Swedelite: Living in Sweden: How to Decorate on a Nomad's Budget

I think some of you may have been following this blog long enough to know that, before I moved to Sweden, I toyed endlessly with the concept of materiality, and what it meant to purge your belongings. In this blog post, I intend to follow up that segment from months and months ago, with a new one that takes inspiration from some of the better designer blogs I've been following recently.

So, here you are: Nina's guide to How to Decorate on a Nomad's Budget

or, alternatively, how Nina's living arrangements went--

from this...

...to this

Before I moved to Annika's place on Blåsutgatan, I lived in a flat with Elin where we compromised light and space for proximity and coziness. This is was not a bad exchange in my book until December, when suddenly, we had only 6 hours of daylight, and my room consistently looked like this:

Not exactly what you'd want to see day in and day out. I think I have a serious respect for seasonal depression; I didn't think I was susceptible, but then again, I did flee to Spain for 10 days only after a couple weeks of this...

Anyway, when I moved to Majorna, I was absolutely infatuated with the amount of light and space that I had suddenly in my possession. Annika already decorates her flat impeccably--with a fresh, minimalist style that's both modern and personal at the same time. But when found myself faced with a completely unfurnished room with bright, open windows that I could feasibly say I had not had in three years, I practically freaked with delight. I became a daylight hound; I craved the white light like a starved plant.

After all, let me remind you where I lived only a year ago:

Yes. Terrifying in a way, though the images bring back good memories. I essentially lived in my own basement studio, surrounded from all sides by art supplies, hamster food, and a low-fabric ceiling. No light. My creative endeavors were powered by that festive, five-headed medusa lamp you see there.

Now I live here, in the building on the left, the very first window you see from the ground.

This, is Blåsutgatan. Look at all that spaaaaace!

Annika had told me that the room would be unfurnished---so suddenly, I found myself in the luxurious(?) nomad predicament of decorating a room on a very tiny budget. I think now, as I write this, I probably furnished this whole place in under $100. But I knew I wanted to maximize light, and I wanted it to be a place of peace. I wanted to rest in a space where I could empty my ideas and watch them expand, not constrict and pile up like stones in my cerebellum.

I first needed a light; the room had no ceiling lamp. After Annika telling me about the skeleton lamps she had seen populating the apartments in Berlin a year or two ago, I decided to do the same. I picked up this lampshade at a secondhand sale for $10 and stripped it of its gaudy fabric. A simple cord and a fancy lightbulb later, and I had a lamp that didn't take up space and pleasantly showers the room with shadows after dusk.

Another appeal to this design is that you can clip on whatever you want to the lamp.
This little bird was initially a hair ornament; now he surveys the place while I sleep.

From my travels and general going-abouts, I had (true to form, some may argue) been collecting cards and images from all around the world that would end up littering my floor when I couldn't find the time to tape them to the wall. My remedy to this: a ball of twine, unraveled and taped to the ceiling, where I could hang items at whim with mini-clothespins. Not only is this my budget-alternative to those expensive wire-and-magnet fixtures, but you can avoid making holes in the wall by simply double-taping to the ceiling. If it falls down, it only does every four months.

Following the concept of my room as an "idea dumpster," I came up with this design idea while riding the train in Barcelona. A roll of plain, white packaging paper and more masking tape became my solution to maximizing the amount of white space in the room, while also allowing for creative expression. Behold, my whiteboard-wall, complete with a calender, images, drawings, and anything else that I feel like throwing up there impromptu.

And obviously, a whiteboard wall needs some sort of art station. An old drawer I pulled out of a dumpster after Christmas and an used shelving platform make for a nice place to store markers, rulers, and ink.

Paper seems to be my inspiration this year. While living on Vegagatan, I spent one lonely weekend doing an art project to try and liven up the trite space in my cozy, dark room. I ended up taking inspiration from--what else, birds--and tried to design an aerial sculpture that mimicked flight patterns of swallow-tails. Here's an archived picture I have of the final product:

Against the gray wallpaper, the white of the birds worked most effectively. I used to enjoy laying on my bed at night and watching the shadows revolve on the ceiling. But, when I moved to Annika's, I was faced with the unexpected disappointment that I couldn't recreate this in my new room; the birds wouldn't show up against the white walls. After much deliberation, and a couple weeks of lifting them up out of their little box and sighing, I decided to mimic an exhibit I saw in Spain on Javier Mariscal, one of Barcelona's most famous graphic designers---

---and redesign my birds. It's not the most fantastic picture, but at least you get the idea. They look much better in person anyway...

Moving on...

Secondhand furniture actually characterizes a lot of this room and the secret to my budget designing. The set of drawers you see there cost me $8 at a secondhand sale in Hisingen, and a small a-ha! moment made me realize that removing the drawers gave the little thing a little more versatility as a object of organization. Not to mention, stacking the two removed drawers made for a nice bedstand. Dumpster-diving is my second secret: that chair there, as well as the table that serves as my desk, I found in a dumpster outside the apartment in January. A little glue and a wipe-down, and the thing was ready to go.

In fact, the only thing that I really invested in with this room was the bed, and even that was something close to an adventure. Now I have to say, I'm not a person who gets upset about sleeping on a used mattress (come on, there's sheets on it!), so using blocket.se (Swedish Craigslist) to find something to sleep on was no problem. The bigger issue was getting it to and from. With two well-intentioned friends, a borrowed van, and a bag of Swedish pastries, we brought this bed from a nice, slightly-anxious pregnant woman in the center of town over to Majorna no problem. It's a latex mattress, with a handcrafted bedstand, actually, and I have to say, one of the nicer beds I've slept on. Total cost: 500SEK, around $60. Throw in some IKEA pillows and some pillowcases, maybe $80. The bed set and comforter I'm borrowing from Annika (there's secret number three, I suppose: make friends and borrow shit).

The last, essential thing I needed the room to have was a desk. Elin's place on Vegagatan already had a desk in it, so when I moved in the bed and started unpacking, I suddenly realized that I would need a table of some sort. Dumpster diving again solved that problem, and a make-over of the cheap IKEA bulletin board into a jewelry stand with old Theo's confections boxes pretty much made me all set. Cardboard boxes underneath for storage, and at night, I sit on the floor, stretching my legs while reading or writing on the computer. Pivot once, and I can do the same on the end of the bed.