In which I’m one step closer to becoming a real live adult
Posted by Isabel on January 7th, 2009. Filed under: Apartment Living, Back in the Day, My Sweet Babboo, The King, The New House.It wasn’t very traumatic to you, so you probably don’t remember this little tidbit, but The King and I used to sleep in a twin sized bed. We did this FOR YEARS!!! Eventually we moved up to a full sized futon mattress. And then, thank the sweet baby Jesus, we moved up to a real mattress. And not just any mattress, but a QUEEN SIZE MATTRESS. (Seriously, it took us almost eight years of marriage to buy a real mattress. Don’t judge.)
We’ve had this new mattress for almost a full year. And what a glorious year it’s been. Full of snuggly sleeping and cozy mornings. Glorious, glorious money well spent.
We moved into our new house this last summer. During the move we decided to throw the futon bed frame that we’d been using out and just put our mattress on the floor of our new master bedroom.
You guys, I’m not kidding. We have this gorgeous new house that we have practically crapped on by merely sleeping on a mattress on the floor, just like in college.
The plan has been for The King to build us a fancy new low bed (much like this one). This was going to be done in The King’s spare time.
HAAA.
Needless to say, spare time has not been found.
Something else that you might have also forgotten is that in the over eight years that we’ve been married we have not owned a dresser. “Where do you keep your socks and underwear?”, you may be asking. I’ll tell you where:
In used milk crates and rubbermaids in the closet. (My crate is the pink one.)
Last week, thanks to my Christmas bonus, a gift card and a sale at IKEA, The King decided it was time to upgrade our milk crates and buy a dresser.
A real live dresser for my undergarments, socks, and jammies.
The King came home from the store and with the help of Babboo put our new dresser together. I promptly filled it up and fell in love.
It was hard not to love it.
(My closet is the one on the left. It’s 2″ bigger then the one on the right. Believe me, I measured them both before deciding.)
The new dresser made such a positive difference to our bedroom that The King woke up the next morning and while looking at our mattress ON THE FLOOR decided to screw making our own bed and just buying a matching one from IKEA.
And again, with the help of Babboo, our new bed was put together.
And I loved it. It’s hard not to love it. Babboo calls it “mommy’s new big boy bed”.
The next day, we woke up in our new bed and discussed how much better our bedroom looked without our mattress ON THE FLOOR. We were both amazed at what a change a couple of pieces of inexpensive Swedish goodness could make. And thus The King decided to go back to IKEA (again!) and buy the two matching side dressers to complete our set.
And so he did.
Yeah, it took us a lot of years of marriage, but we now have a bedroom set. And sure, we bought it at IKEA. But it’s ours.
And I’m happy.
And so is The King.
So tell me, please, that I’m not the only person who has rocked old milk crates for storage.
January 7th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
I currently have milk crates with books in them, b/c my bookshelf is too small. So I understand completely.
January 7th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Oh, and love that pillow on the bed. My favorite colors!
January 7th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Someone I know (I’m not mentioning names to protect the guilty) uses cardboard boxes and a filing cabinet in her closet for storage. Sort of like a milk crate, I suppose.
Congrats on the big-girl bed and dresser!
January 7th, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Milkcrates and mattresses on the floor were indeed done during the beginning of our marriage. Of course I was 18 and newly graduated from high school at the time… hee hee hee.
BUT what I wanted to tell you was the story I thought of when I saw the picture of your husband putting together the bed. When we first got married we had a waterbed… the frame from mine and the mattress from his. Waterbed frames go all the way down to the floor obviously.
My husband once put our waterbed together when we moved into a new apartment.
About a month later he needed a screwdriver and couldn’t find it.
For an entire YEAR we accepted the fact that our screwdriver and hammer were gone. Where? We didn’t know. But a few months later we moved. When we took apart the bed guess what we found!?
OUR SCREWDRIVER!
Ha.
He put the bed frame together and put the board on top, building it around our tools.
Yep, he’s brilliant and yep, he’s all mine!~
January 7th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Your place looks gorgeous! Congrats! I love how furniture makes things pull together. I’ve still got wire stacked boxes and purple plastic bins in my closet, but we’ve only been married 3 months, so I figure I’ve got to put my time in.:)
January 7th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Congrats on your new Big Boy Bed, Mommy!
