January 25, 2013 - A Room of One's Own Day

If you have your own room, you know that it can be a place to get peace and quiet, or where you can turn up your favorite music...

it can be a place where you can get privacy, or where you can hang out with your friends...

it can be a place you decorate your way, but also the place that is your responsibility to keep neat and clean.

Today is set aside for everyone who has his or her own room to take the time to appreciate it! Maybe you will want to reorganize or clean your room. Maybe you will want to treat yourself to a cute new wall switch plate or wastebasket. Maybe you can make a floor plan by drawing your room to scale (hint: use graph paper) and cutting out rectangles and circles that are scale representations of your furniture. Be sure to mark doors, closets, and windows on your scale drawing—and then play around with new and different arrangements of your furniture.

Or you can try using an online tool such as the Better Homes and Garden website to make and manipulate a floor plan. 

But, wait!

I know that a lot of you are thinking—but, wait!—I don't have a room of my own!

You can carve a private corner from your shared bedroom or somewhere else. One of my daughters used to work on a cruise ship, where she had to share a really tiny room with another woman. She found a little window seat where she could curtain herself off from the rest of the ship, and she could read and daydream and watch the ocean roll by in her own little spot. Here are a few ideas for creating a private hide-out or retreat:

• Divide your shared bedroom with furniture.

• Divide your shared bedroom with a folding screen.

• Make your bed into a canopy bed to make it a private oasis in your shared room. 

• Curtain off your part of your shared bedroom. 

• Find a special nook in your yard or even in a backyard tree. Or think ahead and grow a teepee or playhouse in your garden. 

• These window seats may inspire you to look around and see if you can change a window into a pillowed, cosy nook. Is there a window between a bookcase and a corner? Tuck a chair, a giant beanbag, or a pile of pillows into that spot.

Also on this date:

Day of Serpents in Lithuania 

Burn's Night in Scotland

Russian Students' Day