Arlie's Journal

Junk removal was more expensive than I'd predicted. But we have space to sort more of our stuff now, as well as room for the new furniture.

Once the two guys who carried off the junk left, we started finding walnuts where the biggest, oldest heap had been. That was in the enclosed porch, fairly easy for just about any critter to access, since we often leave its door to the back yard open. Apparently this junk heap appeared to squirrels like a great place to hide winter provisions, though I've never seen squirrels in there. We eventually found three walnuts. OTOH, I don't know of any nearby walnut trees, so where did the squirrels find those particular nuts?

It was amazing to have my office floor space almost completely clear overnight. I brought in the yoga mat and did my physical therapy exercises there. I also took advantage of easy access to the section of bookshelves previously semi-blocked by the desk, and partly filled yet another paper recycling bin - who knew I had a stash of catalogs and similar from a decade or more ago?

Unfortunately, they'd practically begged me to move their appointment earlier in the day - it turned out I was their only evening appointment, so once they'd dealt with my junk they were off work for the day. So I had a longer time than expected without any computer connected. (Fortunately for my housemate, I was able to leave the modem/router/firewall connected, so she she had internet access, meaning only one of us was climbing walls ;-) Her room wasn't affected by any part of the furniture replacement and junk disposal project...)

I went to bed early, both for lack of my usual evening activities and to hopefully reduce the time spent fretting. That worked fine - until I woke up at 4:30 or so and couldn't get back to sleep. I got up, made tea, ate breakfast, and read books for the next 4 hours or so. Nothing too challenging; I only wanted light reading. So I read about bats.

The guy I'd hired through TaskRabbit to assemble the furniture turned up within 5-10 minutes of the scheduled time, which qualifies as "on time". He then did an excellent job, quietly getting little details right, such as using pieces of cardboard (from the packaging) to protect the furniture from scrapes. He also had an excellent tool kit - if I were still pretending to be handy I'd covet his drill/power screwdriver, complete with adjustable torque, and bits that could be used instead of Ikea's plentiful hex allen keys. I was pleased enough to tip high, make him a "favorite" on task rabbit, and get his direct phone number for future reference. (He's a handyman as well as an Ikea furniture assembler.) The one difficulty was that he's in the process of learning English, so there were some gestures and rephrasings. (No, he isn't Hispanic - he's from one of the little countries in Asia; at a guess one of the ones dominated/annexed by the USSR.)

To the surprise of my housemate, he came alone. This meant that he needed my help with a couple of things that really can't be done alone; fortunately my back and wrist were able to manage.

In the almost 3 weeks since I posted a query about furniture stores, the great furniture replacement project has gone from "idea" to "work in progress". This morning I get to stay home and wait for 2 deliveries - one of 4 dining room chairs; the other of a kitchen table, a sit-stand desk, and a medium quality office chair. All furniture is coming from the same vendor, but from different warehouses, so is being delivered separately.

All but the office chair require assembly; I've got a "task rabbit" coming on Monday to put everything together, since I'm no longer fit enough to manage it. In the meantime, I need to completely clear out my old desk, photograph it, post it on freecycle, and hopefully have happy new owners come to collect it. Slightly less urgently, we need to get all the random st0ff off the kitchen table, not to mention the cache of st0ff underneath it. Ideally some proportion of that stuff gets discarded in the process, rather than saved, but that depends on energy levels.

Once everything is set up, and my computers are on the new desk and so once again usable, I can call a junk removal service to get rid of an ever lengthening list of junk we can't haul to the curb ourselves, or which aren't accepted by the city's garbage service. This list currently includes, but is not limited to: one futon frame, 2 dead tables, 7+ dead or dying chairs, one dead computer (large tower), and at least two possibly still functional largish CRTs. Other items will undoubtedly be added. (In the 5 minutes after typing this, while fetching some coffee, I remembered multiple broken dog/toddler gates - we could certainly get them to the curb ourselves, but they won't fit in the trash can, which means a special pickup...)

Hopefully I won't have to do this again for a while, but there's still the matter of replacing the storage space integral to my beautiful old desk - too large for the room and non-ergonomic as a computer desk. I'm starting with a 3-deep row of plastic filing boxes, with the stuff from the desk in the top row. (That solves one of my clutter problems as a side effect.) But that may be temporary, being eventually replaced by a small storage unit. Or we might get help to drag the inefficient wooden filing cabinet into the office; I think it would fit in the new layout, and it's currently functioning as a TV stand in the living room, while also containing files previously deemed too recent to demote to filing boxes. (Those files won't be staying in the living room; they'd be more convenient as part of the wall of filing boxes in the new office layout.)