When my mum left my accommodation last September, the first thing I did to distract myself from the all-consuming fear of being alone in a new city was stick as many things to my walls as I could. I knew my new room wouldn’t really feel like home until I could barely see the grey paint behind my posters.
Curating a wall (if you could even call my messy, wonky décor ‘curated’) is the perfect way to bring more familiarity and positivity to your space, especially when things are changing so much. Having my favourite things all around me instantly made my bedroom somewhere I enjoyed being, rather than just the room I was assigned.
A decorated wall is a window to the soul!
This is definitely not an original experience. As self-proclaimed ‘nosiest girl ever’, one of my favourite parts of making new friends in first year was seeing how they each fill their spaces. A decorated wall is a window to the soul!
I personally plastered my room with photos from home, good luck cards, and posters pulled out of vinyl sleeves at first, and as the year went on I kept adding constantly. Club photobooths have become a holy grail, and I will usually offer to cough up the five pound if it means I get one more memory to put on my wall.
When I moved in, my room was a mosaic of everything I loved and everything I would miss about home. By June, though, it was also full of new friends, old friends, and some rogue night out friends that I met once in September and never saw again.
Naturally, I ended up sobbing while pulling 50 sets of command strips off the wall over the summer. As small and messy as my room was, it was also my home for the most exciting year of my life so far.