The Zen Room

We've been living in this apartment since June 2016, and though we've had it decorated and looking decent for the majority of that time, only one of the rooms actually feels finished... or at least close enough. The living room is next in line, once I get off my ass and sew some cushion covers for the couch... but I digress. Let me finally give you a quick photo tour of the Zen Room!

We live in a rowhome - one long rectangle with a hallway that connects all the rooms and runs adjacent to another apartment which is laid out in the exact same way. Thankfully, we rarely hear our next door neighbors, and the darkly lit window-less woes of a city rowhouse are not upon us - we actually have an end unit on the corner of a semi-busy street and the sunlight is amazing. It's actually part of the reason we chose this unit! *

This is the first room you walk into; aka the front room, but we like to call it the zen room because that's our intention for the space. When we moved, I was at the beginning of my yoga teacher training and looking forward to finally having a space to practice at home. So we decided this would be the yoga/relaxation/plant space. When I want to practice, I just move the rugs out of the way. (I actually recently had three friends over for an hour-long yoga session - it was awesome!) We had our record player in here for months, but recently moved it to the living room because this room stays really cold and we weren't using it. Most of our plants are in here as well, but we may move them because the cold hasn't been good for them either. That sunlight totally makes it worth being cold though! And behind those curtains is the door to our balcony, another fun feature of this place.

One of the things I also really like about this room is that most of the things in here were found on my travels, or were gifts from family and friends. I think it just adds to the positive energy of the space. I also love the rugs! This is our first apartment with hardwood floors, and we were ecstatic to be able to get some rugs! If you'd like to know where anything specific is from, ask away! I'll try to remember, or help you find something similar.

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* A quick little background about this apartment building - when Shawn and I first moved to the area 4.5 years ago, every time we would walk past this building we would say, "One day, we're going to live in there!", but we always thought it was way beyond our financial means. Then, about two years ago, I became friends with someone who actually lived in the building. I got to see the inside of her unit and fell even more in love with the place. Lucky for us, when we were looking for a new place to move into, she reached out to her landlords and found out that there were two available units - and they were in our price range! (Actually, they were way less expensive to rent than we expected! Which makes us sad because we could have totally moved in here 4.5 years ago...) Annnnd now we live in our dream apartment! It's an old building and could definitely use a little revamping in parts, but the energy here is great and it fits all of our needs. The cats love it too because it's SO much more space than our last place. Oh, and we didn't paint anything. The last tenants had some great colors already so we told the landlord not to bother repainting. It's so nice being in an apartment that isn't all white!