Common Ground

My labor day was characterized by two things, in all.  Beyond sleeping in (which was a possible third), I did/am doing homework and Sam and I re-arranged our dorm room.  The fun part about the redo, besides the fact that it felt like I was on an episode of Trading Spaces, was that in twenty minutes it felt like I accomplished tons of things.  We organized our new setting so that all of the spare room we had was held in the middle of the room so that we could actually use the little spare room that we did have.

It involved moving my bed so that the foot of the bed was near the foot of his- our beds now make an L.  My desk then goes between the wall and my bed.  Under my bed is my dresser, my kitchen-esque supplies, and we have a large area for storage.  Then on the wall where my bed used to set is his dresser and desk.  The wall that holds his high lofted bed is now bare, so a couch or chairs can fit underneath and the entire middle of the room is open. 

                                   

What I noticed as I was moving all of my furniture around with Sam was that it involved a lot of trust.  Dorm rooms come designed to be two halves.  On one half is a closet, a bed, a dresser, a desk, and a chair.  The other side is the exact same.  Now we have broken the “mine/yours” barrier.  There is no “Colton’s side of the room” because the lines are blurred.  My bed ends and his bed begins; my desk is near his.  We hold the middle in common, and our fridges are now stacked on top of the other. 

There is a higher sense of community between my roommate and me.  There is less mine and more ours.  We share the empty space under our beds as mine is storage and his is the living area.  We have been able to become comfortable enough that we can do this, but we can also do this successfully.  It required a lot of trust on my end, at first I honestly didn’t want to do it.  However, because I did, we now have the most free space of almost any other dorm, and it is the most aesthetically pleasing. 

The only payment that was required was that over-individualism that we all too often harbor.  I had to replace the rigid ownership I held over “my stuff” into the trust that we can still respect it the same. It sounds like I got married… Promise I didn’t, but I think the thought process must be similar, but on a grander scale.

Never fear- I still have my own bed, and fridge, and desk.  But it’s on “his side” and his stuff is on “my side”.  However, the resulting bad news is we get to both clean “our room”.  Alas and alack, some things never change.