- If not chosen correctly, the color of your walls will eventually get on your nerves.
“Grey walls are proven to make people feel dreary and depressed,” was something my dad told me as I contemplated what color to paint my bedroom walls two years ago when I first moved in to my new home. “I would know. I had grey walls at one point in time. I would never paint them that color again.”
Sure, I took his advice. Does that mean I made a wise, well thought out, home designer choice at the age of fourteen? No. The color I chose for my walls ended up being on the opposite end of the grey, depressing, spectrum: lime green. And when I say lime green, I mean bright, obnoxious lime green. The type of green that should only exist in any interior design in the carpets of a bowling alley or a movie theater. This sickly green could also be mistaken for the color of a neon green expo marker: the type of marker you’re afraid to draw on yourself with, as you’re afraid somewhere within the hypochondriac center of your brain that it’s going to lead to radiation poisoning of sorts.
If there’s anything to take from this, it’s that if you’re gonna regret the color you choose for your walls, find a way to cope with it. Personally, I don’t mind the walls much, since they add an interesting contrast to having all black furniture. But with black furniture in mind…
- If you invest in black furniture, be prepared for a dust blizzard.
With all black furniture, dust gathers noticeably. It does this with every color of furniture, but the thing with black furniture is that you just know. It’s visible. Too visible. That bothers some people, understandably. More often than not, I find myself scowling at the dust that gathers itself upon the furniture I’ve just cleaned two days prior to this new dust’s arrival. With that being said, you’ve got to really dig down and ask yourself if you’re willing to put up with black furniture’s nonsense. Personally, I’ve found that I don’t mind.
- Roommates are annoying.
It’s late on a Saturday night and my room is silent. My parents are away, and it’s my job to watch the dogs; meaning all three of them have to sleep in my room. Tank, the largest of the puppy crew, wakes me up in the early hours of the morning by pressing his cold nose to my face. Even though he didn’t want to go outside when it was raining at eleven o’ clock, he decides five in the morning is the best time to go. Angel, the old and delusional pup, snores so loudly that she’s probably able to wake the dead- which is what it’s like trying to wake me up throughout the night. My dog Louie, who normally sleeps in my room, is sleeping contently on the pillow at my feet. Suddenly, the weight on the pillow at my feet feels light, and next thing I know, a dog’s tail is right beside my head, tickling my nose.
“How were the dogs?” my mom asks the next morning.
“They were fine,” I say, feeling the bags weighing heavily under my eyes. “No problem at all.”
- Carpets are more comfortable than you think.
I remember the first day I moved in to my new house. Two years ago, about a week or two before Christmas. My new room was filled with new, bare furniture and a mattress with boxes piling the top. I was tired and lacking Internet access: the fatality of an adolescent. As I lay on my new, crème colored carpet, the softness overcame me, and I fell asleep. I woke up to my stepdad knocking on my door, asking if I’d woken yet. He then slid open his iPhone to show me a picture of myself sprawled out on the carpet, sleeping, again, like the dead. “This one’s going on the Internet,” he said, laughing. Luckily for me, it didn’t.
- Moving a lot isn’t so bad.
You’d get annoyed with moving eight or nine times throughout your life and never having stayed at a school for more than two years, too. It gets tedious. But once you realize where moving so much got you and where you are now: those lime green walls aren’t so bad anymore.
Ashley Apel is an eleventh grade Literary Arts major attending LPPACS. She lives in Burgettstown, Pennsylvania with her family, three dogs, and two cats.