To walk around Dragonfly this Monday morning, it would seem like very little got accomplished over the weekend. But things are not always what they seem, are they? We’ve worked through an amazing list of must-d0 items; we’ve been delaying virtually every nice-to-do task on the list for well over a month.
Sure, there are still boxes to process. But,in many cases, the box that’s in the house is not the same box that was there on Friday.
Other things that moved along at Dragonfly over the weekend:
- R’s bunkbeds are assembled. I had to buy some replacement fastener hardware to assemble his bed. That took a lot of mixing/matching time at the hardware store to complete.
- C and I have a real bed finally. The frame was put together on Friday, but the mattress and box springs were still at the other house. We brought them over on Sunday morning.
- The garage was overhauled, fixing the blessing of unexpectedly effective movers, by accomplishing the following:
- still-packed items organized in the center of the garage
- Final shelving units assembled around the garage periphery, ready to receive their stored items
- emptied boxes cleared.
- Outdoor furniture was unwrapped and placed. The Chiminea is reassembled, too.
- Curtain rods are installed in all three bedrooms.
- Family room was organized and consolidated.
- We determined that the old big-screen television will cost too much to repair. We’re opting to buy a new LCD unit after Thanksgiving. Getting a new TV is a nice-to-do for which we can pick the timing that works best for us.
Thankfully, Mondays are trash days at Dragonfly. I put out a stack of cardboard boxes for the recycle truck that would have filled the back of the mini-van to the gills. They’re going to shake their heads at me when they find my pile! Of course, I still have a pile of similar size that I didn’t take to the curb…
But … that’s not all. The real work happened over at the cottage, getting it prepared:
- Removed last contents, including mattresses and box springs.
- Cleared and cleaned the basement.
- Cleared and cleaned the kitchen.
- Winterized the yard, including:
- mowed and edged lawn
- cut back all flowers, roses, etc.
- Raked yard, cleared leaves from Chestnut tree.
- packed away hoses and sprinklers.
- applied lawn winterizer
So, by the end of the day today, the other house should be ready to receive new occupants. Oh, except for the water treatment system I need to uninstall. That’ll be tonight or tomorrow.
C has opted to hire some house cleaners to the the vacant house cleaning. It’s money well spent; reclaiming two days of her hard labor just prior to her surgery is a wise use of resources. With the other house finished, C can turn her attention to finishing the inside at Dragonfly and writing, not running all over the Portland metro area.
Back at Dragonfly, I should be able to get the surplus appliances onto Craigslist by the end of the week. I can reach them now, which lets me take photos.
The living room is starting to look like a room, not a pile of boxes. Same for the kitchen nook. The kids’ bedrooms are clearing out, and the master is starting to take shape as a usable room. Kitchen, upstairs bathrooms and upstairs hallways are still chaotic, but that will be changing today and tomorrow. The office is usable, but most of the office-related boxes are still just stacked neatly in a corner of the office.
The kitchen is increasingly functional; we can move around in the space now. We’re cooking. We can find food in the cabinets. The dishwasher is running daily. We’re making coffee. Yeah, pretty much there in the kitchen.
The laundry is working, accessible, and in use. Clean clothes now have a place to go, in the form of accessible and operational closets and dressers. So the clothing and closet bottlenecks have been removed.
Apparently, the landing at the top of the stairs has been designated a practice space for M. A mirror and a ballet barre will reside there, for her use. Apparently I will be swapping the location on some mirrors in the house to accommodate the ballet practice area.
I can reach my workbench and tools. Handy, since I’m called upon to use both to accomplish my long list of tasks. The pile of boxes from last week’s move has been worked into an orderly, logical arrangement.
Remember last week, when I noted that having an overwhelmed garage because the movers overachieved would ultimately save me time and effort? Seems I was right. It took me four hours to fix the garage arrangement on Saturday morning. Had I been ferrying loads over from the other house as originally planned, it would have taken me six loads minimum, at two hours round-trip or more. Four hours of box stacking definitely beats twelve hours of box-ferrying.
If boxes continue to empty at the same rate as this last week, we should have a mostly organized house (nearly clear of boxes, anyway), and one car in the garage by the end of next weekend.
You know, it’s easy to say “we unpacked in two weeks!” and call it a victory. It is a victory, afterall. BUT, this process started exactly a year ago, when we made the hard decision to put our house on the market. We’ve been living in ever-increasing degrees of limbo ever since. My family is tired of being in limbo.
So it is compelling for us all that we should be able to return, this week even, to a more normal schedule. A schedule including time for Fencing and other activities. I still have a lot to do. But the urgency of the tasks is dropping off. There are more nice-t0-do’s than must-do’s. And that is a measure of forward progress.
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