Around the House

When you rent an apartment (even when it feels like your rent is higher than 90% of the country's mortgage payments), there's a tendency to not really make it your own.  "We won't live here THAT long" or "It's not ours anyways" somehow become excuses for blank walls, boring spaces and general malaise toward decorating.

Let me be clear.  When it comes to our rented apartment, I = malaise.

But in an effort to make our rented apartment feel a little bit more like a home (we did move in back in July, after all) M finally framed and hung some of our favorite pictures of the Chicago's World Fair.

What you can't see in this picture are the high-hanging light bulbs that need to be replaced

And yesterday, after getting rid of four large trash bags of clothing from our closet, I 1) organized my clothing by color, 2) did two loads of laundry, and 3) marveled at how productive I was being.

And now, NOW, I can hear M upstairs cleaning the bathroom.  I would go up there, but I surely don't want to distract him.  I mean, I am probably more effective sitting here blogging than helping.  Because who likes help when they clean?  Certainly not me.  I prefer to do everything by myself, so that I can complain later that I had to do everything by myself.

Because the reality is that, whether you rent, own, squat or whatever, where you live is your home and should- at least I think- reflect in some ways the things you love.  We've chosen to decorate our home with paintings and pictures that we've gathered on our travels: a large painting of a cityscape from Croatia, another of pomegranates from Bosnia, two small paintings from Slovenia (though I'm not really sure the meaning behind the one where it looks like a housewife is being washed after talking to a devil...) and other art, gathered from around the world.  We have pictures of our families, books we love and mirrors picked up at the local flea market.  

So maybe we don't own it, and maybe we won't live here forever.  But we're working to make this little apartment in DC our home, by the things we put on the walls, the people we invite in and the love that we share with each other during this unique time in our lives.