Love this! This is a fancy version of what I made in a one bedroom apartment to make it into a two bedroom apartment.
(Photo of really cute modular room within a room, meant for a kid to enjoy. The kid in me absolutely loves it and could totally live there. Post that I shared from a group called “homemade haven: recipes, decor, diy and garden ideas”).
Mine was made out of bookcases and folding screens & other stuff scrounged from curbside, cobbled together w some re-claimed screws and other scavenged hardware, pieces of lumber — all scrounged from the urban abundant beneficence of the curbside goddess.
The roommate got the “real” bedroom, and I got an adorable corner of the living room which was surprisingly fun and pleasant, but then again I just love tiny cute spaces where I can find most of my stuff without looking too hard lol.
BTW the “real” bedroom had to be walked through in order to access the bathroom, which created stressful situations at times. However, pee jars exist. So do nearby public restrooms in a pinch.
As another benefit of creating the creative extra bedroom, I enjoyed the economic benefits of not having to pay 70% of my income as rent, which I had been doing at times for some years. So I got to continue being an artist and ecosocial educator and activist (which is and was a key part of my deepest calling; and furthermore is, low pay notwithstanding, an essential function of society) and get by on just some occasional housecleaning gigs and other misc gigs instead of having to get a “real” (=soul-sucking) job.
Resistance takes many forms, one of them can be 24-7-365 economic resistance. That’s my favorite. It doesn’t mean we can perfectly boycott anything, but we can get really darn close.
Also, I do support actual boycott, strike days, buy nothing days, etc. It’s just that I think it might be most effective if a lot of us are having “buy almost nothing weeks” and “buy almost nothing months” etc. Adding up to years of buying almost nothing except from local businesses, Black businesses, indigenous businesses, etc. Which I think a lot of us on this space are doing already! And I’m so happy to be on this path of adventure and resistance with you all.
On a different level, I know from various training that “what we resist persists.” So, while it is convenient to use the phrase economic resistance, I actually prefer to think of it as re-empowerment of ourselves. Taking back our economic agency, and choosing to define what we think is cool and worthy of spending our money and energy on. And re-opening the long-shut doors to our true deepest creativity and humanity. As opposed to being puppets of social norms and fake status.