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There comes a point in your amateur/semi-professional recording/producing career when hanging blankets from the walls, filling a room with random objects or egg crates don't do the trick.  You need sound treatment that actually does the job and doesn't take up too much room.  The treatment will need to smooth out the horrible bass problems, imaging problems and other things that will cause you problems when mixing and recording.  These problems get worse for smaller rooms. Basements have especially bad bass problems.  In certain spots you will get buildup or cancellation of frequencies which will influence your ears and microphones - which can be bad. 

You should also put your listening position - your ears, 38% of the way through the room facing the closest wall.

Get detailed here: http://www.realtraps.com/art_room-setup.htm

I made 12 acoustic panels for my room for around ~$600. I probably could have gotten the fiberglass cheaper, but it was hard to find someone who would sell to me - it's an industrial type of product used for deadening sound and heat. All the microfibers end up acting like little springs to soak up sound waves. After gathering up varied information on the internets I ended up making 12 4" thick wood frames stuffed with acoustic absorbing material - specifically owens corning 703 (OC703). 

Your fabric should be:

• Permeable to your breath
• A little stretchy
• Nice to look at
• Cheap

A salesperson handed me a sample and I did the breath test on it - he didn't want it back.  Whoops.  My wife helped me stretch the fabric around the frames and fiber and staple with old staple gun.  We folded corners back around the frame, trimmed, folded again and then stapled to hide it.  She was definitely the brains behind that operation - I would have made a mess of it. Doing this by yourself could be difficult, so find a friend.

The fiberglass will be the core component though.  I made some with FSK covered fiberglass and some without. FSK means there is a foil sheet glued to the front of the fiberglass.  The foil sucks in bass and bounced back some mids and highs - that's the theory anyway.  Others don't have the foil on the front to absorb more upper freqs.  I ended up making 2 big ones that were 6" thick.   Several that were 4" with FSK and several without.   I ended up placing them in this manner:

• Stacked 4 4" units in the mix corners with FSK fronted fiberglass.
• Hanging two without FSK to the right and left of my mix position.
• Hung one un-faced above the drums and one to the side of them on the nearest wall.
• Two of the 6" lean back onto the rear wall. Supposedly an air gap will suck up more bass behind them. The 4" panels have a 2" gap built in, since I used 6" wood.

Your lumber could be 1" X 6"'s cut to make 2' X 4' inner dimensions(size of uncut 703). Be very sure to measure your actual lumber size before having it cut, otherwise you will be using a handsaw to shorten some pieces up.  Also, note 2" X 4" is NOT 2" X 4". See here:  http://mistupid.com/homeimpr/lumber.htm  . This means that my 2" sheets of fiberglass poke out a bit over 4" wood, but it's not too bad. You must also take into account your ceiling size if you want to stack a layer of two in the corners. 

The sound was definitely changed.  Drums were tighter. Horns are 10 times better. I have carpet in my room and would like to hard floor now.

edit:

Since this was written, I moved into a new room.  Read about it here.