all down to what you like and what makes you feel comfortable. I find filling up all the space helps, making the room less bare, and putting pictures up, but that’s what works for me. Personal taste is what’s going to make your room feel unique to you, but hopefully these tips have given you a starting point.