Monday finally brought the remainder of my belongings (hello, stuff.... goodbye, month long move). As thrilled as I was to finally be reunited with my bowls and measuring spoons, I was a bit dismayed to watch the moving van leave at 5:07 p.m. In the excitement of shuffling furniture around to accommodate the missing entertainment center (storage!), I almost forgot that All Those Boxes were also going to remain, sitting exactly where I instructed them to be dumped in my eagerness to finally have two large usable pieces of storage-worthy furniture.
Tuesday was one of those, two steps forward, twenty steps back kind of days. I unpacked and unpacked, organized and reorganized, shuffled, and finally searched in vain for a tiny place I could hide from the chaos. To make matters worse, I realized by the end of Tuesday there was a box missing. A box full of wedding presents, to be exact, which I really didn't want to lose before I even had a chance to use them! Before I called the movers to complain, I had one last possibility...
The Storage Room
This is a dark, scary room in the bottom of my parking garage, which has been "subdivided" by chain link fence into tiny boxes for residents to use. I have not been to our storage unit since I blindly asked movers #1 to put a bunch of boxes down there. In short, I was scared. But needs must, so yesterday I ventured down, taking my iPhone (no reception, music only), scissors, keys, and a resigned attitude.
It was bad.
One would think that movers have a sense of logical packing, since they spend days cramming other people's belongings into trucks. Not the case, apparently. Or at least not the case when they don't actually have to deal with it at all.
Big boxes stacked on top of small boxes. Heavy boxes on top of light. Brass bed frames casually draped over everything. I had a frightening image of a Jenga tower about to topple over, and I was the one stuck on the bottom.
Like every good Jenga player (which I am not, btw. I always make the tower fall) I studied the piles and slowly began to drag the boxes out. It took some time before I found the likely box, but I didn't pause to investigate. At that point I was determined to actually organize the stupid space, since I had been experiencing that mild feeling of guilt that exists when you know you SHOULD do something but have been ignoring its very existence.
What I discovered in the basement:
- the missing box
- two boxes of every day china, now properly stored
- ten - TEN - boxes of books (this is not counting the 12 boxes of books I've already unpacked, some of which were destined for storage but they ran out of room)
- two brass twin beds, now no longer perilously draped over box piles
- two Christmas boxes, which I cheerfully added to
- a mysterious bike peddle
- all my tutoring materials (I wondered where that had gone!)
- a few friendly spiders
I was proud of myself for hauling around the boxes, making nice stacks, and generally being able to lift things of substantial weight. Then I got to the missing box, and it would. not. budge.
I tugged and I pushed and I made some unladylike noises, until I finally set aside my vanity (I can lift big things, darn it all!) and opened the box. (It was why I had brought my scissors down, after all).
Right away, I discovered part of the problem - a bocce ball set (15 lbs) and a marble cutting board (35 lbs). Well no wonder. I removed the offending items, as well as a few other heavyish objects (cutting board with metal handles? surprisingly heavy metal ice bucket?) and hauled the whole mess upstairs.
I'm relieved to report that all the missing wedding gifts have appeared (and WHO packs crystal with marble cutting boards? Apparently people who want to shell out insurance money.) plus all three of my Le Creuset pots. No wonder I couldn't lift the darn box!
I'm also relieved to report that I no longer have to spend any time dreading a morning down in the depths of the parking garage. The storage room has been tamed, and I'm not going back until Christmas!
No comments:
Post a Comment