Too Intense?

I have been thinking that our world is too cluttered. I decided that maybe some of the problem is that our bookshelf is now directly across from our couch in the living room. Why is this a problem you ask? Because I now stare at it all the time.
I keep looking at photos of other people's apartments and their bookshelves and they don't seem cluttered, why do mine?
I think it might be our bookshelf. It is large and has no back which means a lot of negative space. So I decided to do something radical and go vertical.
I am not ready to pare down my books anymore, or get rid of them all together but I don't pull them out all the time anymore either. So vertical isn't too much of an inconvience...but...is it too intense?
My other idea is to build little shelves or boxed in areas. What do you think? Too Intense?

The Great Outdoors

In New York City any outdoor space is good, a fire escape or access to a roof but a porch well that is prime real estate! And our new apartment has not one but TWO yes two porches. Of course they came with the mess that the previous tenant left in the rest of the house. Below is the back porch minus 25 garbage bags of you name it.

And this is the porch before my guy made it his mission in life to clean it up...

After a few more garbage days we should have the back porch entirely cleared out and ready for spring. My guy simply can't choose between the convenience of a gas grill or the quality of a charcoal grill and so he has chosen to have both.

The plan is to try to start planting in two weeks- and the first of many bbq...soon to come

One Room at a Time

Things are coming together. This weekend we continued our battle against the box. We now have a dinning room and as it is the room you first enter into the apartment having it come together has done a lot for our sanity.

This weekend was beautiful so my guy spent a good portion of it doing his best to clear out the back porch from the previous tenants crazy plantings and such. We also battled a good 60 lbs of laundry to the laundry mat. Thank goodness we have a car!! and I have a strong guy.I don't think I have done that much laundry in one big batch since my college days.

So we are now clean and have a lovely dinning room and bedroom (I have pictures of that too but it is on the other camera so you will all have to wait)

Next up the living room.

New Living Arrangement

This is my life right now. We moved in last Saturday post blizzard and my guy had to leave for a trip on Monday so i have been roughing it for the last few days. It isn't too bad. A couple nights ago I dug around and found some key items: a plate, a bowl, a small pot and my underwear. We are sleeping in the dinning room right now and the bed is my safe haven and really only surface to sit on.

This weekend we are hoping to get a rug for the bedroom so we can move the bed into there- I think it will give us a much needed sense of normalcy.

This is my Life on Moving

Most folks will tell you I hate chaos- and so why is it that my living room looks like this?
Well 4 wisdom teeth, one fixer upper apartment and February being a darn short month later and this is what my life has come to.
The new place is taking shape. Yesterday we had some great help from the lovely Michelle (AKA the tooth fairy). She was a master painter and cheerleader.
Thankfully today more of the cavalry is coming in the form of my good friend Mary, who short of you all seeing this photo is one of the few people I would let see my life like this. She helped us to move in so it seems right that she help us move out. I am at that packing point where I don't know which way is up anymore and I can't figure out what to do next so I find myself going from room to room. I think a pair of fresh eyes and hands is just what we need.

Packing Sucks

Sorry for no pictures today, I forgot the camera at home so you will all have to love me for my words alone.
We are now two weeks to moving which means our current apartment is pure chaos. In fact if I am honest it is amazing that my guy and I can find our way out of the apartment without those little stripes of light on the floor they have in case of emergency on airplanes. The other day I spent 10 minutes looking for my shoes with one of those horrifying moments where I was convinced I had packed them.
Yesterday i took a snow day and packed my little heart out. My guy came home early due to the ever increasing mass of snow and helped. We managed to put down a layer of primer to our lovely red kitchen cabinets in hopes that we will get our security deposit back.
Because nothing can be simple there is an extra kink in the plans: tomorrow I am getting all 4 of my wisdom teeth out. That's right, in the middle of a move I am getting major dental work done. This may explain the insanity I feel to have the bulk of the packing done before tomorrow. My lovely friend Michelle is coming over this weekend to babysit me, feed me pain killers and smoothies and watch Veronica Mars so that my guy and his friend can keep working on our new place. They are going to try to bang out the closet work so we actually have some place to put our clothing once we move.