I feel like I’ve spent the last month going almost non-stop with reviews and shop write-ups (There are still a few more of each to come) stopping occasionally for some kind of emotional dance break so today we’re talking about something completely different- my dresser.
As many of you know, in the last two years I’ve gotten divorced, lost a parent, changed careers and moved clear across the country. None of this prepared me for the transformative experience I had at the beginning of May. Seriously, everything has changed. Up is down, left is right, order has replaced chaos and my life will never be the same. I will now break life into two chunks “before” and “after”, remembering with a shake of my head that long-ago, confusing, misguided time before I decided to put my dresser in my living room.
How did this happen? Well, after braving the Portland rental market (Btw, you people are insane- rental brokers, folks, they are a thing. Look into it.) I found a cute little apartment. Cute little apartments have cute little bedrooms and sometimes a girl comes with an awesome boudoir-style dressing table and a need for lots of sex-toy storage. I knew immediately that if I put the bed and dresser in the bedroom nothing else would fit.
Meanwhile, back in the living room, I had pared down my holdings significantly before my move and the only things set to go in my (reasonably sized) living room were a big comfy chair, a cedar chest, a bookshelf and a MASSIVE television (It was my dad’s – he was a “go big or shut the hell up” kind of guy when it came to TVs, cars and meals.)
It’s weird that I even own this, I don’t watch much TV.
I really just plug in my computer to stream Dance Moms Mad Men
Weighing my options, I saw that putting the dresser in the living room freed up the space in my bedroom for everything else and gave the giant television a home. So, away we went.
Now, previously my dresser served as dresser/make-up table/junk drawer and was usually a giant mess. I knew that shit would not fly in my living room. I had just come off the road from the tour and had used the packing tips from a piece to live out of one small rolling suitcase for 2 weeks and I decided to apply those same ideas to my dresser and here’s where my life started to change.
My underwear drawer used to hold a tangle of panties (Yes, I’m using that word. Handle it. Also: moist.) and socks as well as my giant make-up bag, bills I didn’t want to deal with, things I thought I should hold onto and other assorted crap. (In January I lost a prescription for two weeks. Guess where it was) Also, bras required a drawer all their own and were such a mess that I could never find the one I was looking for- the sentence “how does a garment just disappear?” happened a lot in my life. Non- underwear garments existed in a free-floating, non-folded mass that could be anywhere at any time (and probably had a notebook, three pens and a charger to a phone I no longer own under them) I have no photographic evidence of this awfulness because A. the shame! the crippling shame! and B. who the hell takes pictures of their drawers?
Um, me now.
Yep, showing strangers my underwear. 12 years of catholic school right here
My T-shirts. Because apparently I’m a 20 year-old dude.
Check it: Neat rolls of socks. Baskets to hold bras and cute rolled up panties. I can see all the shirts. No make up! No bills! No unidentified keys! Is this heaven?
So, where are the bills, old keys, make up etc? Well, luckily I had just moved so most of the random junk-drawer-y stuff was gone. The make up was easy, as I have a dressing table (I wasn’t using that before because… yeah, no good reason there) but the rest required some effort. As I had accepted that mail resulted in unmanageable piles of papers that I can’t deal with and then shove places that I can’t see (like under my bras) I set about making all of the people I owe money to stop sending me bills at all. And they did it. Because I said to!! Okay, it’s less of an accomplishment than I’m making it sound. I made everyone stop sending me paper bills. All of my bills now come to my email. I even set stuff up to be paid automatically, which, yes, requires me to make sure money is there to pay them but check this out: my old system was messy and left me with at least 5 separate bills floating around each generating its own stress – now I have one source of stress. I cut my financial stressors by 80% (I think… does that math work? I’m a writer, people) Take that stress!
The life-changing doesn’t stop there. Because I didn’t do this whole thing just to fill my bedroom with ugly crap, what I did end up with in there is the bed, nightstand, dressing table, bookshelf. I mentioned before that sex toy storage was a concern. As a sex writer this concern has been growing for a while and I’ve been keeping it under wraps. No more! Pretty bookshelves now hold the prettier sex toys which, in turn, inspired the decision to decorate the room in celebration of the Superhero Sex Shop Tour.
Right, so by the way, I have the best job ever.
You see, the move that precipitated all this was no mere change of apartments- as I said earlier, I moved across the country and changed careers in the process. I hadn’t quite started owning my new life yet but a bookcase of dildos and sex books right next to my bed makes it a little hard to deny- I am a professional sex geek.
So let’s tally up the things moving my dresser into my living room has done for me:
- It got my sloppy ass organized
- It made me stop being a financial shit-show
- It lowered my stress-level helping me not be a Woody Allen-esque neurotic nightmare
- It made me stop being such a wuss and embrace my new life as a dildo-wielding, consent talking, sex shop touring sex geek.
For reals folks, is there anything my dresser can’t do? I think not.
I could now come to a close by pointing out how my old dresser cum filing cabinet cum junk drawer (now I’m just saying “cum” because, well, cum) hot mess was reflective of the state of my life and mind at the time and this new set-up clearly marks a new beginning but I’m sure you already figured all that out (you’re pretty smart) and I need to go hook the computer up to the TV- I think Chloe has a solo this week Don Draper is going to do a thing. So, peace until next time- when my refrigerator gets put in the bathroom.
