I love renting. If you have a problem, call the landlord or super and have them deal with it. Our building handles trash pickups, cares for the front yard, has a concierge service, and they clean the outside of our fourth floor windows once a season or so. It’s pretty fantastic, and we wouldn’t have these benefits if we owned our own home. I know there are plenty of upsides to owning a home, particularly financial ones, but we’re happy to rent at this point in our lives.
The biggest downside to renting, in my opinion, is the lack of ability to customize your space in many rental properties. Forget painting walls, we’re not even supposed to put holes in the walls to hang artwork or shelves! Having your own furniture and things around you goes a long way to make a place feel like your own, but I really can’t handle large expanses of blank white walls. So we decided to ignore the “no holes” rule and use very thin pin nails to hang some artwork.
And when I saw the new line of washi tape specifically made for home decor, Casa from mt, I couldn’t resist. They sell wider than normal tape (5 or 10 cm, compared to the normal 1 or 2) in a variety of solid colors and patterns. It’s not cheap, so I knew I couldn’t do a huge wall, but it would be perfect for making our bathroom a little less boring. Washi tape won’t leave marks on your walls, so you can peel them off when you move without any issues. And it’s so much easier to use than painting stripes (which I’ve also done before – it’s easy to mess up!!) .
Japanese bathrooms are set up a little differently than we were accustomed to. We have a small room that we call the “water closet.” It houses the toilet and has a tiny sink built into the back of the toilet. The shower, full sized sink, mirror and washer/dryer are in a separate room. I really like the setup, but I’ve struggled with how to make the very, very small space of the wc more interesting. (Is it weird to post a photo of a toilet? I think Japanese toilets are fascinating, I mean, have you ever seen a cute little sink on the back of one before?? I apologize if you think this is a really strange post!)
I decided to use the 10 cm wide tape to put vertical stripes on the small wall opposite the toilet. I’m not thrilled with the color: it turned out to be less rich than I thought it would be. But I like the look enough that I think I’ll keep it up. What do you think?
PS. Sorry that the photos aren’t the greatest! The room is so, so small that it’s difficult to photograph!
If you’re interested in doing something similar, you can find some of the Casa line from mt on Amazon. Here’s how I did our wall:
1. Do some math. Sorry, but it’s completely necessary if you don’t want your stripes to be uneven. You need to measure the width of your wall, know how wide your tape is, and decide how many tape stripes you want. I knew I wanted a tape stripe in each corner, so I just had to decide how many more I wanted in between those two. Then you use a formula to figure out how much space you leave between wall stripes. Here’s how I did it:
2. Hang your first stripe(s). If you aren’t using a stripe in each corner, you can start from one side of the wall and work across. In my case, I started at the outsides and worked in, hanging two stripes.
3. Measure your next stripes(s). I put my two corner stripes up, then measured 8.25 cm in from each stripe (from the formula in step 1). I used a pencil to make several marks up and down the wall where the next stripe would line up.
4. Hang stripes and measure until done. Repeat the process until you’ve hung all of your stripes.
