“Home is where the heart is.”

I look at these big houses, devoid of personality, and I think, “Why the fuck would anyone want to live here?” Houses with big, empty rooms, perfectly clean big furniture, and expensive prints on the walls, and I think, “Who could be comfortable here?”

So here’s my design philosophy: comfortable, interesting, creative.

So, let’s see: an IKEA Expedit 2×4 unit, used primarily for DVD storage, but secondly, as an entertainment centers. On the shelves: seven wickerish baskets holding a couple of hundred DVD sets. On one shelf, only season sets of Highlander: the power strip which shares the shelf won’t permit the depth of one of those baskets. Above: a 22″ HD TV, the perfect size for this apartment, some lamps for mood lighting, a radio/CD player, and my CDs.

To the right: also an IKEA bookshelf, modern design: beech shelves, steel supports. On one shelf, my DVD player, too large to fit on the EXPEDIT. Heck, it’s too large for this shelf: it hangs over! Stacked atop the DVD player: the cable box, the game systems. On the opposite side of the bookshelf, my printer. Arranged on the shelf: books, board games, graphic novels, job-hunting references, a fan. On the far right upper shelf, a table-top bookshelf, stuffed with paper backs: Reynolds, Hobb, Puzo, Irving. Also: globe-bookstops, a skeleton Indiana Jones, a memento a pizza-coworker brought me from Egypt.

Mounted on the wall, above EXPEDIT: also from IKEA (noticing a theme?), a three-shelf wall unit no longer made called “ARTISTE”, I believe. I originally used it as a pantry in my first studio apartment. Primarily DVD sets held on here: Star Trek on the top shelf, Buffy, Lost, The Wire on the second, collector’s edition sets on the lowest shelf. For accents, a Bender wind-up, Gargoyles, a cigar box, a drawing model.

On the walls: posters. Not trying to overwhelm, simply not to let large spaces of pure white wall through. What can be more boring than that? Guide the eye, allow the eye something to settle on. Okay, and I’ve got a sword suspended through the Artist unit’s support. That too.

Frankly, I don’t even try to organize the books. The DVDs are at least sorted, somewhat, by title: eventually, I’ll get cardstock labels and mark the baskets: A-C, J-L, I’ve got a whole basket just for titles starting with S. But books? DVDs, at least, roughly the same size: books are not: hardbacks, softbacks, quality paperbacks. They look, I think, more attractive out of order: messy, disorganized, even. Maybe, someday, if you’re unlucky enough, I’ll share a picture of my larger EXPEDIT unit: holy mess, Batman!