My little house is so cute. When we moved in, Bruno and I couldn't believe our luck at finding such an amazing place with so much charm (and for so darn cheap!). We didn't have much furniture so the place looked HUGE. As a matter of fact, the first few months that we lived in Michigan, we only had a bed and two cushions to sit on. We eventually added a desk for me to work at (which doubled as our dinner table) and a floor mat. Why we bought the floor mat, I don't know. Maybe to make the place look like it had furniture? Anyhow, now we have a couch, a coffee table and a plethora of bookshelves. We also splurged for a dresser and a bedroom chair. We are living the high life!
While we may not have a whole lot of furniture, we have managed to fill this little flat to near capacity with our belongings. My work files seem to be taking over more and more space (like gangs in a turf war) and Bruno's paintings are multiplying like bunnies or gremlins after midnight. Our book collection rivals that of a library's and we no longer have shelf space for our enormous collection of art books and mystery paperbacks. When we come home after shopping (to fill our flat with more stuff) we just huddle in the one spare corner that has nothing but the x-mas tree in it. That's how little space we now have left. Our dining room table has been permanently relegated to crafting projects and I fear that it's too late to reclaim our once peaceful dining space. My crafting accoutrements have made a pact with each other to fight to the death should I try to put them in boxes and restore order (any kind of order!). Our bathroom is so tiny that we can't both fit in it at the same time, which is fine because Bruno and I are close but not that close. What this means though is that the back of the toilet is the only flat surface in the little space. It now is home to make up and jars of hairpins and facial lotion and, every three weeks, a gigantic box of tampons. I tried to hide the tampons from view by placing them in a cigar box- very Monica Lewinsky of me- but that takes up even more space. And I can't open the cigar box because there is too much crap on top of it. We are slowly being taken over by our stuff and we are drowning. Drowning I say!
Bruno and I discussed our need for storage solutions this weekend. God what I would do for an organizational system that actually worked! The problem is, organization costs money. So what can I do that is cheap, not tacky, and will make our lives much much better???
This is a long winded way of saying that today I am going to clean the house. The clutter is killing me and making both of us kind of batty. It's like walking around a huge white elephant in the middle of your living room. "Don't see you! Don't see you! I'm skirting the wall of the room because I like to, not because there isn't any room to walk in here..." I'm actually looking forward to bringing some order to this madness. If I don't do it soon, your going to find me laying in a pile of unshelved books, glazed look in my eye and half dead because I've finally been defeated by the clutter.
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