Rearranging The Apartment

We've been living in the Apartment we're currently in now for nearly 5 years, and we never truly organized the whole place. For the most part, everyone owns something somewhere and It's been a mishmash of what ends up where, so over the past couple weeks I've slowly made my way through the apartment little by little to organize everything into a convenient and efficient living space.

This has nothing to do with Marie Kondo.

If you were to ask me, "Does this spark joy?" My answer would be
yes to literally everything. It's the burden of having a photographic memory. Everything means something to me, because I can remember exactly where it's from, the story attached to it, and all the people involved. Does this make me a hoarder? Luckily, not really. I do hang on to a lot of things, but I have been good at donating and throwing certain items away.

One of the biggest items to ease our burden and throw it away was the couch in our living room. It was huge, and shedding. It cramped our beer fridge into a corner, took up valuable space, and literally sprinkled faux leather across the entire apartment. I had two wingback chairs that used to be in the space, and for some reason I allowed my roommates to talk me into moving them upstairs when bringing the couches into the apartment. For two years they remained upstairs, collecting dust and being used as a laundry rack, but now they're happily back in the living room where they belong, have a look:

Amazingly, the picture of Tory in VR is the only photo in literally thousands of photos that feature the old couch. I guess Marie Kondo would say "how can this spark joy, if you never appreciate it?" Also amazingly, we never keep the coffee table clean, but you can see how the beer fridge used to be cramped in a corner, but now the wingbacks have opened so much space.

Our bedroom has a new bed, which dates back several months ago to over the summer, but we didn't exactly rearrange the bedroom or organize it. So now, we've reorganized the book shelves, currently going through old clothing, and will be removing all of my CD's from the bedroom to free up even more space. 

Lastly for the main floor is the backroom, which used to be Tory's bedroom, but he's since moved upstairs. We did nothing with the room, we let it sit there, almost vacant. Tory's old bed and old desk sit in there, with a mostly empty closet and mostly empty space. Not anymore! I threw out most of the things were were storing in there, such as three different tables and a desk. Moved in a curio cabinet, shelving for better storage and organization, and a newer better desk/table to free up more space in the room. The old bed is going to remain where it is, so that this room can act as a guest bedroom if we have people come and visit.

The plan is to use the back room as an arts and crafts space, something I've wanted to have for a while but never put much effort into. I've always wanted to scrapbook, and I really need to get back into photography, so what better way to put myself in a win-win situation than use the back room as an arts space to document all my old items, photograph them, and keep them in a physical or digital scrapbook. Hopefully this all turns out well.

The Kitchen was rearranged after Molly and I's wedding, no need to go through it again as it's very well organized now.

Once I'm finished downstairs, the plan is to make upstairs as efficient, but one thing at a time, let's fix the downstairs first and reassess on completion.

Joe