We just moved -our new place

It's official - we moved and we feel good about it :) We are renting our friends' apartment. It's a 52 m2 /560 square foot one-bedroom apartment in our old neighborhood.

Want to take  a peek?

We are still  missing a kitchen table and chairs, we have been eating sitting on the floor (and a few meals at restaurants too..)

The entrance:

Living room:

The art still needs to be hung up..

There is actually a walk-in closet, which we use as storage space and for some of the outer wear and shoes:

The bedroom - we got a new 2x2 meter futon mattress, so that we can all sleep on it without "someone" starting to kick the other two in the middle of the night...

Bathroom is small, but will fit a washing machine:

Kitchen is small too, it will barely fit three people to sit down:

Another view of the living room, where you can see the balcony door:

Packing and moving were so easy.. This was the easiest move ever, and I felt a lightness - being able to move just by ourselves, bringing only the things we really use, fitting everything in the smallest van - it felt like one kind of freedom. The kind that minimalists gush about.  I gladly left behind the excess dishes and nick knacks and books and furniture and table cloths, which the house came with. I left behind "nice things" I could have taken, but didn't need. I was glad to start with a blank canvas, adding just the essentials we have felt necessary enough to acquire during these past 10 months since having to start over.

After being so free of stuff during our trip, feeling so light with just one suitcase for the three of us, I realized that I had been bogged down by excess in the house, even if it wasn't my excess. I still had to look at it and clean around it. And if we removed  most of it, we would just have had to deal with tons of empty space, not to mention trying to fit all the stuff into storage (we couldn't just give it away as it wasn't ours).

This apartment is just the right size for us! The bedroom will fit a large mattress (which is arriving tonight, we borrowed a couple of foam mattresses from my dad's house until then) and it already has closets. We don't need any storage furniture, we have plenty of storage space here as it is. The living room will be Indiana's play space as well, just like in our old apartment. The kitchen is tiny and barely fits a table that seats us three. My friend, the owner, thinks the kitchen is horrible, with yellowish wooden cabinets, and should have been torn out. I think they are just fine!
If everything were spanking new and shiny white, we'd have to be really careful, now it's already lived-in. So we really don't mind.

Each time I move I dislike stuff even more. There is nothing like having to touch and pack and unpack every single little thing you own, every opened bag of cookies, every half-used shampoo bottle, every book, every piece of paper lying around and so on, to make me acutely aware of why I love minimalism, and make me even more resolved to stay clutter-free and on top of the random crap that accumulates unless you keep up with it.

I involved Indiana in packing her own things, and she first picked her most important things and put them in a box. There is some stuff that came with the house that we didn't take with us, and some stuff she just said she didn't need. For example she didn't want to take the doll house.

Since we have no table and chairs yet, and we sleep on the floor on a mattress, it feels like we are camping. Luxury camping with a hot shower and a kitchen!