My New Apartment and Why I'm Turning It Into a Studio

It's been awhile, I know, but as most of you know my life has been insane for years now. It seems everywhere I lived turned out to be some kind of nightmare, and I had to move again. I won't go into my year into the 'hood with a slumlord landlord. That nightmare isn't over yet, even though I've moved, and its something that will affect me the rest of my life, but I won't go into that here.

Suffice to say, I've moved and I'm so much happier now. My apartment is a small 1BR, and I'm wondering how I'm going to fit all my stuff into it, but the truth is, I'm not. I lived in my last place with all this stuff packed away for almost a year and if I learned one thing, it's that most of what I own is unnecessary to the physical act of living. Yes, some of it is precious and some of it is beautiful, but a lot of it is just useless crap I've been holding onto for reasons I can't now fathom.

So in addition to finding ways to store what I need or can't part with, I have to go through all these boxes and be really brutal getting rid of stuff.

In the meantime, the boxes were all piled into the LR, and it occured to me that even if I got furniture, I wouldn't be able to put it in there, because the entire LR was full. To make things worse, I am living in my BR, which I promised myself I would never do again, so I made a drastic decision. Without the bedroom, my apartment is 480 sf, and the LR/DR is plenty large enough for most of the furniture I have now. The bedroom is 140 sf, so large enough for all the boxes and a work area. I'm going to swap the two rooms, put all the boxes into the BR and fix up the LR/DR area like a studio.

Swapping the rooms will allow me to buy furniture and place it in the LR where I want it while going through the boxes and getting them all unpacked. As I buy furniture, I'll keep in mind that it has to be useful: it has to do something, store something, or hold something. My first order of business will be to buy bookshelves. I got rid of a lot of my books, but I still have several boxes full, so bookshelves will serve the double duty of holding my books and some of my keepsakes as well. From there, I'll hand-pick every piece of furniture for its intended purpose, and eventually, all the boxes will be gone.

How long will this take? Could be a year, could be six months. It all depends on how quickly I can make money, buy furniture and go through the boxes, but I love this place and I'm not going anywhere any time soon. I'm sick ot death of moving! I just want to stay put for a long time.


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