Lalia's Profile

Move the very basics, what you know you will absolutely need. Be ruthless on this. Then get a storage unit and have three categories of storage:

1. What you think you will want/need but aren't sure you will have room for. You may be visiting this category frequently at first. (I know there are good storage places in LIC.)

2. Stuff you love and can't take and want to use at some point later in your lives.

3. Stuff you can't bear to part with yet and want to revisit in a year. Most of this will probably go at that time.

Label your storage boxes very specifically so that you can find what you want when you want it. And then be sure to revisit the unit and do the weeding out!

Be prepared - some of the furniture that you might want to take with you might not be the best solutions for small space living.

Make some money and sell what you can.

I understand that you would want a kitchen table, not just an island, and you do have room for it. But I would definitely put the table on the wall next to the fridge, not in front of the fridge where it is blocking access to the rest of the kitchen. Then, if you are eating alone you can leave it against the wall and if you have company you can pull it out into the space a bit. You have a nice wide opening there so it wouldn't be in the way.

Technology is not the issue for me. Fellow movie-goers are! I'll take a decent big screen at home with family or friends or alone, over people sitting behind or in front of me talking and/or rustling candy bags for two hours.

Admittedly, I am sensitive, but the people around me, and their noise, can easily ruin a movie for me. And doesn't it seem like that kind of thing has gotten worse?

I live in a small house and I love almost everything about it. My wish list would include:

1. A bigger bathroom. Doesn't have to be huge, just bigger than a postage stamp.

2. A first-floor laundry room.

3. A dipping pool! Not practical, but wish I had put one in when I actually had some money.

4. Someone said fresh flowers all the time, and I want them too. Sigh.

5. Built-in bookcases in the living room. For which I would need a slightly larger living room.

Lots of potential in this room! The trick is to make it into a room rather than a hallway.

The first thing I would do is simplify this room visually.

I would replace those heavy knotted curtains with off-white sheers and I would keep them closed all the time. They would allow light into the room but still provide a "wall" for the living room. I would hang these from a very simple white wooden rod.

Then I would take everything out of the room except for the furniture, and maybe also leave the vertical book rack just because it would be pain to move it. (Take the art out, too.) Not forever, just for the purpose of editing. The amount of stuff in this room is creating a hallway/storage area feeling.

Then I would focus on making this a seating area by moving those chairs in off the wall. Until you do that, this is going to feel like a walkway. Bring them in just a little and angle them towards the sofa. Yes, you will have to maneuver around them a bit, but better that than a hallway.

As someone said, the length of the rug contributes to the hallway feeling. I would go with a round rug. It would accentuate the seating area and break the rectangularity of the room.

The lengthwise stripes on the sofa cover also worsen the hallway aspect.

Now carefully start to bring stuff back into the room. I would really be judicious here. Let the seating area and the bookcase and the round rug breathe. I have a feeling that a lot of your stuff may need to be relocated in order to achieve this.

Last, I would get remove all the small artwork and get a couple of large pieces for the wall behind the couch and for the opposite wall, where the chairs are. I'm big on poster art. It's inexpensive and there's some cool stuff out there. I would pick three vertical 24x36 pieces that relate to each other either thematically or visually (color) and hang them together, in black frames, with only a few inches between them. These create the visual effect of a really large piece of art and would anchor that seating area and give that wonderful high wall space some pop. The other relatively inexpensive option for those walls would be large maps.

And as one said, definitely get rid of the coat tree and rethink the shelves across from the door.