I started cleaning our apartment so I could take photos to remember it by. My husband was retiring, and we were moving from New York — leaving the place where two lonesome apartments combined into this one; where two single people combined as a pair; where I, at 63, had lived longest. What I really wanted was to remember our home in all its chaotic glory: open sardine tins, piles of papers and books. So I stopped tidying. You’d think this mess was caused by moving, but really it was created because we were living. — Jill Lipton