You know which floorboard squeaks for which neighbor. You rotate a chair onto the bed to vacuum the spot it was covering. You eat standing up sometimes — not because you're rushed but because using a plate means a plate, and a plate means later.
There are tells. I started noticing them when I moved in with someone who'd always had space. Things she'd never had to do, I did automatically, in a way that I couldn't really explain. So here, with affection, is the catalog.
The catalog
- You have a 'guest mug'. It's the second-nicest one. The nicest one is for you, alone, on Sundays.
- Your spice rack is the side of the fridge.
- You own exactly one large pot and one small pot and they nest.
- You know which switch is for which lamp by which click sound it makes.
- There's a chair you only use for guests. The rest of the time it holds a tote bag.
- You measure rice by knuckle, not cup, because the measuring cup lives in a drawer that requires moving two other things.
- When something breaks, you wait to fix it on a 'big errand day' because fixing one thing means rearranging the storage of the things you moved to fix it.
I rearrange furniture to vacuum. We have a one-room dance.
It's not a problem
None of this is a problem. It's the friction tax of small-square-footage living, and you stop feeling it after a few months. The point isn't to fix it. The point is just — yeah. We see each other.