This month, Apartment Therapy is hosting The January Cure, a month-long project encouraging readers to take a good look at their homes and make meaningful changes that will improve their living spaces. I got a bit of a late start, but I’m all in. 

I’m about to air some dirty laundry. Well, it’s not technically laundry, though I have some of that, too. I’m about to show you the messiest, most disaster-prone part of our small apartment. Are you ready?

 

This is our spare room. It’s very small. In fact, in the original layout of the house, it wasn’t a separate room at all. The owners built up a wall and a pocket door, turning this into a very large closet room. When we rented the house I was excited that we’d have another room, where I could work on projects and maybe set up a little cozy reading nook. Intead, this room has basically become storage.

We (ahem, ok, I) have a lot of stuff. I have a lot of books. I have crafting supplies. I am a sentimental collector, so yes, I have years and years worth of letters from friends, newspaper clippings, papers I wrote in college. Owning all this stuff makes living in a small space challenging, and this room is proof of that. We clean it up, and within weeks it’s a disaster zone again.

I really want to get this space under control and make it useable. So when the January Cure encouraged me to get a fresh perspective in a problematic space in our apartment, you know where I went.

In this perspective-getting project, the Apartment Therapy people encourage you to sit in a place where you can get a perspective on a room that you don’t normally have, and to just sit and observe. Imagine the space empty, mentally removing whatever clutter or mismatched objects might be there. Figure out what does work and what doesn’t work in the space, and make note of the changes that you envision for the space, so you can move forward with clarity.

I immediately realized how many things in this space can simply be thrown away. I quickly thought of other spaces in our apartment (both in closets and just in other rooms) where some of this stuff could go. For example, my studio photography lamp can go into a corner in the dining room area. Not only will it fit better there, without feeling like it’s just taking up space, but it might encourage me to actually use it more often. I realized that buying more pretty storage boxes would really help with some of the clutter, and that those big plastic storage bins (we keep our camping gear in them) can go into another closet.

So, I’m hoping that in about 30 days time, this room is in much better shape, and I can’t wait to show you.

I’ll keep posting about the January Cure, too, so check back in to hear more about what we’re doing to cure our tiny apartment.