When I was moving to New York the first time I would spend
hours and hours online looking at pictures. I would research small spaces
trying to find out how to maximize every inch of my apartment. The Apartment Therapy
Small/Cool Contest
was my best friend.
This is NOT my apartment! I wish it was
There was something about my things that I couldn’t let go
of, memories here, adventures there, a book that I may or may not pick up to
read again one day. “Oh I can’t get rid
of those jeans Mom. I bought them too tight in the first place and have never
been able to wear them…. But you never know when I might go on that diet.”
Then I actually got to New York. My 500 square foot apartment was spilling at
the brim. My closet was overflowing with clothes. I would wait until I had absolutely
NO underwear, at which point I would cart 60 lb. (trust me, I weighed it once) worth
of clothing DOWN the hill TO the laundry mat. At this point I really started to consider the
possibility that I just might have too much stuff. But that wasn’t the breaking
point.
One night, after filling 7 or 8 washing machines, I can’t
remember exactly, and folding shirts and pants and towels and sheets…….I loaded
everything into my shopping cart to take home. Or should I say, I attempted to
load. It didn’t fit. I also had a large IKEA bag full of laundry to carry (which
by the way, IKEA bags are great for carrying dirty laundry). It was just too
much, I couldn’t even get out the door.
At this point in my life I was stubborn and bull headed, and determined
to get this mess I had made for myself back up the hill and onto the third
floor of my apartment without any help. I remember struggling up the street thinking, “Ok Nikki, if you ever worried about looking like an idiot in public,
today is not the day.” Oh did I mention
it was raining?!?!? Not raining hard but drizzling and the city sidewalks were
wet. When I think “wet” in New York City, I think dirty. Dirty and covered in Bed
Bugs.
So you can imagine my dismay when my shopping cart hit a
crack in sidewalk and fell over; spilling all of my nice, neat, CLEAN clothing
onto the wet sidewalk. Oh you can imagine my dismay. I will save you the story of how I ranted and
raved the rest of the night like a little child……
The next day I made a decision. Things in my apartment were organized and in
their place but it just never felt like home (I realized later that this was for a different reason but that, my friend, is irrelevant). It was too cluttered. I was
always uncomfortable. I went through all
my belongings and started purging everything. If I wasn’t using it at that point it wasn’t
important. I reduced my wardrobe by 50
percent, and found that I actually had MORE to wear after that. Maybe actually being able to see the things I
wore on a regular basis helped.
I realized that I want to have a beautiful home free of
clutter. I told a friend the other day that I wanted to have cabinet
in my dining room, and when you open the doors….empty. Just because you have
storage space you do not need to utilize every spare inch of it. Make your home
beautiful but make it work for you. In the past year I have detached from a lot
of my clutter and I notice now that I have much less anxiety when I am not
looking at piles, when I can see the things I need to get to because there is
not a bunch of junk I DON’T need in the way.
Next time I live in New York…..Things will go much differently.
And my apartment will look more like the ones pictured in
this post.
And I will be Swedish....
The End.
