The Room of Requirement
The Room of Requirement
If you're a Harry Potter fan, you already know what the Room of Requirement is. For everyone else: it's a magical room at Hogwarts that appears when you need it and becomes whatever you need it to be. Storage space, practice room, hiding place. The catch is that because it could be anything, it tended to hold everything. You walked in and it looked like the world's most ambitious estate sale had exploded inside a castle.
We have one of those.
Ours is upstairs, third door on the left. It holds my husband's drawing table, the exercise equipment we bought with excellent intentions and average follow-through, the gift wrap collection (don't judge me, gift wrap is just craft supplies for packages), bedding that didn't have a home, and now, my entire office and creative workspace. There is a pink semicircle painted on one wall that belonged to the little girl that lived here before us. I like to think she was deeply creative and left it as a blessing. More likely it was a headboard accent and I'm projecting. Either way, it's the warmest thing in the room right now.
I moved my office up here because we're making the downstairs bedroom ready for my dad. He's moving in with us. I'll write more about that soon. For now, just know that making that space right for him meant finding a new home for everything that was in it. Including me.
Here's the thing I've been sitting with lately. Every decision I've made in the last year has been some version of the same decision. Less chaos. More peace. We downsized our house intentionally, choosing a smaller home in a good school district over square footage. The garage went to my husband's woodworking. The creative messes that I used to make, the furniture pieces that need days to cure, the paint projects and their dozens of supplies that take over an entire room, those have gotten quieter. Not because I wanted them to, but because the house doesn't have a good place for them, and I've been prioritizing calm over creative disruption for everyone who comes home at the end of the day.
I don't fully know yet what that's costing me, but having my dad here is worth any price.
What I do know is that the inventory wind-down at Purple Monkey Manor is part of the same thread. I've been selling off what remains, category by category, and not restocking. The store is closing. I'll tell you more about the timeline very soon, and where to find me when it does, because I'm not going anywhere. I'm just getting quieter in some places so I can get louder in the ones that matter.
The Room of Requirement is finding a bit more purpose. But somewhere underneath the laundry basket and the cutting mat and the tubs of supplies, there's a room that could become whatever I need it to be.
I'm working on figuring out what that is.
P.S. Speaking of things winding down: the Sweet Pickins Milk Paint stash is almost gone. I have nine items left and I've bundled everything into a single listing at $74.95. The Lantern and two large Top Coats alone are worth more than that.
Retail value for the whole lot is just over $214. One person gets all of it.
I love this product. It stays fresh in the bag until you're ready to mix it, it's a joy to work with, and I'm genuinely a little sad to see it go. But even in the Room of Requirement, you can only hold so much paint. Grab it here if it's meant to be yours.
Sweet Pickins Final Sale Box
