Another one of my roommates I'll refer to as The Matchmaker. She and I worked for the same sandwich shop where she was responsible for lining up all the shifts. Lucky me! She offered to schedule me with all the cute guys who worked there. Oh boy, did I take advantage of that. Friday and Saturday night shifts felt more like date nights. Slow shifts turned into soccer matches, sing-alongs, dance parties, and way too much fun to be called work.
Ironically, one of the first times The Matchmaker heard about her future husband was from me. I came home from a party telling her about some guy who waved a dollar around, offering to give it to whoever would feed him grapes. Being in a silly mood, I took him up on the offer. Why not? Apparently, The Matchmaker didn't think too highly of a guy who'd do that. Fast-forward a few years, and the two meet at a Christmas party and the sparks fly. They're now happily married with three kids. And while no long-lasting relationships came out of her attempts to set me up with my hottie coworkers, I still smile when I think about all those fun shifts. And I know she's gotten more than a few laughs telling the story of the man with the grapes.
This is my half of the room. As I mentioned earlier this week, my bed is raised on 7 inch lifts, providing ample storage space beneath it. The other happy side effect is that my king-size comforter now fits on my twin bed. Woohoo!
The shelving unit is a combination of two from IKEA. It's nice, because they sell 3 types of drawers for it depending on your preference. They hold a lot, are easy to assemble, and don't take up too much room.
The closet still looks messy, but you get the idea. The hanging shelves are also from IKEA. They take up a lot less space than a dresser but do the trick.
For now, my shoes are piled up at the bottom. I'm still trying to decide whether or not to get a shoe rack.
And the TV's just stuck in the corner there on a small side table. Not very earthquake-friendly, so that's another thing on the list of things to resolve.
This picture below is of my shelf in the closet. It's semi-organized. I had the bins and little shelves from before and have just rotated what gets stored in them. It's sad, but I have a whole bin under my bed that's just clothes I want to sell on Ebay. The next step is getting something up on those plain white walls!
One of the things I used to get in trouble the most for growing up was a messy room. It's never been a top priority for me. I usually go from utter chaos to organized and clean and then back again.
Let me preface this disclosure by saying I don't normally live in this kind of wreckage. Next thing you know Oprah's going to be knocking on my door with a camera crew, asking what this disarray says about the inner workings of my mind. I really do try to keep a clean house, but I thought I'd offer a little encouragement to those of you think your house is "messy," (which means there are a few toys on the floor or a couple things scattered around). That's nothing!
Mom, I'm sorry you have to see this. The recent combination of a bursting water heater (requiring the removal of some boxes from the garage), a lost driver's license (necessitating frantic searches through any and all papers), a trip to Chicago (and a lack of energy to unpack), and the discovery of the missing packages (and enthusiasm to open them but not put away the gifts and boxes) resulted in this:
