Living Space and Me

When it comes to living requirements I need two basic things: peace and space. I don't really care if my apartment is dusty or not, or if it has a nice colour scheme, or if the decor is...well, even a decor.

Today I got my first good look at the apartment I'm moving into and it certainly has space. More space than I remembered, in fact. When it came to choosing either unit A or unit B in the duplex, I chose "space" over "nicely renovated."

So now I take a closer look and, yes, there are some things that make me go "yich!" Despite the lack of cleaning by the previous tenants -- there's a crust of grunge in the bottom of the bathtub, most noticably, which my mother recoiled from in terror -- there are other things that I find myself being a little sad about. The bedroom painted in garish, childish blue and green, for instance. The loose bannisters. The ghost of cat urine still haunting the basement. The fact that both doors have wobbly fixtures and are difficult to open.

Still, though, it's MY new space. Will it be peaceful? I guess I'll know when the new tenant moves into unit A. And I'll really be able to judge when I have some furniture in there, and when I've wiped up the dust and cleaned the toothpaste off the mirrors.

Question #2: Will I be "house proud" in my new apartment? I'm feeling twinges of "house-proudness" at the moment -- as evidenced by my wondering what people will think of my shabby door and my garishly-painted bedroom -- but in the past this instinct for dusting, vacuuming, and cleaning has occupied a far-distant "last place" in my mind, behind all the other things I do in my life. And when I HAVE gotten house-proud in the past it's only lasted a week or so, before some percieved calamity has inspired me to retreat back into a purely functional (and avoidant) routine.

The difference here might be that I have SPACE to put the huge mountains of "stuff" that I've acquired over the years (and that I regrettably have to move during the next few days). If I can partition my life and still have a few square feet of visible floor, maybe I can form a routine of prettifying.

All in all, though, I think I'm in a pensive state of mind because our furnace broke again last night. My days are running out in this building -- and I still have a lot of packing to do -- but it looks like they'll be cold ones. And the fact that somebody backed into my mom's car in the parking lot sort of put a damper on the "first look."

But I'm hopeful! We'll see...