It was a Saturday morning at 10am and I was still comfortably sleeping on my side of our queen size bed. My fiancee comes to the bed, gives me a sweet kiss on the cheek and then goes on to say in a kind voice “Are you going to do something about your dirty clothes pile in the corner? Also your nightstand can use some attention”. My reply was “Yeah they’re cleaned already aren’t they?”. I get up and look in the corner only to see last weeks clothes having their own little private congregation with all the socks praying to the pants pile covered by a polo shirt roof. My nightstand has also seemed to accumulate a switch, a few more books, and a treasure chest of change. Literally! Well I guess that was last week I cleaned them.

Now for a little backstory. I tend to live in a state of organized confusion where to other people it may look like a mess but I know where everything is. My “messes” accumulate into their own natural caches of convenience where the most frequently used possessions gravitate towards where I spend the most time in the house so that I never have to spend too much time looking for most things. I have labeled the clothes pile in the corner my lightly soiled work heap, where if I wake up late I have quick access to socks, jeans, and undershirts. Honestly who pays attention to if I wear the same jeans to work twice in one week? Don’t tell me you have never done this. The closet has most often been for dinner party shirts, dress pants, and as you dive further back you start to find the Christmas gift shirts from your aunt that spells your name wrong on cards and the dreaded ‘suit’.

Sharing a bedroom

While this method has worked well in my bachelor days; apparently this isn’t an ideal strategy when you share your bedroom with an Architect fiancee who has a keen eye for design. Crossing the line between my side of the bedroom and her side is like going from a musty late 1700s bedroom, entering a magical wardrobe, and coming out the other side in a land of talking animals, flowers that emit their own light, and furniture you’d find in Buckingham palace. OK maybe not that extreme but they at least have their own different zip codes.

A simple solution to my organizational woes

Cluttered nightstand and the clothes hamper corner after taking them to the washer

To combat this habitual problem of item accumulation on my nightstand and in my corner of the bedroom I came up with a simple solution to move the dresser from the guest room into my ‘hamper corner’. We don’t have guests that stay over as often as I originally thought when I first put it there and when we do I found they weren’t using this dresser anyways. Instead its main purpose was holding socks, boxers, and other miscellaneous old clothes that I never wore anyways and should instead be donated to a second hand shop.

The dresser in our desolated guest room waiting to be relocated

To recap here is why I deemed moving the dresser a good idea.

  • Takes up the physical space of the corner perfectly to block me from throwing clothes there
  • Gives more surface to put my electronics on that is in a place close to the bed
  • Be a dedicated place to put my wireless phone charger away from the bed so I don’t always check it at night
  • Allows me to hide the wires from my electric extension block
  • Provides more storage for other clothes items such as socks and underwear saving me from having to walk between rooms
  • Wasn’t being used by guests and we infrequently have guests that would use it anyways
  • Empties out the guest room to allow us to plan to redesign that space
  • Even if it doesn’t match our rooms “theme” it is a better alternative to clothes clutter
  • Gives Chen an activity to paint it to match the room and a future article!
  • Makes our bedroom more of a peaceful sanctuary

There are some cons about moving it which I’ll also note but otherwise I’m disappointed I didn’t put it in our bedroom originally.

  • Moving the dresser by myself led to a slightly strained lower back which I pulled even worse a few days later assembling an exercise bike by myself. Both dumb ideas on my part
  • This is a cheap way-fair dresser I originally bought when I was single and first moved to Boston so it doesn’t really ‘fit’
  • The guest room now looks like even more of a barren room where you would hide a disgraced family member.
Final more organized results

Two weeks after moving the dresser

It has been two weeks since the “dresser” project and I am still delightfully pleased with how moving this piece of furniture has allowed better use of the space in the corner of the room behind our door and appear more visually alluring. I was originally concerned the added surface would just lead me to putting even more clutter on it but so far this hasn’t been the case. I’ve even found I’ve been able to sleep better with the peace of mind that my night stand wasn’t a hang out for all of my stuff; where they were potentially plotting against me when I fell asleep. Now they have a large chasm they would need to conquer to be able to attack me. Nonetheless as you can see from the pictures posted throughout the blog that nightstand really was a mess and it does look more homey. Chen was also pleased as well and hasn’t had to lovingly remind me to clean my corner of the bedroom for two weekends now. The clothes have migrated to another corner but I have a plan to put a compact clothes hamper in the bathroom and to plan a closet upgrade during the summer which I will share here.

I did move the Alexa spot device back onto the nightstand since I didn’t like how it sounded when playing music on the top of the dresser. I’ve also been tempted to move my phone back to the nightstand too but this would just end up leading me to continually check notifications when I should be trying to sleep. It has been a tough habit to resist the urge to check the phone every time I hear it vibrate on the charger but ultimately this should lead to better sleeping quality once I’m used to cutting ties with my phone after 12 o’clock.

Also I’ve enjoyed not having to go between rooms as often to get new clean socks every day, this results in a minute or two time savings everyday. That could add up to a 6 or more hour time savings over the course of a year which gives a little more time to write these kind of articles!

If you’re anything like me and have enough floor-space to clutter it with lightly-soiled clothes do yourself a favor and find some furniture to take up that space that will allow you to be more organized, less messy, and make your home more alluring!