Re-arranging. My Clinical Disorder and Obsession.

Since I was a little girl, I have been known to re-arrange anything I could lay my hands on at least once a month. My poor Barbies never knew what was going on, their home moved so much. My parents think I might have a clinical problem, but what can I say, I just like the change.


Since Scott and I got married, I've toned it down quite a bit - we've only re-arranged our apartment three or four times in a year and a half. It's a good thing I'm not a homeowner with any carpentry skills, or I'd probably be knocking out walls every six months (although this sounds suspiciously like my dad...hmm. Apple...tree?)


However, this most recent adventure was not necessarily my idea...fully. For Christmas, we got an Xbox Kinect. Normally I'm not a huge fan of any sort of video game and tend to shun them completely, but this gaming system has rocked my world. Scott and I actually went out to buy a game...FOR ME. Although in my defense it's not a game, it's a fitness "game" where you can do various exercise programs and even yoga. Like a glorified aerobics DVD. But I digress. We played it at our friends' house and had a blast...then brought it home to our apartment, only to realize that we couldn't use it because we didn't have enough space. Thus, the need and intense desire to re-arrange was born in both our minds.


Here are some "Before" pictures. And yes, I'm laying my soul bare to you because you are about to see what my apartment normally looks like - mess and all. Don't judge me.

Please excuse Scott in the photo. I was in a hurry when I snapped
these shots and didn't have the heart to ask him to stop his game.

Because I majored in Interior Design, I'm more than slightly anal, and I grew up with a father that drew floorplans every fifteen seconds (again, apple...tree), this is how Scott and I function whenever we re-arrange. A couple months after we moved in, I took a Saturday and measured our apartment down to the inch and drew a scale model, including our major pieces of furniture. The below diagram is how everything was previously arranged.

We were pretty stumped on how to fix the Kinect game-space dilemma. In fact we pondered on it for several hours. After a while, Scott came up with this as the solution:

In the end, we figured out an arrangement that would work, and it worked well with my recent insane desire to purge. 


We had been toying with the idea of combining our desks and working from one for quite some time, since Scott's schoolwork is mostly clinic-work and less homework now. When he does study, he's usually on the couch with his laptop, and his desk was collecting a bit of dust. So that was our major change. And behold, the fabulous result:

We took the extension off Scott's desk to make it smaller, and moved it
where the dining room table / seldom used reading nook used to be.  

We had originally planned to take down what we fondly refer to as "Ugly Mirror" (my dad hates this mirror), but after we moved the desk I was shocked to discover that I loved having it there. Scott has the far end of the desk with the laptop, and the desktop area is my workspace. Like I said before, Scott is usually on the couch with his laptop and doesn't require much of a workspace anymore.

This is my attempt to keep my paper piles at bay. Most of my clutter falls into these three categories, so I've designated folders for everything to fall into. Plus, my favorite little notepad for grocery lists, etc.

My favorite part of the big change is our art arrangement, and the way the afternoon sun hits it.
Happy sigh.

The base of the lamp is working as a sort of "docking station" for us. The speakers can be plugged into either my computer or Scott's, depending on what's going on. The same goes for the printer, that way we can share. The other part we loved about this arrangement was how close I am to the kitchen. No more traipsing back and forth between cooking dinner and checking e-mails on the opposite side of the apartment. Whoop!

 So, what happened to all our eighteen tons of desk stuff? A lot of it got put into bags destined for Goodwill, or bags destined for the garbage. We were able to condense quite a bit, since we had duplicates of a lot of things. Sharing a desk area allowed us to keep most things in one storage area. (The top of the main storage area you can see peeking up behind my monitor in the above photo.) The rest of it, went to our "library". We came to the conclusion that we didn't really need half the books that we kept here, so we boxed up three boxes (with a few more stacks in the hallway that are waiting for more boxes), and then converted the library into a shared space.

Please excuse the liquor cabinet look on top of the library. I'm not a huge fan, but I was tired of the bottles taking up room in my tiny pantry closet and this also makes it easier to make some quick cocktails when we have friends over.

Easy access to blank notecards, stamps, address books, and notebooks.

But enough with the desk area....what in the world did we do to the living area?

Moving the trunk to underneath the window actually gave us the benefit of significantly more sitting area in our living room without overcrowding. Something we've found pretty difficult to do in this small space. When we are ready to use the Kinect, we just swing the coffee table out of the way. My old desk turned into a media center, which was excellently timed, since our old hodge-podge arrangement was on the verge of collapse.

Look at all that SPACE! I can hardly stand it. 

To finish it off, the dining room table went where Scott's desk used to be, and our little recycling can lives tucked away in the corner. Whenever we have company over, we can easily pull out the table to seat more people.

And for inquiring minds...what happened to all Scott's medical equipment and teeth molds? Neatly boxed up and destined for the front closet. 

We are beyond thrilled with this newest arrangement. It gave us the opportunity to go through and finally get rid of accumulated debris and things we no longer needed. I think it's going to be a really good thing for us, and I'm wrapping up this post so I can go check out the Yoga program on the Kinect. Hope you enjoyed your weekend as much as I did!