How can I make my one-room living space less depressing?

[Entropia]

Hello people,

I have been living in some basement room for the past few months. at first, i LOVED it and stayed in here for weeks straight and only stepped out a couple of hours every other day for a while cos of it. that life style didnt last very long cos of certain obligations (i.e lab, lectures, and what not.)

im a practical sort of person with an iota sense of aesthetics... so i was quite content with the little furniture i have and even creating "furniture" out of boxes and random stuff that i compiled into something useful.

the problem is... for the past several weeks i developed this strange phobia of my room that i can't explain. its really bizarre and i don't quite understand it. i would sleep ar rather unconvential places (under the round oak table in a chem classroom, the rooftop of the music dept. or just not sleep at all!)just to avoid my room.

there is a limit to how much sleep deprivation the human body can stand, you know?

my room has a depressing feel. i have some of my paintings on the walls (most are at my parent's house though), i have pictures of my "patron saints" (pauling, bohr, godel etc.), and various other things... but...

last week i bought a robot to cheer up the place. -that worked for like a day or two. i was like a child on christmas morning!

today i cleared and organized the piles of cluttered paper and books... and rearranged my room. I am satisfied with that progress.

actually, rearranging my room and putting away the clutter has made a big difference- I am in my room as i type... :)

but there is something missing.

so, my question is...

does anybody have any decorating tips?

(i live in one room, and i have a bathroom. so, my living room, bedroom, office...is just one big room )

if you like your room, why?

what cool things do you have in your room?

how can i make my lving space less... depressing?

why the hell would one have such irrational sentiments about their living space anyway? i really don't understand my neurotic thing i have about my room.

<sigh>

madness.

 

[steppenwolf]

i started painting the indside of my closety thing, it's now a big mural thingy with bits people have added and it's all very cool, although you do need a certain painting ability/artistically inclined friends for this to work. my friend had a big boring wall so she put out a tin of pencils and crayons for bored visitors and it was such a plethora of sketches and quotes and poetry she was quite pained to paint over it when moving out.

i love my room becaus of the way the light comes in, all orange in the morning and then during the day it's so pretty looking out into my garden, living in a basement would be a bit of a *****, hmmm. if sleeping is the issue then what you need is the universe! nothing better then those little sticky glow in the dark stars you stick everywhere. ah the many times i have put drunken poeple to bed in my room to exclamations of 'oh f**k there are stars in here! i am sooo drunk!'

music is very important too, lots of photos, a cat curled up on the bed, books everwhere...

 

[Another God]

I have a very spacious room with lovely purple walls. Purple is supposed to be the colour of sexual ..something or other, but meh, I think its PRETTY!

Um...Well, i can't really give any good tips which U haven't already effectively done I think. I like to have things up around the room which I like looking at/doing. I have a picture of the Eagle Nebula, Climbing ropes hanging from my roof (practical reasons, but I reckon they look cool too , and a big sign which says

PROHIBITED Scavenging
Toxic Waste
Flammable Waste
Liquid Waste
Asbestos/Fibro
Putrescible Waste


I am still not sure what putrescible waste is, but it sounds like food scraps or something. Which would be an odd thing to not allow at a Tip (which is where me and my friends 'Borrowed' the sign from.) (Still not sure when we plan on returning it... Its been a few years now)

Otherwise, posters of Huge waves (the 30ft style monsters), pink Floyd, and TOOL. (You can never pay enough Homage to TOOL)

 

[Zero]

Get a plant, some brightly colored posters, and a small caged pet that makes noise.

 

[N_Quire]

Throw a party, get some light in, think of colors you like and paint the place, get one or two items of solid furniture which feel dependable, get an attractive live-in lover, find some additional heroes that are good to look at when hanging on your wall, cook good food, keep the place reasonably tidy (disorder can be depressing), always go to bed in clean sheets, get some plants, put your bed in a diferent place.

 

[Kerrie]

try some glow in the dark stars to your ceiling, add some bean bags and inflatable chairs...

 

[Galatea]

I generally agree with most people here that you probably need some color. If you don't already know about color theory, it would probably be beneficial to do some research on it. My room is painted a lavendar color which is supposed to be soothing/tranquil/serene etc. It worked when I first painted it but then everything got cluttered up and.. well, that was a long time ago and is beside the point.

You say you live in a basement. Do you get decent light in there? Some people get depressed without proper lighting - sometimes it has to be natural, sometimes not. Either way, if you don't get much light I'd look into finding some good lamps to help you. You can probably search for 'SAD light therapy' and find stuff.

Besides that, I recommend keeping your room clean and nice smelling at all times so that it will be inhabitable. And what everyone else said - glow in the dark stars, bright stuff, things that make you smile. They all work wonders. Good luck.

 

[J-Man]

I lived in a one-room basement "apartment" for several years in college myself. I think part of the problem that I had is the limited decorating space and limited walking space. I like to wander aimlessly occasionally, and it's hard when you can only wander aimlessly for 2 or 3 steps before bumping into something.

