Things are looking at lot different around here — at least in my apartment.

Last week, my pod came two days early to my utmost delight. For almost two weeks my bed had been my primary area for eating, sleeping, entertainment and study. An IKEA trip, some Amazon orders and about a million trips to Target and/or HomeGoods filled in the gaps from the furniture I didn’t bring from home, but my apartment felt sterile and strange without my belongings.

Since the pod I shipped everything in was about the size of my new tiny living room, unloading everything made unpacking a pressing matter.

Well my stuff arrived… 😮🙈

A post shared by Lauren Mauldin (@lauren.u.mauldin) on Sep 12, 2017 at 1:02pm PDT

If I didn’t unpack the boxes, I couldn’t get to my fridge or bedroom without stepping over things. The dogs were less than impressed. Next time you move, put everything in the most inconvenient places as possible… I promise that’s the fastest way to get your life in order, at least aesthetically.

Aesthetically, things are going well here. It took me about a week, but I have everything unpacked.

Before the pod arrived, I wondered if I even needed all the stuff I crammed into it. Sure, a couch would be a welcome addition… but I was doing okay with a limited wardrobe, paper plates and three forks. I was worried that when my stuff arrived, there’s no way it would all fit in the 400 square feet.

I was right to some extent. A lot of the stuff I pulled out of the boxes, I will rarely touch or need. But I feel better knowing that my first (terribly bad) literary magazine publication is in my bookshelf. My horse show ribbons sit on top of the china hutch, and remind me that once upon a time I had my shit together. There’s a comfort in stuff, even if that stuff is practically useless.

The biggest challenge was my closet. My Austin house is rich with closets. The master bedroom had two, as well as a linen closet and a coat closet in the rest of the house. My new apartment has one, and it’s tiny. Even though I had organized and compartmentalized as much as possible, I still couldn’t get the doors to shut.

So I tore them off.

Once I hacked and unscrewed my way into an open closet, my bedroom suddenly felt a thousand times better. I needed to aggressively push something down to make room for the new life.

While an organized closet makes picking out an outfit a possibility, it’s the art on the walls that made this little place feel like somewhere I lived versus a strangely unfurnished hotel room.

I abandoned all concerns about security deposits, and hammered every frame into the walls. It’s more important to me to feel whole, than worry about holes.

With the pieces up, the walls are full. There’s a little growing room to add to my art collection, which I tend to do, but they represent the life I’ve led so far.

Some paintings and art pieces I did back in high school. A Stephen Huneck print from Dog Mountain. Photography from WEF, show photos of Simon. A signed print Tim bought online years ago and was super excited about, because it was done by the same artist who designed the X-Files alien. My art from Japan. It’s all here.

I’m not settled yet, but I feel a lot less like a drifter. Sure, my furniture is too big for my living room and I don’t have an actual dining table, but I have a lot me in this little place. That’s more than enough for now.

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