Boxes

Almost a year ago, I wrote a post about how I was going to perhaps move some of the still unpacked boxes out from the bedroom so that I could paint the cupboard and rearrange some stuff before unpacking those boxes. And, that still hasn't happened. It has been bothering me more and more the last while but I couldn't face actually doing anything about it. In the end, I've come up with a throw-money-at-it solution. I need to be careful on this kind of thing. Now that I'm working full-time again, I can loosen the pursestrings a bit but honestly, not all that much.

However, in at attempt to try and create enough physical space to create enough mental space for me to actually get on with things, I've decided to rent a storage space for a while. I'd like to think that it's only for a couple of months but then decided to be realistic and signed up for a year (taking the corresponding discount). It's just a 1 square metre (1.2x1x2.2) space and it'll be costing me €33/month. If I want to switch to a smaller cube (1x1x1) during the year, I can do that, too.

So I hired a car for the weekend, and set to dragging out the (I thought) 12 boxes of cloth and wool and crafty stuff that were piled in my bedroom. Except there were actually 15. And at least five of them had kitchen stuff, documents, books and all sorts. I had totally blocked that out but now that I've looked at them I remember adding them to that pile because I just wasn't ready to deal with them. They were among the last boxes I packed before moving, when it was three o'clock in the morning and just a few hours before the movers were due to arrive and I thought I'd never finish. Even yesterday, nearly two years later, I could nearly feel that panicky feeling coming back. Still, I'm only sending boxes with the crafty stuff to storage, and I'm keeping the other boxes to deal with now.

I do have friends coming to stay next weekend, which is partly what gave me the push to finally tackle this so I think I may end up putting a lot of stuff into that cupboard, just to get it out of the way (which is exactly what I didn't want to do the whole time). But I'm setting myself the challenge to deal with one shelf/large pile every weekend from now until the end of may in an attempt to deal with it once and for all.

The other thing I've squeezed into the storage space is my barbeque. It was the cheapest one available at Argos when I bought it about, well, it must be more about 18 years ago now. I was so looking forward to be able to using it here on the balcony and then a couple of months after I moved in, the house rules changed to state that open flame barbeques are no longer allowed. Very frustrating. I've at least freed up the space on the balcony now and when it comes time to emptying out the storage space, I'll have to think long and hard about whether to keep the barbeque or not. I know the sensible thing is to not keep it and just get another barbeque if I ever have a space again that I can use one in. But I also know that the quality of cheap barbeques today is nothing like the one I have (I'm not the only one who thinks that - have had lots of compliements on what a great barbeque it is from lots of people who have used it, even if it is just a basic round one). Anyway, that decision is being pushed down the road for now.

And in the meantime, I need to get back to the boxes. There are at least two more that can go into storage and then I need to deep clean the space they've all been living in for the last two years. To say it's dusty in there would be an understatement.