old {and young} wives tales: Master bedroom: Storage room or Retreat?

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Thank you everyone for your kind comments yesterday about my blogging “slow down” for this week. After one day, I am already feeling better. Instead of spending a big portion of the day on my laptop, I was outside, blowing bubbles, swinging my girls, and also got in a nap. {Oh yeah, and I did about five loads of laundry. blech!}

I am so blessed to have Ange from The Blooming Hydrangea sharing today for “old {and young} wives’ tales”. She is one of my newer blogging friends and I really appreciate how honest she is on her blog. I love her topic today: keeping the master bedroom, well, a master bedroom. And as a fun bonus, Ange will also be back next week, discussing a “hot” topic!

I am doing a little series on the Master Bedroom over the next few weeks.  You can find the first post here. Does your master bedroom look like the picture below?  If your bedroom has become the laundry, papers and junk catchall for your house, maybe it’s time to shovel it all out and make your bedroom somewhere that you can’t wait to head to at the end of the day to hang out with your husband and not just to go to sleep!

There are a few things we’ve done to make it feel more like a room at a bed and breakfast than a catchall room that you sleep in, that is if you can find the bed! First off, we gave the television in our room the boot! We haven’t had a TV in our bedroom since 2005 and frankly, we haven’t missed it at all. If we ever want to watch some Boston Legal or Netflix, we just bring the laptop into our room and voila, TV without a permanent TV!   We are able to spend time reading, snuggling and catching up on our day instead of zoning out in front of the boob tube.

 I try to keep our room personal with photographs of the two of us and not our children. I love my children but I don’t know if I want them staring down at me from the wall in my bedroom, if you know what I mean! Plus, who’s going to really see their cute smiling faces in our bedroom? I like to display them in the main parts of our house where everyone can see them! I display some of our wedding pictures and various other photos of just the two of us. We try to get our mug shots together every few years at the same time when we have our family picture done. I love having professional photos of us and who doesn’t like having to get dolled up and pose with their man?

I try to keep the girly knick-knack stuff to a minimum in our room and instead use candles, pictures and books for decor. I love having candles around the room because they’re great mood lighting and also make your room smell great too! Mr.A keeps the clock on his nightstand and when we bought a new one, we made sure it could play cds and i-pods. Music is always nice to have around for relaxing, dancing and other bedroom activities, if you get the idea.   Mr.A doesn’t really care about the style of furniture too much.

 A few years ago I came across a dresser, a nightstand and I think it’s some type of sewing table at a garage sale, all for $10 total! They were painted an ugly red/black combo mixed together but I knew with a little paint they’d be perfect for our bedroom. I painted, distressed and sanded them, found some fun knobs off e-bay and five years later we are still using them. For as much as I like to change things up, I still love my bedroom furniture!  So if you aren’t loving your bedroom furniture, maybe you could give it a fresh coat of paint and maybe some new drawer pulls or knobs and get a whole new look for less than $100. 

We are on our third Shabby Chic bed set from Target and we use them all. Mr.A doesn’t mind them and he knows that it makes me super duper happy, so that makes him happy!  If your bed needs some freshening up, maybe you could go comforter/quilt/duvet shopping together, pick something out that you both like.  After all, he has to sleep in your bed too! I’ve also found that making the bed everyday makes the bed look great but also shows that you think the bedroom is just as important to keep looking good as your kitchen.

One of my favorite rooms in our home is our master bedroom. It’s not something you’d find in a Pottery Barn catalog but I’ve definitely tried to create a sanctuary, a place where we are not tripping over toys, laundry baskets or piles of crap. A place that feels relaxing, calm, cozy and well, intimate and romantic.  After all, it’s the only room in the house that is for just my husband and me. So put the laundry away, find another place for all the stuff you’re storing on top the dresser, get out the vacuum or broom and give your room a good cleaning. I’d love to hear from you, is your bedroom a sanctuary or storage room?  What do you do to make a sanctuary for the two of you?

Thank you so much Ange! It is so easy for me to shove the clean laundry in our room when guests arrive, isn’t it? I have really felt convicted about this lately and am trying so hard to do better. Make sure to come back next week when Ange talks more about the bedroom. 😉


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About Kelli Hays

Kelli Hays is a wife, mother, writer, and friend. She has been blogging since 2008 and loves sharing inspiration for the everyday woman!

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