Kenny Thapoung offers tips for dorm-dwellers to spruce up their rooms.
A bedroom shouldn’t just be a place for you to pass out after almost blacking out at a kegger on Friday night. Nor should it be a room for you to hide during finals.
Bedrooms exist as settings for dormitory classics: It’s a place to hibernate when the snow is 6 feet deep, dry off when the rainstorm wind broke your umbrella and relax on movie night with a slice of Maxi’s pizza and your friends on the floor after a stressful week of work and classes.
But no one wants to be in a bedroom with barren walls, stiff comforters and dirty sheets.
If you want to make friends during your years of dorm living without rushing to a fraternity or sorority, then maybe you should transform your crib into a chillin’ crash zone.
Nailing anything to your walls is strictly prohibited inside Temple dorms – unless you don’t mind paying the damage fee – but that’s why God invented Scotch sticky adhesives.
Among the boutiques and food venues that line South Street stands the go-to college dorm store, Beyond the Wall, which has a collection of portfolios stocked with nearly every poster imaginable.
Feeling too lazy to take the Broad Street Line to the Lombard-South station? Try meandering through Main Campus and make a pit stop at the Global Prints stands.
The visiting vendor usually sets up shop near Peabody Hall and the Bell Tower and offers students an array of posters that feature popular movie titles, such as “The Hangover,” and old-school Michael Jordan posters for the still-living M.J. fans in all of us.
Although paper rectangles aren’t the most decorative forms of art, at least these can cover up the unsightly pale walls that turn it into a jail cell.
Picture collages of your best friends from home are pleasant mementos, but let’s be honest: Looking at an old prom photo in a “friends forever” photo frame is a bit overdone. Take a trip to A.C. Moore or Michael’s, buy some yarn, print pictures and create simple collages similar to the ones Taylor Swift used in her music video for “Mine.” String yarn horizontally, then vertically tie strings of different lengths to your photos, and voila – the collage will make your walls appear less boxy and dull.
When I have visitors, the first thing they usually do is leap onto my bed. Besides being the most mundane, yet proper place to shag, the bed is the singular most important piece of furniture in any bedroom.
The lifeless bedspreads at Wal-Mart and Target have burned my eyes one too many times. Although I’m an avid fan of both retail stores, the fabric that’s crammed into plastic bed-in-a-bag packages is often brittle and uncomfortable. Instead, my favorite place to cruise the most refined yet playful sheets and comforters is within the endless aisles of Ikea.
Though Sweden’s gift to the world mostly sells furniture, the ground floor of its Columbus Boulevard location has a variety of comforter designs hanging in a corner. The best part about finding a comforter at Ikea is that you can determine how soft, feathery or plushy you want your bedspread to be.
When searching for a comforter, aim for plush. Although it’s not as thick as a normal comforter, plush blankets will replace your mom as you tuck yourself in at night.
But the primary asset to the success of any conversion from flat to fun is that everything must coordinate through color or design to create a cohesive living space. No one ever walked the runway in a train-wreck of a collection, and you shouldn’t have to sleep in one either.
Kenny Thapoung can be reached at kenny.thapoung@temple.edu.
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