u/ButteredToasts

My room always has an insane amount of echo. I believe most of it comes from the space left of my desk(Opening with the paintings in the first photo). I was thinking of using a sound blanket to simply block that entire opening but I'm open to other ideas. For the rest of the room, I'm not sure what else to do.

Photos were taken at different times of renovation but it's still the same layout mostly. I don't want to cover all my walls in acoustic panels since that's really out of my price range. What would be some options to reduce echo?