Sunday, October 25, 2009

Thanksgiving weekend I started to re-arrange my apartment to accommodate the new piece of furniture in my house.


It looks almost like this. Mine is the black/brown and not the birch shown in the picture. You may recall I purchased the shelf last fall in Calgary. The desk will be a great addition to my home...I may even be able to teach myself to eat at the table and not on the couch...maybe.

In order to accommodate the new desk I needed to flip the living room furniture. I emptied the shelf, the drawers of my end tables, and moved everything. Some where during the process I pulled/strained my neck/shoulder muscle. And the rearranging got put on hold. My kitchen was a disaster to try and cook in (turkey and my 5 veggies) because I had moved all the living room stuff into the kitchen thinking it would not stay there long. Famous last thoughts.

Then last week as my shoulder was starting to feel better I found out I was heading to Yellowknife for a couple of days. Yikes. I managed to get enough clothes cleaned for the trip (thanks to the drop off service down the road from the office) and the garbage was sent to the bin. And that was it. My house was/is a total disaster. I hate returning home to a huge mess. Over the years I have learned that I would prefer to stay up LATE the night before a trip than come home to a mess. It is relaxing to not need to do anything but drop suitcases when you walk in the door. But that didn't happen last weekend.

This weekend then needed to be the complete the cleaning/renovations weekend. Ok, there was no demolition involved but for all the mess there might as well have been. I am easily distracted in my tasks and find that I can start one project and end up with 20+ on the go by the end. It happened again.

It was such a simple event. I took everything off the book shelf and decided I wanted to go with simple. So I started going through all my books. What to save, what to toss, what to donate. I have a box in the hallway awaiting a trip to Value Village. Then where to put the books. Hmm, what about moving the bookshelf from the bedroom to the kitchen and putting all the books on it. Perfect. Except that the shelf already had things on it. They are now on the floor in my bedroom. Move bookshelf start re-filling. Oh, they won't all fit. Hmmm. Move cookbooks to cupboard. Move food out of cupboard and onto counter. Perfect, books fit. What to do with stuff on counter. And the vicious cycle begins.

It is just past 7:30 on Sunday morning. I am meeting a friend for brunch in a couple of hours (YEAH) and need to finish cleaning and organizing before then. But it won't happen. The laundry is going to be simply piled or thrown into the closet until later in the day when I can venture to the laundry down the street and the papers I wanted to sort are being boxed until a later date. I hate to not finish, but really even if I didn't have plans it would take another week or two to finish. Thank goodness my apartment is small and I have a limited amount of stuff. Who would think that one small desk, not even a full desk, just an L shaped extension could cause so much work. And who would think that with all the purging I've done in the past 18 months I would still have more stuff to purge. Sigh.

On the plus side brunch will be fabulous. I can't speak for the food cause I am not sure yet where we are heading but I know the company will be great.

I can't believe you read all of this post...how boring is that? I really need some new material. Maybe now that the purging, cleaning and redecorating is done I can get the camera out and practice.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Jennifer:

Why do you think they have this thing called "spring" and "fall" housecleaning?? This gives the woman of the house a chance to purge, re-arrange and clean to her satisfaction. I just don't know how they expect the working woman to do all this and work at the same time.

So we do what you did, complete the job in stages. There is no rule book that says you have to do it all in one weekend. I think you have done amazingly well to complete what you have done. I think the new furniture will enhance your living space nicely.

Edith