Making every inch count

I loved our condo in Monclova Township. It had three glorious bedrooms - the biggest of which Brent and I actually used as a bedroom. The second one was an office and the third one was "my" room. That room had a daybed and a TV and I used it as my personal getaway space, like when I needed to get away from Brent watching sports in the living room to read a good book.





Our German Shepherd mix, Chloe, even had her spots around the condo, which included underneath the daybed and desk, and beneath my clothes in the farthest corner of our walk-in closet.


And when either Chloe or I needed to get out of the house, I had to go no further than 50 yards in front of our condo to take advantage of a 10-mile bike trail.


And now we live in a one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a six-floor building in New York City. Before we moved in, I measured every room and dusted off the graph paper I used in high school math class to sketch out our new place so we'd know how much room we had to work with. I then measured our furniture and told Brent what we should take and what we should store at both of our parents' homes. That was the easy part.

The hard part was deciding what we'd "need" at the apartment. Would I use my muffin pans and wok? How many cups and water bottles would we need? Would we watch all of our DVDs? Do we really need all of our clothes?


Brent and I both thought we downsized our belongings to fit. Boy were we wrong. I've been in New York for a week and I still have a pile of clothes I have yet to find a place for because we have exactly one closet for clothes. Yep, that's right - ONE. Think about your house. You probably have a hall closet for coats, a closet in each bedroom for clothes, and maybe one in the laundry room or in the basement. Ours is crammed to the point that the hangers don't budge so all you can see of each clothing item is its profile.


The dresser drawers throw up if you open them and I even bought an extra metal stand to hang clothes from, but all it holds is our coats and business suits.


The problem is that I have way too many clothes because I still believe that I'll lose enough weight to fit into those size 4 jeans from high school. Ha. And believe it or not, Brent has too many clothes because even though he may not wear them anymore, they have sentimental value, and he won't give them up. (That was my favorite shirt in the seventh grade - I need to keep it!) Sigh.


And poor Chloe really only has one place to take shelter - underneath the kitchen table. The rest of the time, she's sleeping on her pillow or next to the toilet like a drunk college kid.

So even though it's been a week, I can't really finish unpacking because I have no idea where to put the rest of the stuff we brought here. So it's piled up next to the wall in the living room labeled with an imaginary "what the hell should I do with this crap?" sign.

Elbow space is not something to take for granted.