A big deal. Bye bye to my bedroom.

I am staring at my bedroom. I just finished organizing it. Everything is where it’s supposed to be. Everything looks neat and clean.

I know this space will make me feel nostalgic. It’s the first space that I intended to make comfortable. It’s the first place that made me feel like I belong in this city. I’ll tell you why.

As some of you know, when I moved to Canada 4 years ago my plan was to finish my studies and go back to my hometown Panama. Meaning I would stay in Toronto for 2 years only.

Having that in mind, decorating my space was the least of my priorities.

Also moving to Toronto by yourself is EXTREMELY expensive. New York City Level of expensive. Finding a decent place to live can be devastating if you live on an entry-level salary, as I did. So it’s not like you have all this money to spend on fancy mirrors and fashionable chairs. Nope. Ikea was close to being luxury, to say the least.

Finding a comfortable place to live has been the worst part of my experience in Toronto. What you pay vs. what you get is a joke. Real state sucks. Toronto’s real state sucks.

I’ve moved 4 times in 4 years. Each time resulted in a dreadful experience.

I’ve experienced all of what could go wrong when renting a place: I’ve slept on an air mattress for 3 months, lived in a place so small that the kitchen was my bedroom, stayed in a friend’s living room for 12 months, lived with friends and ruined a good friendship, lived in a place infested with cockroaches… in case you’re wondering, I’ve never paid less than a thousand dollars for rent…

Until I moved to this place… I understood that your environment is everything. I’ve been able to achieve so many of my long-term goals in this space and I credit it to this bedroom. Here I felt creative, happy, peaceful and relaxed.

For the first time, I took the time to take care of my space and respect it. Now I prioritize always having an organized bedroom. I light candles and have a room fragrance. I am old lol!

But all good things come to an end. Tonight is the last night I’ll see this bedroom put together. Tomorrow I’ll start packing up because… I am moving by myself!

This is just another long-term goal that I achieved in this space. Another proof that the pull to getting your shit together from a nice space IS REAL.

If you want to change your life, change your envinronment.

Please help me embrace the change and enjoy my dollar store + Ikea decor with me and follow me on my journey of becoming an adult (I am almost 30 but I am a millennial, fuck it…). Shoutout to @justme.draw for the paintings, she took making my room alive a personal project.

See you next Wednesday 😉 I´ll be packing!

With love,

Andrea