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I have no closets.

I took this apartment without looking at it first because there was someone living in it at the time I signed the lease.  I realized there would be quirks, and I’ve learned to live with the slanted floors, the recessed lighting in the cathedral ceiling (making my life hard, here), and the tiny oven that won’t fit a cookie tray.  I mean, what, do single people bake fewer cookies at a time or something?

But the closets?

There’s a wardrobe with a few drawers and some hanging space, but dude!  I’m a chick.  I’ve got clothes.  Like, serious clothes.  Not to mention shoes.  Did I mention the shoes?  I should mention the shoes.  There are a lot of them.  But that’s not even what gets me.  I arrived with a vacuum, a mop, two Swiffers, three boxes of electrical cables, two computers I no longer use, and a box of accumulated Christmas gifts that I don’t actually want but can’t get rid of because family members who presumably love me gave them to me.  I had a partridge in a pear tree, but I threw it out, because I had nowhere to put it.  That’s right, after lugging all this stuff up to the top floor, I discovered there was nowhere to store all those things that everyone puts in their closets because, yes, all together now:  I have no closets.

It gets better.

I have a really long hallway that has become a sort of de facto closet.  The ceilings are very high, and I have a hard time replacing the lights in the ceiling when they burn out.  So, the very last bulb blew just before I left on a weekend trip, and I was rushed for time, so I left it. I forgot about it until I came back from said trip, opened the door, and traversed the hallway-closet while carrying two duffel bags and a half-empty soda.  Well, attempted to traverse the hallway-closet.  This next part happened exactly as described, hand to God:

I bumped into the vacuum, cursed, fell backwards from the weight of the duffel bags, overbalanced, tripped over a box of Christmas decorations, stumbled forward while trying to keep my balance, stepped into the bucket with my cleaning supplies in it, jumped around on one leg for a while, and fell against the wall where I lean my–wait for it–mop and dusters, which smacked me in the face in the very best vaudevillian fashion.  At this point I gave up, dropped the duffels, groped around to make sure I wasn’t going to sit on an old set of steak knives or something, sat down, and finished my soda.

What else can you do at that point?  Welcome home, little blind girl.