We have a room that is largely unused.

Well, I shouldn't say unused: it simply has no respectable purpose. It's the catch-all of the condo, kind of like that one drawer in the kitchen that attracts pens, paperclips, safety pins, pennies, and whatever else we happen to find lying around. We call the room an office, but the desk only takes up a teeny bit of the space. We used to have a futon in there (so it could have been used as a guest room, I suppose), but Nick sold that to my cousin a few months ago when she moved into her own apartment.

So, what has been sitting in the room? Baskets of clean, folded laundry belonging to yours truly. You know me and closets. I must defend, however, that I have not had a dresser since I moved in with Nick. I grew up with a big closet and two dressers, so it was a bit of an event figuring out how to store all my stuff with only a closet to work with (albeit a really big one).

I do not think my volume of clothing is absurd for no one has ever questioned my storage needs—heck, when I moved into my aunts' home, my dad came out and built additional areas to hang my clothes without any reaction (though, he may have just been dulled to clothing volume because of my mom's collection).

Nick, on the other hand, seems to think I have a lot of clothes. I find this laughable because his closet is all but bursting at the seams; he has four or five long containers that slide beneath the bed; AND he has a five-drawer dresser. All storage areas are full. (Of course, he doesn't switch out winter and summer clothes like I do, but still.)

Anyway, my storage system in this dresser-less existence was an impressive combination of baskets and stacked containers, but it required constant vigilance.

All that changed when I realized that I could fit a dresser in the room with the futon gone. That's right: after nearly six years, I have a dresser! It's wonderful! I spent a day reorganizing my clothing and other miscellaneous bits then decided that I might as well claim the whole room as sort of a closet-entryway…second-closet…outer-closet. By that evening, I was calling it my closet proper, and Nick was all, "Wah!?"



And behind the door:



I have found myself wandering into this room more, lighting candles and buying Wallflowers. It's absolutely sinful. I think Nick is in a state of bemusement. I did let him retain a tiny corner of real estate to keep his computer desk…see? I can share.