I had several approaches to making my crappy place livable. First I didn't spend the majority of my time there. I did much of my homework at school in one of the common rooms, library or labs. I went "home" on the weekends to visit friends and family. I would go to a park, a grassy area on campus, or a beach to hang out, read or do homework. I even, gasp, went to work a few days a week.

Of course, you eventually have to go back to the "little place". So I liked having colorful pictures/paintings covering most of the wall space. Since you already have some pictures and things, maybe you just need to change them once-in-a-while, kind of like an automatic desktop wallpaper changer for your computer, that way you don't get bored/tired of the same 'ol things. My goal was to have things that I felt were either beautiful, inspiring, memorial or entertaining.
For example, I had a large photo of a sunset over a river and a tapestry of a mountainscape with trees and mountians reflected in a lake. I had pictures of friends and family in one of those multiframe things. I had my radio, guitar and Farside calander. A couple of plants can do wonders for both color and smell (smells are important too!). Those things my mom calls "nick-nacks"; like a pretty rock, shell or other souvenier from a vacation - a carving, sculpture or vase - a drawing that a young sibling or niece/nephew gave you - that 'piece of junk' that you keep only because a special friend picked it up and handed it to you so that now when you see it, you smile and remember a happy time. I even had my old, cute teddybear because sometimes you just need something soft to hold onto.

Others mentioned light, which can be important, but if your basement room was like mine, you probably only have at most, one tiny window that may not even be all the way above the ground. It's hard to get much light from that. I had several kinds of lights even though I didn't really need all of them, at least at the same time. It helps sometimes just to change from an incadescent light to a flourescent or to increase/decrease the amount of light or where it is shining. Go outside and get some real sun light occasionally.

Another thing I can suggest is to try to keep busy. If you stay occupied, you have less time to dwell on how depressing your room seems. Learn how to play a flute or harmonica, read a book that has nothing to do with school, paint your own pictures, learn how to make your 10 favorite meals, take apart your robot, try to put your robot back together, smash your robot into little pieces cause the darn thing just won't work anymore.

 

[N_Quire]

If someone played the flute in a room close to mine, it would depress the heck out of me.

 

[The Grimmus]

hang crap on the wall and have like a plasma ball a lava lamp or something that dds a splash of "what the hell?". And lighting makes a big diffrence

 

[FZ+]

Visualise your perfect room.
Visualise the degree of effort you need to put into turn your current room into your ideal one.
Realise your current room isn't so bad after all.

 

[Mulder]

Originally posted by Entropia
i have some of my paintings on the walls (most are at my parent's house though), i have pictures of my "patron saints" (pauling, bohr, godel etc.),

That's where it's going wrong

 

[eNtRopY]

That's funny... not to laugh at you... sorry about that. It's just that your situation reminds me of a book/play I have been trying to write for a few years now. It's about a world where most people live underground... somewhat anyway. Since I trust that none of you will try to steal my story... I'll fill you in on a the premise.

You see, at this point in time, people are created by corporate sponsors. Why? Because overpopulation along with the increase in privatization has created a situation where the concept of having a baby has become quite frivolous. No one can afford it except the 1% of the population which lives high in the ivory towers that touch clouds. They are the business-people who conduct commerce with alien nations.

Since robots with AI can be built for doing physical labor quite efficiently, people are only genetically engineered for completing specific mental tasks like engineering. Let's say a company forcasts the need for new designers. They can grow new people and rapidly teach them using futuristic brain programming techniques. They can also terminate any candidates who don't perform quickly enough, and they can take away any makio by genetically eliminating common distractors such as sex drive.

By the age of thirteen, an engineered human would have today's equivalent of a PhD in five different disciplines of study. These people are bred to be stoic in nature. They live in cells beneath the earth. They never leave these cells. They spend all of their time working online (which has evolved to become a rather sophisticated virtual world) except when it's time for eating their dietary enhanced mush and sleeping.

Of course, they must be bred to have a certain level of creativity in order to solve sophisticated problems! Unfortunately, along with creativity comes... passion, and passion is of course the ingredient that makes this story interesting.

eNtRopY

 

[Entropia]

thnx people.

any more suggestions?

 

[Zero]

Originally posted by Entropia
thnx people.

any more suggestions?

Tie a naked person of the opposite sex to your wall?

 

[Another God]

Now that's a good idea!

Is there anywhere on the net you can order such ornaments?

 

[schwarzchildradius]

Like zero says, get a plant. Name it, print out the name and tape it to the plant. Start a consuming but pointless project. Read a book on a subject you do not understand. Solve increasingly difficult difeq. Plan to take revenge on your enemies. Burn incense. Scheme.

 

[The Grimmus]

ok i gto another idea...steal entropy's idea. OK now sell the book/ play/ made for tv movie and then get a better room, eh.