Thursday, September 2, 2010

Minimizing

A kind of perfect storm has been in the works for a while. While working long hours, things got messy around the apartment. I had just long enough to make messes, but not enough time to clean anything up. Two, the bike room seems to be filling up. And that's a large room. Three, I've been reading some minimalist blogs lately, some so extreme that people pare their lives down to 100 items. All these things combined were finally enough to get me to take a hard look at all my junk. While 100-item living is decidedly not for me, there are some things that could stand to go, and others that could stand to be organized.

Cool chair w/ a good looking pillow that's color goes nicely with the books on the book shelf? Great, but I haven't sat in it in about a year or so. Gone!

Beauty Parlor Chair

The closet. So sad. My unmentionables were stuffed in shoe boxes and a garbage can thing that I've had since college. It's so shameful. Could you even call this living?!

What a mess.

Since the closet's a weird size, I went online to find some containers with which to organize. I found some options, the best of which was $20 per box. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay the man $80 to house my skivvies. I'd rather spend that ON skivvies. So I found some nice three-ply cardboard boxes, painted them, put knobs on them, cut out some vinyl to label them and called it a day. They don't look quite as nice as what I could have bought, but... SO?

Bam! Organized.

Next on the organizing block: books. I can't bear to part with many books, but I'm going to wrangle them. Currently they're infesting the apartment.

Art books, library books.
Books

Design books, kids' books.
Books

Big books, little books.
Books

Oh, books.
Books

Books

Books

I love 'em. I'll have to post an after photo for those eagerly awaiting the solution that I shall arrive at. All in due time, fans. All in due time.

Now, to attend to the detritus cluttering up the couch.

IMG_7003

3 comments:

Elizabeth said...

We totally just went through a decluttering phase here too...I got rid of a bunch of stuff, and jon even helped clean out/organize our stuff room. It looks way more awesome here...but the trick is to not replace all that crap with more crap...

And books...they come with guilt complexes...so you can't ever get rid of them.

Dano said...

You go!
This summer I had a huge dumpster dropped at my house. Filled it on one day. Will do it again soon.
We also make a point of doing a Goodwill run every Friday. Then we go out for ice cream.
Point is: no Goodwill no ice cream.
It works for us.

Unknown said...

My God, Cale or the Cat? What are you going to do?