Never underestimate the power of clean windows

I cleaned like a crazed person yesterday, hence today's sore muscles. Anyone who claims 17 square meters couldn't possibly take any time to clean hasn't seen my place. Once it is filled and decorated like a proper home it'll take you just as long as cleaning that amount of stuff in some other, bigger apartment. Perhaps even more because of the limited space. I could probably write a whole book about how to clean to not just move dust around. How successful my methods are depends. Logically, the more dust runs down a drain, the cleaner the rest of the apartment gets, right? Most likely, the vacuum cleaner basically just removes dust form the floor and spits out other compositions of it in all directions too small to see, yeah?

Anybody want to figure out how I previously fit all this into a 6 square meter room? Okay, so I love surrounding myself with things I like, I have tons of books and movies, numerous hobbies competing for space and time, and naturally everybody wouldn't be happy in a similar setting, but it isn't a mess, and I was alright in that tiny room for 18.6 years or so. Most of the time spent there was sitting at my ugly but enormous desk anyway, not very different from right now (not at all actually, except I'm now in front of a huge window looking out on a very gray and rainy Stockholm, and the computer is not the same).

It might be argued that big spaces frighten me.... but it's mainly that I always find them cold and impersonal. I can admire stylish, clean, minimalistic and open homes just as much as the ordinary Swede who just spent a small fortune on turning their house into white walls, oak floors, invisible storage, white orchids in fake old looking pots, and sterile curtain arrangements, but as much as I like looking at photos of open, organized places where the main color theme is white, I don't think I could be happy there. That is rather fascinating considering I'm also a person who thrives on organizing and planning. Perhaps I like small and cozy with a potential for mess because there is also great potential for a need for organizing. Guess I dream of a big house just as much as the general human being, but big, open, neutral and minimalistic, no thank you. It just isn't homey, no matter how good it looks. And it's good to know that you can live in tight spaces with little money - chances are you will involuntarily end up in that situation at some point anyway, and seeing your changed circumstances as a cozy challenge rather than hell must surely be a good thing. Growing up in less than socially accepted or generally considered ideal circumstances teaches you to make the best out of what you have, which is the only thing the majority of us can ever aspire to do, anyway.