Nesting, or just fed up?

I have a serious clutter problem in my apartment. This is by far the smallest place Jon and I have lived together, and possibly the smallest place I have lived even by myself since my college dorm. It is also the most unclean, cluttered, overwhelming space I have ever lived in. It drives me crazy every day, overwhelms me every day, to the point where I don't pick up or clean EVER unless someone is coming over. While every "declutter your house, declutter your life" book/article/website I have read emphasizes that every house has enough space for the things you need, and that clutter is really a product of a disorganized mind, I think I have a space issue.

If you don't have a broom closet or a kitchen nook or something, where can you put the mop/broom/bucket/etc? If your entire under-sink area is full of pots and pans, because there are only four cupboards in the kitchen, where can you put the kitchen cleaning supplies? If your bathroom doesn't have a single inch of built-in shelf space or storage, where can you put extra towels, cleaning supplies, hair products, make-up, etc? Everything ends up out in the open, out where it clutters up the corner of the kitchen or top of the toilet. Nothing is where it should be, nothing is within reach, nothing is quite right.

It doesn't help that I married a self-proclaimed pack rat. But this apartment drives me crazy. However, we don't want to move right now, we renewed our lease, so I'm here for another year. And we are adding another human being to the space, a person who will require a lot of things, even if we keep his/her items to just the bare minimum. Time to make the best of it.

If I had my druthers, I would walk through the house with an enormous trash bag and throw away 25% of the stuff we own. Seriously. I do not hold on to many things for sentimental value. But, really, the 25% I would throw away is probably 95% Jon's stuff, and that just isn't fair. He loves his collection of tiki mugs or comic books or whatever it is I don't care about. I have pared down my own items repeatedly over the last year of living in this small space and the only things left are necessities, often used items, a few jointly-beloved items, and Jon's stuff. Since he won't get rid of it, I need to find more space.

I've been making a list all morning of ways I can move things around within the house to make it more useful. Surely I can move enough things around, possibly getting rid of a few things, definitely decluttering common areas, to make room for what I need. Jon is less concerned about cleanliness and clutter and general housekeeping than I am. Since getting married I think I became more concerned about equality in the housework routine than getting it done. If it is more important to me, surely it makes sense for me to do more. I can recruit his help, and he never says no when I ask, but I can't expect him to have the same level of urgency about moving the kitchen broom and mop out of the corner. He doesn't care. I do. The end.

I feel so much better about everything when my house looks good, smells good, feels good. I need to move toward a cleaning routine that helps me achieve this happy feeling without feeling like I'm constantly cleaning up.