Organizing My Life (or Not)

Jesse arrived home from his business/week 'o fun trip to San Francisco last week to an apartment that was slightly cleaner and somewhat more organized (although, honestly, it was hard to tell the parts that I had tackled). Unpacking this apartment has been the bane of my existence. I hate having piles of stuff everywhere, but I can't seem to motivate myself to make any significant changes. There are so many things to do! Where do I start?!

One of the problems is that this apartment, while bigger, has about 50% less storage space. If you remember our place down the street, it had an entire hallway of marvelous built-ins with drawers and high cabinets that made unpacking and organizing much easier. We just don't have enough pieces of furniture to put our clothes and stash away things like cloth napkins and the state of my exploded fabric collection. I guess one solution would be to just go out and purchase another chest of drawers, but then, how do I know if it will be the right size/shape/color? It's a viscous cycle that keeps me in a perpetual state of organizational purgatory.

While Jesse was out, I was attempting to get all of the paperwork necessary to begin doing our taxes and accidentally knocked over a giant pile of miscellaneous papers. Just before winding back my leg to kick them all over the room in frustration, I decided that this would be my first conquest. No more un-filed papers! It took me all afternoon and my back and legs ached from sitting on the floor for hours sorting, filing, shredding, and tossing things away. I also cleaned out the file cabinet so we could start off the new year fresh without having to jam new important papers in with really old bank statements and nonsense that (I guess) used to be important. It felt good and more importantly, cleared up some precious shelf space in the bedroom.

Next on the agenda? Our closets and that beast of a built-in pictured above. I think we're going to have to break down and drive out to Ikea for another set of shelving for our massive, yet empty entryway. Maybe this time we'll splurge a little. Instead of playing it safe with our favorite, good 'ol Billy bookcase, we'll go for the more sophisticated Expedit series with cabinet and drawer inserts. It would certainly make stashing things a lot easier!