Wow. A new bed. And wow. Our apartment shrank.

[icarus]

We officially outgrew our apartment yesterday.

Okay, this has been going on for some time now. What was once a spacious one-bedroom apartment with wood floors and a lovely view of the mountains has been shrinking.

Yes, fine, the kitchen started out small and has stayed that way. wildernessguru and I both love to cook and cook together, but the narrow (if colorful and appealing) kitchen is an elbow hazard. The dining area (I can't call it a room with a straight face) has always been tragically tiny.

But the living room began its existence comfortably large with high ceilings and wide windows. Once upon a time it had an open expanse wide enough to land a small glider. Then it sprouted a couch and a couple of chairs, which didn't seem to take much room. But of course, couches seem to acquire coffee tables after the third or fourth spilled drink. Then one of the chairs grew an ottoman and a magazine holder. Two lamps became three, and of course the halogen needed a home. Surely the curtains didn't take up much space?

One bookshelf multiplied and became four, and yet there are still books on the floor, piled in a two foot stack by the ottoman.

A TV appeared in our formerly TV-free household. I blame the weather. It showed up one day right before Seattle was due to be snowed in for a week (with the video store membership). I suppose it was cold. Then the phone, which perched on the TV with the curling cord falling in front of the screen, complained, and thus a long table arched over the TV, accomodating the phone, a fifth lamp, and as near as I can tell, a landing place for every piece of junk in the house. Periodically I clear-cut this area.

Now what home would be complete without a cat? Ours certainly wouldn't. While the cat began as a small little handful of fluff, two trees instantly grew up in opposite corners of the apartment, for one must not have an unexercised kitty. A litter box took up residence in the bathroom behind the door, becoming a covered litter box for everyone's convenience.

Then the livingroom developed a squatter.

The laptop was supposed to be for work, and travel, but give a computer an inch.... Soon it had taken over a corner of the coffee table as a permanent occupant. After a few years it began wheezing and losing data, and in the circle of life, the laptop went into retirement and was replace by a 17" LCD monitor with an Aspire ASE360 CPU and AMD Athelon chip. With a printer! Which developed its own stand (and another small but desperately needed bookshelf, still not enough).

The rather negligible closet space in the apartment, well. The closet spillway I blame entirely on wildernessguru. Unlike most women, I am a minimalist when it comes to clothes. It comes from being a Buddhist nun. Once you've spent ten years with everything the same color, you break the habit of owning more than you absolutely need (though I do hold onto favorite t-shirts even when there are more holes than shirt, yes, yes, I'm the guy in the house).

wildernessguru unfortunately has a jacket fetish. Can't drag him past a display of jackets without him having to check them out. He comes home with a guilty grin and... yet another jacket... especially designed for certain esoteric weather conditions, it's Gortex 10-ply-blah-blah-blah and check out the extra pockets! Plus it was on sale. When he's not buying himself jackets he's buying me jackets. I have more jackets than shoes, and it takes a brave person to squeeze through the hangers in our closet to pry one out.

The base of the closet is full up to jacket level. Did you notice the boyfriend's name is wildernessguru? You may imagine that the "wilderness" part of the name means he just grabs a can of pork n' beans, a row of traps and a .45, but in reality it means six backpacks (two daypacks, one mid-size pack, an expedition pack, the custom pack, and the pack he bought me), a half dozen camp stoves (white fuel cell and canister types, plus the multi-fuel for overseas trips), two tents, four sleeping bags, pre-packed fire starters (he makes them), a bazillion flashlights in various sizes, various headlamps (working and non-working), the titanium ultra-lite cookset, and every outdoor bit, bob, and bauble known to man. Much of it fits in the closet. Until he's looking for something. Which is why I call this area "the spillway."

Okay. The books are my fault. (And the computer. And the DVDs squeezed next to the TV.) Funny. I say we need more bookshelves. He says we need more closet space. We both say, "Buy fewer books/buy less outdoor gear!" But I feel I have the moral high ground. Fewer books, what a ridiculous idea.

Still, we were fine. Everything had a corner. Books accumulated. The spillway spilled. But we could clean up. There was enough open space for three sweeps of a lawn mower should we ever choose to mow our hardwood floors.

There was one last hold out to our younger years: The bedroom. wildernessguru still had his queen-size futon from college. I still had a big wicker basket (full of art supplies) from when I was seven and a lamp from when I was in high school. We more or less camped out in the bedroom with few concessions to adulthood. Okay, wildernessguru bought a dresser, but it lived in the closet. There was a second spillway next to the closet known as the laundry basket.

Well, our bed arrived yesterday.

Mahogany, platform-style, vaguely Asian in design.

I cleared out the bedroom, scrubbed the floor and walls, and spent a happy couple of hours with screw drivers, cursing quietly as I squared the headboard to the frame and realized I'd better start with the foot of the bed. I used to work construction and know a carpenter's most important tool is a finely honed collection of four-letter words -- wildernessguru knows to stay out of my way. He went to go seam-seal a new tent (ask him what that means). I left the screws loose until I had it all assembled, then cranked down on them. Got out my cordless drill as I debated whether or not to put in the fetish hardware that prompted the purchase of the bed (the futon was pine but you drill into pine that's been heat-aged for 25 years), or wait until I was less tired and apt to make a mistake. Caution won.

It's gorgeous. Elegant. Last night I lit candles and felt like I was sleeping in a hotel.

The cat has been playing, leaping from the bed to race across the open living room and back again. He's delighted. Every time I walk by the bedroom I smile, That looks nice.

But now the laundry basket won't fit. A queen-sized bed seems to be slightly wider than a queen-sized futon frame and the manufacturer was never able to give me exact measurements. The laundry looked terrible there anyway. The ficus has been kicked out and I knew my wicker basket would have to go. The ficus is parked by the computer, the mirror doesn't work on that wall any more and --

-- my god this apartment is small.

wildernessguru started circling apartment ads last night.

Comments

[rike-tikki-tavi.livejournal.com]

Ok, wg's amount of outdoor gear is scary. As for the book problem, do you have a corridor in your apartment? IMO you can alway fit another bookshelf in a corridor and it looks super cool to boot.