I only JUST got a dresser – and it’s an awesome one that my Grandma had in her TV room. There are two matching pieces – an end table and then some other thing with three drawers and a cabinet. I don’t know what you call it.
January 7th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
We have the same IKEA bed, just in a lighter wood. And we have the side tables. One day I’ll become closer to being a real live adult when I get a bed that’s less than a foot off the ground…in the mean time, I’ll continue to love that bed. It’s been so very good to us. Congratulations on yours…your bedroom looks great.
January 7th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Holy crap, did you guys buy the Malm bed set from IKEA?!! Because Shaun just BARELY bought the entire Malm bedset from IKEA with the little side tables, but they’re different from your side tables. He got it in black also! Crazy!
I keep most of my underwear and socks in a duffle bag. I hate dressers. But I have an armoire that holds my TV and has two little drawers at the bottom that I keep some stuff in, but other than that, I just hang everything up. It’s not uncommon for me to store my stuff in bags, suitcases, and boxes. It’s how I’ll roll probably until I’m done with school.
January 7th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
We still use milk crates to store some of our comics. I love that, technically, we’re breaking the law by doing so.
Love the new furniture! I (heart) IKEA.
January 8th, 2009 at 1:40 am
Looks great! Someday we will have a real bed frame and matching bedside tables. For now, we do not.
January 8th, 2009 at 4:21 am
Oh, Isabel and family, I heart you so much. This post is fabulous. I can totally relate. Andrew and I used to sleep on a secondhand mattress on the floor, a futon, and then a used double bed. Eventually we bought a real, new queen mattress, and just last week we ordered a REAL ADULT HEADBOARD! It hasn’t even arrived yet, but I am so freaking excited about it. I mean…a headboard! WOO HOO!
January 8th, 2009 at 4:23 am
I don’t have a dresser either, I have to use the built in cabinets in our hallway for my PJ’s and underwear such. I think the cabinets were meant to be a linen closet or something. It’s an okay place to store stuff, but it’s a little worrisome that guests might discover my lacy underthings! I also still have plastic drawers in my closet from HIGH SCHOOL that I use to store my belts and first aid items.
January 8th, 2009 at 6:52 am
Hehe – T and I spent our first few months living together on his sister’s old matttress placed on the floor whilst waiting for his dad to make us the promised bed… when I fell ill and desperately needed to sleep in a proper bed we stole T’s old one (one his dad made) from his parents!
We were hoping to save up for a proper bed and mattress that doesn’t have springs popping out everywhere when we move into our new house (which actually belongs to one of my colleagues – long story)… anyway as they are moving away for 18 months and didn’t want to have to store all of their furniture they have told us they are thinking of leaving their bed for us – meaning we’ll have a PROPER bed and not have to fork out money we don’t have (we’re poor too!!)
I don’t think I ever realised how important a proper bed is until I didn’t have one – so I hear exactly what you’re saying and am just glad I didn’t have to wait 8 years for one. (BTW our socks etc just sit in bags on the floor or the cupboard we have – I’m thinking maybe we should visit Ikea now having seen the cool goodies you found!)
January 8th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
1st of all, Babboo is now a young man! What the?
We’ve always had some sort of “real” bed, but I don’t have a dresser. I have rubbermaids on a wire shelf in my closet. It’s my version of ghetto closet organizing. But it works.
Your bedroom looks fantastic.
January 8th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
I keep my underoos in a crate ON TOP OF my beautiful dresser that I got from my grandmother. There’s just not enough room in the top drawers for all my socks, and my underoos too!
January 8th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
This has nothing to do with your new furniture, but I L O V E the windows in your bedroom!!!!
January 8th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
We have the same set from IKEA. I am so happy that you have achieved a new look in that room because your original pictures made the designer in me cry out in horror. A bedroom should be a place that you go to unwind from the day and having it look pleasing to the eye is important to your SOUL!!! Ha ha…okay, maybe that’s a bit much, but seriously. I’m glad you guys have upgraded.
