Ten Minute Fix: The Eyesore

In college I lived with six guys in an apartment. We had stained blue carpet, torn up linoleum, cinder block walls, red and green plaid couches, and our only artwork was a ThunderCats poster. I had a lot of fun in that apartment, but for a kid who chose interior design over woodshop in high school, it was a difficult living situation. What I started doing was coming home, looking at the living room and deciding what was the biggest eyesore that I could do something about. The first thing I noticed was that the window sill had become a place to put junk that we didn’t have any other place for. So, I cleaned it off and removed enough dust to cover New Jersey (No offense New Jersey. I don’t really want to cover you with dust). The next day I came home from class and decided, now that the window is clean, what is the biggest eyesore? Over the course of a couple of years, I ended up scrubbing 20 years worth of bacon grease off the walls, rearranging furniture, and even cleaning…underneath…the refrigerator (pictured below).


Before




After



Ten Minute Fix: The Eyesore

So, if your life were my college apartment, what would its biggest eyesore be? Would it be a smoking habit? An estranged relationship? Not owning any Seinfeld on DVD (I shudder at the thought)? Follow these steps to start cleaning up, and improving the aesthetic of your life.

 

1. Imagine you are stepping back to see a complete picture of your life as it is now.

2. Take a quick look at your entire life. Relationships, finance, health, spirituality, education, etc…

3. What sticks out as the biggest eyesore?

4. Create a plan of action to either remove the eyesore, or even better, replace it with something beautiful.

  

Focus your self-improvement energy on this aspect of your life until it’s fixed. Then repeat the steps to move on to the next biggest eyesore. Eventually, you’ll find the deep hidden grime that you’ve spent years ignoring.



If there are things you feel like you can’t change, don’t worry. Work on what you can change and things have a way of working themselves out. My roommates and I couldn’t buy new furniture or carpet, but eventually management replaced them all for us. By the time I left, I could be proud of the apartment. The ThunderCats poster was still up, but ThunderCats is awesome, so…yeah.