Irecently read an article from the Washington Post about cost-effective ways to transform a rental into a place to call your own.

Among the tips:

Remove dated lighting fixtures and replace them with affordable ones more your style. Store the originals so you can hang them back up when you move out.

Use Roman shades –which usually require only about two yards of fabric – for a sophisticated look at the windows.

To create more storage in a bathroom, hang a hotel-style spa towel shelf above the toilet.

This got me thinking about the places I rented right out of school and early in my career. And about the enthusiasm with which I –and a roommate when I had one –went about decorating the place.

On very tight budgets, of course.

I was picky. Color schemes became very important to me. Furniture for my first apartment consisted of a combination of estate-sale wicker and wrought-iron outdoor furniture I borrowed from my parents.

The cushions and pillows all matched –even if the seating was hardly comfortable.

I shared the two-bedroom apartment with a friend, and we loved setting it up. We entertained often and kept the place incredibly neat.

My next apartment was a studio, which meant the furniture –including the bed –was in one room. There was a small galley kitchen behind one wall, a fairly large walk-in closet and a tiny bathroom.

For this place, I depended on plastic. No, not credit cards but rather Parson- style tables and shelving that snapped together.

I bought a brown quilted daybed cover from the J. C. Penney catalog, found cushions for the back and tossed around some home-sewn pillows. The twin bed became an instant sofa.

I hung a cheap wood accordion rack with peg hooks on the kitchen wall –didn’t everyone have one of those? –and placed huge ferns on the tops of the plastic bookshelves. The fronds hung down in a way I found quite dramatic.

With each place I got more creative and interested in decor. In Rochester, I told my soon-to-be landlord that I simply could not live in the apartment until the dark walls were painted a pretty white. He agreed.

Then again, I think my previous conversation with him –the one in which I convinced him that having my cat in his rental property was indeed a very good idea –had worn him out. He gave in to both my requests.

I also have persuade landlords to pay for new kitchen wallpaper if we hung it, scoured warehouses for cheap carpet remnants, polished neglected woodwork, rolled towels into baskets like I saw in a magazine, improvised book shelves, lived without bedroom furniture and depended on things like houseplants to accessorize.

For the most part, the brick-and-board shelving, orange crates, plastic furniture, potted jade plants, fabric wall hangings and mauve (!) pillows are all gone now. We have a real dining room table, rather than a small one that would move across the floor when you rested your arms on it.

Still, I wouldn’t trade those rental-apartment memories for anything.

Mauve pillows? What was I thinking?