Not so much “cleaning”...
It’s more like pruning. Our apartment is a garden and plant in it is badly overgrown. We don’t have any literal plants in our apartment, that might actually make the situation worse. But rather all of our stuff is overgrown and filling up valuable living space, so that it seems like the primary function of our apartment is “holding stuff” and not really intended for living.
We haven’t bought a lot of furniture in the two years we’ve been here, we replaced our couch and got a nice big coffee table, for the majority of our meals are eaten on that couch at that coffee table. A new desk came in and our old desk was shoved to the side to create just another surface. Our bed was on risers to create storage space. All three closets in the apartment were stuffed full.
We’ve had enough, wise men have said “He who wishes to travel quickly, must travel light.” Other wise men advise against letting the stuff you own “own you.” Now it’s time to apply some of this wisdom to our apartment. We like the idea of traveling someday, so we needed to get rid of some stuff. We started feeling the pull to move into a bigger 2 bedroom apartment, but soon realized the price difference between a one-bed apartment and a 2 bedroom apartment was significant, and would weight down our budget a time when it really needs to be light. So, instead of moving to get a change of scenery Becca and I started thinking about rearranging our existing apartment, and just getting rid of our accumulated stuff.
Becca did a good job of sorting through our original pile of stuff when we first moved in here before she got a full time job. The past 15 months of her working were wonderful for our budget, not so great for the efficiency of our lives and our living space. Now she is home working part time as a freelance writer and enjoying it immensely. Her other more than part time job is taking care of me and all the wonderful little details of our lives that were neglected before. She is a saint, and has made my life much easier than I deserve.
In the past 2 days, we have hauled out to the dumpster six 30 gallon hefty bags of assorted trash and stuff, one fiber-board beat up desk, one old PII computer, and other miscellaneous items that didn’t fit into trash bags. We have a stack of decent electronics and exercise equipment that will go on Craigslist for 2 weeks, and then on to the Goodwill. And we have already hauled 4 30 gallon hefty bags of clothes to the Goodwill. That is a lot of crap! Much of it was usable potentially useful stuff, but the idea is that if we haven’t had a use for it more than once in the two years we’ve lived here, it’s gone!
It’s not all easy, there are strange sentimental ties to odd things. I really had a hard time throwing out my Rio 500 mp3 player, the first generation of digital music players was a long time ago, and this one had been broken since 2001. We had to throw out some of our holiday decorations… ok a LOT of Becca’s holiday decorations. The entirety of our Christmas decorations takes up about 7 cubic feet. All other holidays fit in one impressively small box! That wasn’t easy for Becca to sift through. We are keeping each other strong and the progress shows. It’s not as much about re-decorating as it is just making room to actually keep things we care about and need, and not interfere with living in our living space.
We don’t care about Feng Shui, or Yin and Yang, or modern designers that make everything from one piece of extruded stainless steel and bed’s with ipod docks that cost $12,000. It’s just about form following function, and making it easier for us to live comfortably in an efficient space.
