Cohabitable: True Life: I'm A Mess

Welcome back to Cohabitable – as you may have noticed I took off for the holidays. They were, by the way, insane, but more about that at a different time, this post is about the future, lovelies, the future of my apartment.

2012 is a new chapter for me. In this spirit, I am willing to make an admission to you readers: I am about one expired can of grape juice away from being classified as a hoarder. I have been known to get weepy giving away old stuffed animals. I once asked Dan if he thought my old toys in the basement felt sad that no one way playing with them. By the way, I totally blame Toy Story for all of this.

I have trouble throwing out papers and packets from undergrad and graduate school because “I MIGHT NEED THESE NOTES SOMEDAY!” I literally cannot get rid of books, especially hardcover books much to everyone-who-has-ever-helped-me-move‘s chagrin. Sigh.

I have massive amounts of clothes, shoes, coats, bags, bathing suits, tote bags, sunglasses, etc. etc. Each and every time I try to clean out my closet I find myself saying “oh that might come back in style, I should keep this” or “I’m going to lose weight and these pants are going to be the inspiration”. Guess what? These scenarios have literally never happened. Ever.

I recognize my problem, and I am sharing it with you. I reached a pretty absurd level over here. This is what a room in my apartment currently looks like:




Jesus take the wheel.

Thankfully there is a door on this room so I don’t have to look at it too much. But seriously, that should be Dan’s office/music room, but my life has basically thrown up all over it and rendered the space utterly useless. I’m not proud of myself.

To be fair I’m not actually a slob, I’ve just been trying for 2+ years to fit a house’s worth of items into a one-bedroom apartment. This year I will finally give up and realize that my parent’s house is in fact much, much larger than anything I will be living in for the next 5 to 10 years. It’s going to be hard.

I am going to have to give up some of favorites pieces of furniture to open up some more space, including my desk. My mom is awesome (duh!) and has agreed to let me continue to store everything I cannot fit in my place at my parent’s house in Mendham, NJ. My dad doesn’t really know this yet so don’t tell him. He’ll be very vaklempt.

And yes I’ll be tackling the office/closet catastrophe above. I don’t want to live like this anymore.

There will be growing pains, lots of crying, maybe some yelling, copious cups of coffee and many, many trash bags full of donations.
Sprucing up the living quarters should be a group excursion, so to that end I’m going to leave y’all with this fabulous list of tricks and ideas for making life easier and neater - 25 clever ideas to make life easier.

See ya next week – picture updates will be included!