With the term beginning again, it’s easy to let work pile on top of you and take over every aspect of your life. Before you know it, your room is full of papers, clothes are flung on every piece of furniture, and mugs are perching on any available surface. I feel you.
With this in mind, here are some key tips to try and make your room as cosy as possible, all while keeping it a workable environment.
1. All About the Lighting
I’m a big believer in having the right lighting for different atmospheres. For work, I find it helpful to have as much natural light as possible, as well as a main source of light if necessary. What you don’t want is to be peering at pages or your screen, trying to decipher words. When relaxing, I like to turn on a small bedside lamp as well as my fairy lights which I have placed in different areas around the room. My lamp has a yellow glow, and the fairy lights are twinkly. It helps the room feel more relaxed and allows me to separate my relaxing environment from the working one!
2. Decoration
Being quite a forgetful person, I find it helpful to have my timetable pinned up on my wall, right by other pieces of information I might need at any given moment. These could be class, appointments, coffee dates – you name it. To make this area of your wall slightly less intimidating, you could also pin up motivational quotes or images, or, at least, give your reminders lots of colours! On another area of my wall, my pin-board is filled with photos and cards with all the fun things I have done both during my time at St Andrews and at home. I find it helpful to keep the distinction between the two, so that my board of photos and cards makes me feel fully relaxed and calm.
3. Space
This brings me to my next point – space. If possible, I find it really useful to keep a small separation between work and relaxation. If you have a desk, use it as your working environment and keep all of your books/papers only in this area. Your room doesn’t have to be massive for this to work. Having a desk space will allow you to get in the mindset of productivity. Your bed, on the other hand, is the place you can fully relax. It is also helpful – and here I could take my own advice – to keep your desk space clean and tidy. It is much more appealing to sit and work at a table which is not covered in clutter, so I suggest getting poly pockets for loose sheets, pencil cases/jars for pens, and maybe a drawer or a box for extra stationery.
4. Surfaces
Last but not least, there is something so nice about having other surfaces in your room filled with personal belongings. Having just argued the case for a tidy desk space, I would argue the opposite for other surfaces, such as your bookshelves, windowsills, or chests of drawers. I have never been a minimalist when it comes to knick-knacks, so my advice here is to go crazy. Lamps, mugs, jewellery trees, candles (if allowed), ornaments, photo frames, and the list goes on. Anything which makes your room feel like yours, I say go for it.
I hope these tips can help you make your room feel like both a workable environment and also a kind of personal sanctuary. You’ve got this!