i have been working on trying to downsize our apartment a bit lately, preparing to hopefully move this coming june 1 (which isn't as far away as it feels! -- this winter will be over before we know it.). slowly but surely i've been sifting through our belongings and trying to decide which should stay and which should go.
my giant Expedit shelf from ikea was the first to go; it had been taken apart and put back together twice already, and though it was still fairly sturdy i knew it wasn't going to make the move. a friend of mine bought it for about half what we paid for it, and we definitely got our money's worth- it got us through our last very tiny apartment where we had very little storage space. in this apartment, though it fit into the space in the sunroom nicely, i always sort of felt it was just filling space.
(photo by
jessica weiser)
we cleaned out our book collection a bit and paired it down to fit in a new 4x4 Expedit (we had the larger 5x5). my guy is buying me the new one for my birthday (not sure when we are going to make it down to ikea, but i'm hoping soon!), and i've picked out the white one this time. it just looks cleaner and more simple to me. so, for the meantime, all of our books are piled up in the sunroom where the shelf used to be, and the kitties are having fun trying to climb on the stacks.
(sunny early morning.)
so now i am trying to decide how i want to organize the new Expedit once i get it. i obviously would like to fit all of my books onto it, but i don't want it to look too cluttered, i want a more clean and organized look.
i am contemplating getting 4 of the doors to go along the bottom, like this one:
those would hide some of our less organized things like video games and photos. the doors are $20 each, but for half the price i could get these baskets, which i think would really have the same effect of concealing things to keep it look more organized and simple:
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something else i've been trying to downsize, which is much more of a project, is my sewing area. i plan on possibly going from having a whole room in which to sew, to a corner. but! i think its do-able. i will be selling my current sewing table:
it has been with me through four apartments (since my very first tiny studio apartment! and has even doubled as a dining room table!), and though i love it so so so much, it just isn't the right type of table. its too long, not wide enough, and lets face it: its big. it needs a room of its own.
for christmas my parents gave me an awesome cutting table, which has two leaves that fold down on the sides. lately i have been using it with one leaf folded down and one set up:
and so you can see how small it really does fold down to, here is someone else's photo:
the cutting table is too tall to sit at and use the sewing machine, however. so, if i sell my large sewing table, i will need something else to replace it. luckily ikea has this adorable little folding table which folds much the same way as the cutting table - and it will actually fit underneath it if i leave one of the leaves up! nesting tables! so, i have my heart set on getting one of those when we go for the Expedit. :
the good thing about having the two tables, is that i can use them together if i need more space to drape out a quilt while i'm sewing, and i can fold everything up (and just keep my sewing machine ontop of the cutting table) when i am not using it. i have to be honest with myself: while having a whole sewing room to myself is amazing and a wonderful space to create in, i am not in it as often as i would like to be. with a busy work day, i often find myself opting out for the couch instead of the sewing machine. i've been in the midst of rethinking my etsy shop and what direction i want to go in this year - all of the sewing i've done this past month has been for myself only. i have been able to send some of my fabric to a friend who has just started learning how to sew/quilt, and have been swapping like crazy to unload some of the fabrics i don't love anymore for fabrics i do love. i have plans to make a half a dozen or so quilts using the fabrics i've been hoarding for years, to keep for our own home. i currently have 3 drawer units (tupperware) that house my fabric, and the two shorter ones would fit perfectly underneath the cutting table as well, the taller one would have to just be next to it. all in all, i think i could fit in a corner if i had to! i would also like to make sure that if this corner happens to be in the living room, or closeby, that whatever chair i use it would also be able to double as seating for guests should we have some :)
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i just want to downsize. i want to have less stuff in a smaller space and still have it feel like home and have it be organized. i want to be able to fold things up and put them away when they are not being used. if/when we move, i want to only take the necessities with us.
i've also been eyeing these ikea shelves for our new place; who knows what it will look like or what the space will be, but i love these:
they are only stick out from the wall about a foot at the widest part (bottom), so they would be great space savers! perfect for holding dvds, photos, decorative items (my typewriter, cameras, etc). they're only $20 each, and are a good inexpensive substitute for the pottery barn shelves i really love (which are $300 each):
the whole idea of downsizing is to try to save some money and use our space more wisely. when we moved to this larger apartment we're currently in, we thought we needed more space to spread out, and i guess we did: our last apartment's layout was very closed off and yes, it was tiny. but i know with the knowledge i've gained in over a year since then, should we go back to living in a smaller space, there are definitely things we could do to make it more efficient.
we need to save money, we've canceled our cable. we can't cancel much else. yes, our place is large, but it is also expensive. ontop of being an expensive apartment, there are other downfalls to living here that seem small, but really bother me on almost a daily basis: our neighbors are exceptionally loud. three or four girls living on the front of the building, and at any given time you can hear their music, hear them having a party, hear them yelling at each other, hear them yelling at their pets, hear them having sex, smell them smoking weed (more in the summer when the window's open)... they made a deal with our landlady to shovel the whole walkway on the side of our building (leading to our front door) (for $$), and we've ended up doing most of the shovelling this winter. also, my guy has had to park his car pretty far away during parking bans this winter which is such a pain in the butt (since we only have on street parking and no designated parking space). not to mention what an absolutely terrible job they did plowing the street so far (we're off the main street on a side street).
the only thing that will be tough (besides finding a place in our budget that doesn't suck and will let us have 3 cats) is going to be to find a place that will hold our washer and dryer. they're stackable, which isn't an issue, but if there is no hook-up they will need to go next to a water source (sink - either kitchen or bathroom) so that they can be hookedup to the faucet (right now they're in our bathroom -- hooked up to the sink and drain into the tub).
getting the washer and dryer out of this apartment is going to be no small feat. the washer weighs about 400 lbs., and just BARELY fit through both the bathroom door and front door. we had the company deliver them, and those huge strong guys could barely lift it. the same goes for our giant sofa, whose wooden base got scratched to shit when the movers tried to get it through our front door; that will also need a miracle to get out of this apartment and into the next (some sort of thin padding device will have to be constructed!). we'll need to measure doorways, for sure. our large tv cabinet will have to be taken apart before its moved, because like the washing machine, it weighs a gazillion pounds (metal frame, wooden parts):
(PS. our living room looks absolutely nothing like that now, that photo is from when we first moved in... but it demonstrates well the giant tv sidebar and giant sofa!!)
all i know is that if i start downsizing now, by the time june 1st rolls around, we'll be ready to go. i'm good at things like this, and the less my boyfriend has to do with it the happier he is. i just think we can do so much better; and wherever we end up we'll be staying for the next couple of years until he graduates college (for the second time). after that, we could end up across the country, or wherever he can find a job (mechanical engineering). if we downsize now, moving to a far away place will be that much easier. i'm just trying to plan ahead a bit, and make us a home - not an apartment.
