how I turned my closet into a classroom

My freshman year is shaping up to be very different than I imagined. Instead of spending the last half of the semester on campus in Austin, I’m at my house in Dallas. Instead of walking fifteen minutes to get to class, I can be there in fifteen seconds. We’re online because of coronavirus, and I came home to the reality that my two younger sisters, my parents, and I are all going to have to work from here, and that table space would be at a premium.

Luckily, I got permission to do some remodeling to the guest room that I now call mine, and I decided to turn the closet into my “school.” Having two doors between where I study and where I sleep hopefully will let me separate those two parts of my life!

Before, the closet was a spot for a lot of random stuff. The remodel prompted a massive and much-needed clean-out! I had originally planned to use the wire shelves as a desk, but my family got involved and decided that would just not do, so we hunted around the house for spare furniture. We took out the shelving and repainted the walls with a spare can of paint from the garage.

We moved a spare table in and I found lamps and Christmas lights from around the house to decorate! I took off lampshades to get an Edison-bulb effect and to make the dark closet a little brighter!

Finishing touches included my laptop, a jar with clippings from my plants (I’ll get to see them grow over the next few months), my notebooks and calculator, and a silverware organizer tray for my pencils.

I was hoping to put up some Polaroids or my letterboard (both of which are on my dorm wall at school). I brought a good bit of my stuff home with me from school during spring break but I was going to go back sometime this week to properly move out of my dorm. However, right now I'm living in Dallas, and we just got a shelter in place order, so that's going to have to wait. I'm okay with the simplicity for right now- what a beautiful way to learn to live with less!

As strange as it's going to be to finish up the semester at home, I'm so thankful to have a little space to call mine. It's going to be so wonderful to study in my closet classroom!