Space

I'm in the middle of cleaning my apartment - right between the dusting, windexing, and Fantastic-ing and the vacuuming and mopping. I'm trying to get the place spruced up for a prospective realtor's inspection. When I dusted the silly picture from a recent wedding of me in a bridesmaid dress hiked up my leg while my boyfriend put on the garter he had caught, I thought about perhaps sticking it in a drawer until after the realtor has made his visit.

Unlike the room of my friend D. who has traveled all over the world, is from California, and has pictures of all her friends and family pasted on the walls, tucked into bookshelves, and dusting her bureau and desk, I have a few select photos and personal mementos sprinkled around my apartment. Of course, one of the limiting factors in what I display is space itself. Influenced, I'm sure, by the shaker-inspired aesthetic of my house growing up, I don't like clutter.

This summer, I'm thrilled to be moving in with my boyfriend. However, I haven't lived with anyone since sophomore year in college, and we both have some reservations about how we're going to respond to sharing our personal space. I can be pretty anal about how things get done and where things go, and there are times when I have a real need to control my space and what it projects when people visit it (as evidenced by my urge to remove the ever-so-slightly risqué picture of myself). My boyfriend, on the other hand, likes to spread. You know, mark his territory with a few socks here, a jacket draped over a chair there, books open on the desk, papers on the coffee table... did I mention I don't like clutter?

Then again, right now he lives with a bunch of slobs. Seriously, the fraternity house he lived in during college was neater than his current digs. Every time I watch him get frustrated with the disorder and filth, a part of me is reassured that our cleanliness and neatness thresholds are more similar than I credit. Trite I know. At one point during my first visit to my boyfriend's home, I was helping his mother clean up after dinner. The rest of the family had headed out to the back yard, and as we began soaping the plates the squeals from the youngest siblings heightened and the laughter got louder. Wiping her hands dry, she turned to me and said, "There will be plenty of time to do these dishes later, but you only get to be a part of their childhood once." She has it right, no doubt. We made obstacles courses, and ran around in the twilight until everyone's sides hurt from laughing.

And with that, I'm off to watch Bri Van de Camp polish her silver to a gleaming shine -- because we all know that vacuuming and mopping can wait, but a new episode of Desperate Housewives needs to be watched before it becomes a re-run.