Living Spaces

In the 8 years I've lived in Santa Barbara, I've moved a total of 7 times (including the initial move upon my arrival). That's roughly one move per year ;-) Since Allan and I have been married, we've moved a total of 5 times:

1. A 350-square-foot studio (brand new)
2. An 800-sq-ft 2BR/1BA apartment in family student housing (built in the '70s)
3. A 450-sq-ft 1BR/1BA apartment in family student housing (built in the '50s)
4. A 750-sq-ft 1BR/1BA apartment built in 2003
5. A 1000-sq-ft 2BR/2BA apartment -- our current one.

So as you can see, our current apartment is the largest place we've lived in to date. I can still remember our cleaning endeavors in the previous apartments. The studio, while being the smallest, was the hardest to maintain because it was so cramped. The next apartment, I only lived in for a total of 10 months, because Todd was born around then, I spent the summer at my parents' house, graduated the following school year, and lived with my parents again while working at Amgen. The third apartment was again small and cramped, especially when Todd began living with us full-time a year after we moved in. The next apartment was a welcome breath of fresh air, but as Todd got bigger and we eventually had to get him his own bed, things started feeling crowded once more. Especially since we couldn't, as we had in all our previous residences, store our extra stuff on the patio.

When we moved into our current apartment, I mused that if we had trouble keeping a 450 and 750 square foot living space clean, how were we going to fare with something even larger? To my surprise, we've been doing better at the upkeep of this place than we have in the others. I realized it's precisely *because* we have so much more space to store things (one of the walk-in closets is large enough to use as a micro-room-- it has a window, you can stick a twin mattress in it, and still have plenty of room to move about and reach all the shelves). Now there is a place for everything, and stuff isn't just stashed willy-nilly into closets, or left lying around because said closets are too full. Because no matter how neatly you arrange things on table and countertops, too much stuff still gives a cluttered, untidy appearance.

I think the other factor is that the apartment IS so much more spacious, it *looks* so much nicer when it's cleaned up (that sounds like a self-evident statement, but I'm comparing our clean 1-BR with the clean 2-BR, there's a difference!) -- even the tiniest bit of clutter is contrasts sharply and turns into such an eyesore, motivating me that much more to tidy up.

Well, so far, I'm enjoying a neat and clean living space. Then again, we've only been living here 3 weeks. Let's see how things fare in the coming months! ;-)

And if you haven't already seen it, I've finally, after 5 moves, managed to take before and after pictures of the apartment:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2436941&id=3605072