Our bedroom has looked like this for while. Until something happened last fall.

I can’t remember exactly what it was but somehow, Chad and I ended up at my sister’s house and we slept in their king size bed and suddenly, I could not deal with spending one more night in our microscopic queen sized bed for infants.

Chad’s a big man and I am an evil woman who cannot stand to be breathed on or feel body heat from the closeness of another person on me while I’m trying to sleep. Yes, I am a sleep diva. Yes I am horrible. Yes, a king bed is 100% luxury and I had to have one immediately. Even if it just meant having a mattress on the floor. I felt like I was sleeping in a self-imposed casket every night and it had to stop.

Here’s where we are right now. We’re getting close to where I want it, but having an unfinished room has never stopped me from sharing it here with you. We’re learning together, right? Yes, I know the top photo looks better than my current room. This is what progress and change look like. It looks worse before it looks better.

This room isn’t styled or staged, which sometimes I do for photos like for last week’s One Room Challenge reveal. Today, I just walked in after the room was clean and snapped photos. Some items in the room might read as confusing or weird on camera but they make sense in the room. When you style and stage a room for photos, you remove anything that looks weird or confusing on camera, even if it makes total sense in the room. It’s not trying to be fake or play tricks on people, it’s really removing distractions so the viewer can see the space without being confused. Getting off my soap box in honor of those who style photos for our viewing pleasure. Thank you.

Meanwhile, good luck figuring out what that weird black thing is on the bench at the end of the bed.

There are things I’m still looking for, and changing but there are a few things I’m liking in this room and they are the bed, the drapes (Ikea), the rug, and the simplicity. One side of my drapery rod came lose three months ago. I really should fix that.

The Bed. I searched around for the perfect bed that didn’t cost too much because I was already making a purchase that felt a little over the top–we already had a perfectly fine bed that was only 5 or so years old with a relatively new mattress. I wanted a bed that had traditional presence that I wouldn’t get sick of looking at, that carried its own in a room and didn’t have to be styled with a bunch of random pillows to look good.

I ended up choosing this Skyline Swoop bed that I bought through Target.

At the time they had the best deal but I think they also carry it at Overstock and Wayfair, Bed Bath & Beyond has the headboard, just google image search Skyline Swoop bed to find who has the best price. There are 14 different colors too.

I sold the old (but still relatively new) bed on craiglist and the buyer ended up being someone who went to my old church and is a reader here so that felt great.

And the mattress? It was only a year and a half old so we gave it to some friends. The queen mattress was a Leesa and it was sponsored at the time and I LOVED it. So this time around, I used my own hard-earned cash and bought myself a king size Leesa mattress. I cannot say enough about how much I adore this mattress. If you are ever at my house I will make you sit and lay on my bed and then you’ll want to go home and buy a new mattress.

Once we got the bed that I will not change for the rest of forever (don’t hold me to that) I found the perfect vintage rug that played down the masculine lines of the bed with some subtle shapes and colors. Come to mama.

I found this glorious vintage rug that’s been shaved, bleached, colorized, overdyed and dried, PHEW! This rug has had a complete makeover! I was a little worried that it would be too thin and not soft, but it still has a pleasant weight to it and feels more like velvet underfoot than a shaggy plush rug. I absolutely love it. If you are wondering, I put the old jute rug from the bedroom out on our covered porch.

Don’t worry, I didn’t simultaneously have a clean, orderly room and a clean, orderly self. I slipped on cute shoes with my 2 day old yoga pants and three-day old top knot.

If you’ve been around here much you know I’ve been going through my entire home and life applying my Cozy Minimalist way to everything. Basically, I’m tired of making life more difficult on myself by having so much stuff. Even cute, pretty stuff for my house. So I’m challenging myself to have less stuff while trying to achieve more style.

It puts more pressure on each individual item in our home to serve us well and have a voice, each piece has to carry its own weight because I’m not gonna hide it behind 1.5 million throw pillows. (Sad face in remembrance of the 1.5 million throw pillows that I miss). I don’t have time for that anymore.

So this bed and rug were a move forward for me. And I’m only allowing myself TWO decorative pillows in this room. So they have to work hard. The pillow on the bed is from Anthro, yep a big splurge (well, I had a gift card that covered 100% of it, and a 15% off card, but still). I figured if I’m only going to have one decorative pillow who is doing the job of three on the bed, then he can cost a little more. This great pillow on the chair is from the Kilim Pillow Store. Both pillows add a little color and a lot of texture.

I also have been annoyed by the overhead light in our room for ages. I love the light itself, but we have 194os shiny wood furniture in our room and the grey driftwood style of the chandelier over the bed had always felt off. In the spirit of insisting that each piece in a room deliver and earn its keep, I decided to paint the chandelier. I grabbed some craft paint and was going for a dark off white for the chandy. It’s all wrong right now, it turned a little green, but I’m deciding what color to try next.

I’ll keep you posted. And if I can’t get it right, I’ll sell it and start fresh.

I’m also trying to keep my surfaces and the floor clear so our room is truly a place I can actually relax. I used to have a quirky mirrored table on one side of this armoire and a fun thrifted chair on the other. Guess what? I never sat at the chair and I didn’t need the adorable table. The only thing I ever used them for was to pile up crap I didn’t feel like putting away and then my room looked and felt worse. So I took them out to trick myself into keeping our room more tidy. It works!

apparently I’ve joined a cult centered around essential oils. I’m obsessed and cannot escape it. And I don’t want to. I love keeping my oils all together in one place because playing with their pretty bottles and putting them in rainbowetical order is part of the fun. I also I like them on display, but behind glass because it feels like less clutter. For now, they are in this old medicine cabinet I found at Target a hundred years ago. If I 100% know I want it to stay here I’ll hang it, but I’m not ready to commit just yet, so it sits on the table.

So, that’s the bedroom in its natural state. If I had to, I could finish it in a few days, but since the big decisions are made it’s kind of fun to wait and see what comes along. The furniture on the long wall is all squeezed in but I don’t want to rush finding a smaller chair or different side tables. So for now, we’ll have a weird green chandelier and a little crowdedness on one wall while I go beauty hunting and pay attention to how we use everything this room so I can make good decisions.

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