Spring Moving

You know how when you move into a new place, you carefully layout what is going to go where in each room? Once you get everything unpacked and situated, you survey each room, feeling a little bit of pride as you think to yourself: I did all of this. After all, you took an empty space, made it your own, and you did so with a keen eye for aesthetics while smartly maximizing your space.

A few days/months/years later, though, you realize it is time for a change.

In our case, we found that our living room/dining room/office space (it's all one big, rectangular thing we'll call the "living area") was feeling really small. We weren't getting the most out of our bookshelves because they were placed against walls, so homeless books abounded. I was also unhappy with where we had the work desk. It was in the back corner of the living area, facing the window, and just didn't feel like a productive space. I rarely sat there to do work, often preferring the couch or stretching out on the floor with some pillows. To remedy a lot of these issues, I wanted to buy several floor-to-ceiling bookcases, a more compact desk, some file cabinets, and a snazzy media console. Once we had all of that, we would get rid of the IKEA bookshelves, gargantuan IKEA desk, and make room for a coffee table and some comfy armchairs. We had been talking about doing some rearranging for a while, but on Saturday I came back from yoga and announced that today would be the day we would make some quick changes utilizing what we already had. 

I thought that it would be simple. Oh, how I wish it had been simple.

This is just some of the chaos involved in the quick rearranging process. Keep in mind that there are more in our bedroom and in the hallway that are not visible in the photo.

Instead, it was chaos. The planned arrangement didn't really work out, so we spent a lot of time moving things into every configuration possible. Eventually we decided to see if using both bookcases in the office area would fix things. This, of course, required emptying out yet another bookshelf and moving all of the electronics (TV, cable box, etc.) off of it. You can see that I tried to stack the books carefully at the beginning, but by this time I was tired and feeling defeated because my simple plan wasn't turning out quite as I had hoped. Books were removed from their shelves and put haphazardly into a pile. It was the best I could do. Mark kept reassuring me that he didn't see the time or effort we spent as wasted even if we simply put everything right back where it was at the start of what was quickly becoming a fiasco.

The rearranging fiasco was becoming much more frustrating than my attempt at being crafty by painting the inside of a vase to turn it into a lovely utensil holder. Usually this poor thing hides in a corner between the knife block and our stove. Next time, I'll just buy one that looks like an artsy wife could have made it.

Once I had reached the point of total despair I sat myself up on the counter and poured myself a Coke in a glass filled to the brim with ice. I had given up. I was pretty sure we were going to be spending a lot of time making space for and returning the couch, desk, bookshelves, and books to their original places. Mark continued rearranging things. Soon, Mark asked me if I liked where everything was now. I looked up, and by golly I liked it.

This is not exactly what I saw when I looked up, as the computer and monitors were in the hallway and the books were still in that pile pictured above, but you get the idea.

As you can see in the picture above, both sides of the black shelves are now accessible. The extra bookshelf space gives me plenty of room to house formerly homeless or double-stacked books. The desk is in its own space, but still feels connected to the room. We are even *finally* getting a dedicated work chair. Our previous setup involved taking the wooden dining table chair (pictured) and literally turning around and putting it down because the desk was right there. Now, there is a little pseudo-hall between the wall and the bookshelf that makes me feel like I am walking into the office. The setup is great for working as I can now get to my frequently used books and articles without getting up or keeping them on the desk just in case I needed them, which used to take up a lot of desk space and result in a not insignificant amount of clutter. The clutter would then make the desk an unappealing place to work. Since Saturday's big move, I've actually been using the desk for work. It's only been two days, but I'm trying to be optimistic, y'all.

If you are wondering what is playing on the television, it is the docu-series Chicagoland. 

The couch used to be perpendicular to the windows, cutting the room in half. The black bookshelf was standing up in the empty space next to the light one. We now have room for a proper side table and floor lamp! Two bamboo trash cans that my parents sent with me when I moved to Chicago have been doing an admirable job masquerading as side tables by being turned upside down (you can see one of them in the above picture). Now there is a large, open space that we might fill with a rug, or coffee table, or cushy armchairs. For now I am happy to just enjoy the extra space we created simply by moving some things around.

Our unadorned, super big, comfy MCM couch. It was our first relatively large furniture purchase together. I enjoy vacuuming and flipping the cushions weekly. It makes me feel like I really have everything together. That's how you feel when you do that, too, right?

I was happy that we ended up using what we already had instead of buying all of the stuff that I had originally envisioned. To be honest, we don't want to accumulate a lot of stuff in Chicago. In fact, if we are able to keep the bookshelves, desk, strange floor lamp, and couch until we move I would be ecstatic. The bookshelves, desk, and floor lamp have been with me since college, and I'd gladly hand them off to another graduate student and buy some solid wood shelves whenever we move out of Chicago. We will have to move eventually, and I'd prefer to do so with the smallest amount of stuff possible.

I know what you are thinking. This photo doesn't belong here. Except that I need to put it here to show you that even though our couch is naked of throws and accent pillows, and our walls are not decorated, and we still have pieces from IKEA, we do have placemats, and linen napkins, and we always keep the table set (it looks pretty and keeps us from putting random things on the table). I swear, we know how to be adults.

We are very slowly, but surely turning the apartment into our home. Soon, the office chair will be in, which will mean our dining table will always have its chairs. Our walls are currently bare, but we intend to paint them soonish and finally hang some artwork (not done by me, I promise!) and photos. We might get a new floor lamp that doesn't look like it belongs in a dorm room, and we will almost certainly purchase a few accent pillows for the couch--eventually.

Library books and notebooks go on top of the work shelf between our bookends. One is a bear given to me as a graduation gift from two dear friends, the other is an elephant that Mark brought with him when he moved up here. I still haven't decided which way the books should face.

Smokey also enjoys the new work area.

That's all I've got for the past two weeks, but this weekend should yield a post as we will have officially been married for a year on Sunday! Crazy, I know. Shouldn't we have accent pillows by now?