Splash No. 113 - New Home
New Home
A few weeks ago, my roommates and I moved apartments in San Francisco. After spending a year living in an overpriced apartment in the Mission neighborhood, we decided to move to an overpriced apartment in NOPA, a neighborhood closer to the park. The whole process of moving during a pandemic is weird, but everything worked out pretty well all things considered. I moved to San Francisco last year, with just a few suitcases full of clothes, so it was crazy to realize how much stuff I had accumulated in just a year. However, I decided to get rid of the furniture that I had been using for the last year, which I had received for free from some friends and took up 90% of the space in my old bedroom.
For the first time in my life, I started with a (mostly) empty bedroom and had the freedom to decorate it however I wanted. A blessing and a curse. I was initially excited by the prospect of my room being my oyster but quickly started to realize how difficult the process would be. There are many factors at play that made this design process brutal. The biggest being: I hate spending money, but I can’t stand IKEA furniture. So, I had the gargantuan task of not only figuring out how to block out my space for different pieces of furniture, but also choosing which pieces of furniture were in my tiny budget, fit the space properly, and matched my desired aesthetic (light-colored wood that doesn’t feel cheap). Add in the collapse of global supply chains due to COVID, and you end up with a 23-year-old Indian-American boy sleeping on a mattress on the floor and using an ironing board as a desk for nearly two weeks.
And let me tell you— it was terrible. Previously, I thought of myself as a cockroach, able to survive and thrive in inhospitable conditions, especially after living in a Georgia Tech apartment building for 3 years. But somehow, this was worse. As a lifelong homebody (even before it was cool/mandated by a virus), I’ve always been attached to the space that I live in and have an insatiable need to have a space I feel settled in. Not having a bed frame wasn’t the hardest part, although my back might disagree. Instead, being unable to unpack fully without the storage space that a bed frame afforded made it impossible to feel settled. Tall towers of boxes haunted me, and I had no idea what laid within each of them. It felt like living in a really crappy hotel, where the mattress was weirdly nice and all of the furniture was made of cardboard and for some reason you didn’t pack a suitcase and just had stuff strewn about your closet (which has no lights). But, you don’t ever really leave the hotel and you live in that state indefinitely.
Thankfully, I’m on the other side of the mountain of getting basic furniture and I’ve started to feel settled. I managed to pay less than $350 for my bed and desk combined, get some nice plants, and get everything organized in a way that utilizes the room’s space pretty well. Sure, our living room TV is sitting on a couple of speaker boxes and half of our living room is completely empty, but at least I can go to my room and know that (mostly) everything is in its place (except for any and all wall hangings). I’m excited to slowly gather more things and find new uses for the space that I have and the backyard that we never had before. In a time where we’ve had to experience so much sameness for such a long time, it’s been refreshing to be able to find a new space and mold it to match me. But until I get everything in order, I’ll be watching _Top Chef_, hoping that the TV doesn’t fall over.
The fight against systemic racism continues. With each day, we move closer to a more equitable world. Reminders:
Ways you can help
Anti-racism resources
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From an impeccably designed bedroom,
Nikhil