January 8th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
I don’t understand people who can move into a place (house/apartment/whatever) and have it look like they’ve been there forever in under a month. It’s just not natural.
Viva la Milk Crate!
January 8th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
I still have one milk crate left in my house. And it’s used to hold mail. We have a mail slot in our door instead of a mailbox. So each day we just kind of pile up the mail and toss it in the crate. And then we try and go through the mail once a week. Of course packages and gifts and cards from awesome internet friends never make it into the crate. Those are snatched up and opened immediately.
January 8th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
How lovely! The husband-elect and I bought a new bedroom set when we moved, but kept my king-size mattress. Prior to that, my mattress was just on a frame that I sat on risers to give the illusion of a real bed. I used sham pillows against the wall as my headboard. I still had my same dresser from childhood that was missing two handles.
Now? Everything matches, I have nightstands and art glass lamps, coordinating bedding, a reading chair, and handles on my chest and dresser. it’s so grown up.
And I agree with Liberal Banana, my bedroom is my retreat.
January 8th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Congrats on the big boy bed!! Our mattress was on the floor in our temporary apartment while our house was built AND it was on the floor in our brand new house for at least 4 months! I will also tell you that YES, my clothes are kept in totes… but not for lack of a dresser! They’re still in there from moving and I have no where to put them (a lot of them don’t fit, either).
Your new bedroom looks great and totally befitting 2 “almost” adults!
January 8th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Congratulations! I wish we had an Ikea nearby to replace our current Scandinavian furniture which is falling apart after 14ish years.
January 8th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
hey..there is no shame in ikea. i freakin’ love that place
January 8th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
Absolutely not, m’dear. When my husband and I got married, we spent the first month of out marriage using a big plastic tub as a TV stand in our bedroom. We found a free armoire sitting on the side of the road (!) that happened to match his dressers exactly see we brought it home and relieved our sagging and dented plastic tub of TV duty.
You’re a real trooper to make it eight years!
January 8th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Apparently we can ALL RELATE. And while we did invest in a new mattress right after we got hitched, we’ve never had a real bed. It’s on a $20 mattress stand thingee. No headboard. Nothing. But I did finally stain our two beside-the-bed dressers dark brown so they don’t look quite as ghetto. 9 years of marriage later, our room is finally coming together.
Plus, we are all about the milk crates. You’ve helped us move enough times to know that. Keepin it real, Isabel, keepin it real.
January 9th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Oh, you’re not the only one. We bought a new mattress over the summer, and it was too big for our bed frame so we sold the frame… and up until last week we’ve just had the mattress on the floor. Now we finally have a real big boy bed… but we’re still using a plastic rubbermaid 3-drawer set for a nightstand!
Congrats on your new bedroom! It looks fantastic!
January 9th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Yay for IKEA! I still have a milk-crate upstairs with stuff in it, those suckers are handy!
xox
January 11th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Welcome to the world of bed frames. (It’s great having a place to store crap!)
January 12th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
[...] We would like something that sleeps two instead of one. Not all of us can sleep two on a twin bed. [...]
January 12th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Yes, I have milk cartons. Yes, I use them to store stuff….
I love Ikea. I miss it so much it hurts sometimes.
January 13th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
See, I’m the exact opposite of you– we have about four dressers and three bed frames (but only two mattresses). And yes, there are only two of us. Among all our moves, we somehow acquired all this extra furniture (thank goodness we finally have a house big enough for it all). Oh, and at last count, we have five desks. I don’t know how it happened, either.
January 14th, 2009 at 3:25 am
Oh, I am jealous! On Luke’s and my to-do list is to purchase a book shelf (for storing photo albums and displaying picture frames) for our bedroom, along with two matching nightstands. In the distant future, we hope to buy a new mattress and new dressers. Right now, Baby Brother’s room has been getting all the love, but someday!
Also, I wish we lived near an Ikea. There are no Ikeas in Indiana, and the closest one is in Cincinnati, about 90 miles away. We thought about ordering from their Web site, but their shipping costs are outrageous. Seriously, I went to order a $99 chair, and the cost to ship was almost three hundred dollars. WTF?!