I can’t believe I did this, I just changed our bedroom from orange & pinks to blues & whites without even really planning to. It was just something that happened by chance circumstances and following my gut. I only spent $4 doing it too.

This is how it happened. My daughter came home from a summer job as a counselor at a music camp. She said one of the campers had bought a quilt to use while there, but couldn’t fit it in her suitcase to take home, so she gave it to my daughter. It was not something that my daughter or I would have ever picked out for ourselves; light blues & grays & white in a generic linear pattern. We didn’t think one of her brother’s would like it either, so there it sat in our living room.

Everything tends to sit in the living room for a day or two when someone comes home from being away, one of the drawbacks of having a small house. It got a little chilly that night and I found myself wrapped up in the quilt as I watched a movie. It was comfy. I fell asleep on the couch in the quilt.

The next night was similar but I ended up moving to the bedroom with the quilt wrapped around me. I slept well. When I woke up in the morning the orange curtains & bedspread seemed to jump at me in an irritating way, while this gentle blue quilt comforted and soothed me. Curious, I thought, but I left the room and began my daily routine.

Our bedroom is right off the kitchen and every time I walked past the door I saw the blue quilt and felt it’s soothing, calming energy. At the same time I couldn’t help but notice the intensity & high energy of the oranges & pinks. I suddenly realized why I haven’t liked our room for the past 5 years. It wasn’t just the wall color, or the smallness, it was the restlessness of the color scheme.

I never thought about this before because I like the Hawaiian print bedspread even though it is loud. Orange is my husbands favorite color and it made our room kind of spicy. It worked in our old apartment, but we had different furniture then too, and we didn’t have the curtains. Since we moved to this house 6 years ago I haven’t slept well and I have never really enjoyed our bedroom, but I didn’t think much about it because redecorating our bedroom was not on the list of priorities, not with 3 kids going through middle & high school & heading off to college.

Suddenly I knew what to do. Within an hour I had pulled the orange curtains down and replaced them with some blue ones I had bought for my son but he hadn’t like them. I folded up the old bedspread and put it in the attic, took off the bed skirt and spread the blue quilt over the bed. There was an immediate feeling of being relaxed and comfortable, and I just wanted to curl up & take a nap. I noticed how many blues there were in our photos & other random items around the room. It was so pleasant and peaceful, even though I would have never chosen a bedspread like that, nor would I have ever thought to redecorate our room in blue.

Now when I walk by the bedroom door I want to go in. I felt motivated to finish the cleaning & organizing I had started in there a few weeks ago. Eventually I will paint the walls, but it’s already so much better that I don’t care about the walls right now. I went to Building 19 and found a perfectly matching bed skirt for only $4. I slept very well last night.

Sometimes things happen by random chance and you just have to follow your gut feeling or your intuition to see where it leads. I’m happy that I did.

Even the cats seem to like it better.