The Fire and Flood Company brought my furniture back today!
I’ve found the boxes with the laptop docking station, keyboard and large-screen monitor, as well as a few other desk items: speakers, telephone, electric pencil sharpener.
::: EXCITED!! :::
I can’t wait to get back to working in my space. Working at the kitchen table since September has been a real bummer. Distracting, too. I’m hoping that getting back to my own space will be freeing, creatively.
This is what the front half of my office looks like right now:
The thing I’m amazed at: the last box I looked at was numbered “70.”
Really?
And I packed 12 additional boxes from my doll cabinet. (I wouldn’t let them take those away for fear of something getting damaged or lost.)
So that means I’ve got at least 82 boxes of junk in just two rooms of my house.
I’m hoping that a great many of these boxes are books…because if they’re not, I’ve got a ton of stuff that has no place being here.
I’ve already told the Husband of Awesome™ that I anticipate that at least a third (I hope more) of what’s in these boxes is not going back on the shelves.
I believe this means parting with a great many books, and possibly some (published) manuscripts that have been lying around. I’ve been advised to scan them and toss the originals.
Here’s a picture of my double closets. Note the filing cabinet in one. I have a bookshelf in the other closet. I love the option of putting furniture in closets. It makes the space so much more useable.
Notice the non-brown boxes, devoid of pink labels? Those are my own. They’re numbered, too, but not in any scheme I can figure out. And, now that I’m looking, they don’t appear to be counted in the 70 (82).
Now, there’s a mystery I’m going to have to solve. The Secret Math Junkie™ inside of me is starting to wonder: How many total boxes? How many brown ones? How many are the 3 cubic feet version? How many are the smaller? How many contain books? How many contain paper? Etc.
It might take me a few weeks to get through it all, but in the end, you’ll have your report. 🙂
In the meantime, I find myself already with a plethora of packing supplies on hand. Anyone need any bubble wrap?
I look at these situations as “forced organization”. I did get rid of a lot of stuff, but wound up keeping entirely too much. I keep telling myself that some day, I’ll get back into it and dispose of more. I think you are much better at doing this than I am. I imagine you could feel a bit overwhelmed with holiday prepartions coming up. Maybe you’ll even find a few surprises you forgot about. We kept boxes from our bar supplies under our pool table for 4 years after we moved here and when we finally built our bar and unpacked there were lots of things I forgot about! And guess what–some of them we still don’t use!!!
Hi Sue! I’m not looking at this as “forced,” per se. It’s more a matter of the situation having upped my timeline a bit. I’ve been aiming to get to this stuff, just not this minute. 🙂
As for holiday prep overwhelming me….well, I let it overwhelm me EVERY year. Why should this one be different? In a way, having everything in boxes is more relaxing. It’s all “out of sight…”
The teacher-mom in me says, “yeah, do the math”. The rest of me screams, “I’m sure you have lots more important things to do than calculating boxes and the mass they occupy in your home”. Have fun with that!
By the way, my strategy is becomming ‘the longer the boxes sit out, the more likely they become candidates for leaving the house permanently’.
Hi Cori! I’m certain there’s some sort of procrastination effect going on by the obnoxious desire to form a complete set of statistics about the boxes… I like your idea about boxes sitting out. Do you count ones you’ve delved into? I’ve got boxes full of books in the basement that we moved in with, and haven’t unpacked. But every few weeks or so I’m digging through them looking for a book…
YaY! Good for you, my friend. You’ll be glad when this is all behind you. We are weeding out right now also. Long (years) overdue. Feel good, & yes, scanning is the answer. Love the window to have light & viewing from.
Hi Marydon! I want to take this nice and slow, so that I’m not overwhelmed….but I also want to be done. :0 The scanning idea is growing on me….but it just takes so long! Suggestions?