Happy Saturday! Would “Gods of Shipping” be more clear? What I mean is, whoever controls the fate of packages.
Ugh! I had SUCH a frustrating start to the day. Before I could do any more unpacking, I had to build a china hutch. My lovely new kitchen is lovely, but there is no way I can store food and dishes and cooking equipment all in it. After thinking over multiple solutions, I landed on buying a simple china hutch as the best option. I can put my glasses and plates in there, and then there will be more than enough storage space in the kitchen for everything else. Plus, then everyone can sit in the dining room and admire my lovely dishes.
Shopped around, found a perfect design for what I need at a pretty cheap price too, obviously it was a flatpack assembly required thing, that’s what everything is these days. But no problem, I got the huge box delivered to my door about 2 weeks ago and then put off opening it until I had a whole day free to build it start to finish. Which is today.
Opened the box, heard a “tinkle tinkle” sound, looked inside, broken glass. GAH!!!!!! So now I am stuck. Can’t unpack any more until I get a china hutch, can’t get a china hutch until I return this one and get a replacement, which is where we get back to the Gods of Shipping complaint.
Anyway, instead of building furniture this morning, I drove to a UPS drop of place to return a thousand pound box of broken furniture pieces, then did a recycling drop off, did an Amazon drop off, and finally swung by Goodwill just for kicks where I found two pieces of furniture I really needed (filing cabinet and bedside drawers) for practically NOTHING!!!! So decision made, I’m gonna check out Goodwill for my china cabinet that is PRE-BUILT and give up on making it from scratch.
Anyway, all of this is to say that I am grumpy and hot and frustrated and, although I have finally watched Mimi, I may not be in the right mood to review it today. I may be in the right mood to do a puzzle and pretend I don’t have to unpack.
Now, y’all talk!
dontcallitbollywood 
My day is not as stressful as unpacking, but it is similar in that I’m packing up all but 33 pieces of my clothes. Which amazingly means I’ll be able to close the dresser drawers, and allows me to see that the chaos of our bedroom was from more than clothes, so I gotta organize and tackle that – and maybe then go through spouses drawers so that he only has 33 pieces of clothes as well.
I didn’t think I had that many clothes; I’m wearing a pair of overalls I’ve had since I was 16 right now, but maybe that just proves I’m a packrat. I was contemplating doing a challenge where you wear the same item of clothing for 100 days, and a friend brought up this challenge, which is easier (although I’m not sticking to it exactly), so I went for it. I don’t want to be my parents, or my in-laws, with so much beloved stuff you can’t bear to part with it and have stacks of stuff on stairs. I must stop myself from getting attached to stuff, like these OshKosh purple striped overalls that are a total pain to go to the bathroom in.
I should go by the local thrift store to check on bookshelves, another bookshelf would definitely help with the chaos.
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I thought 33 pieces sounds like really a lot, and then I realized that is ALL your clothes? Underwear and stuff included? Follow up important question, do socks count individually or as a set?
I just finished unpacking all my clothes yesterday and I am overwhelmed. With the pandemic, I ended up having clothes scattered between my place and my parents and storage and I didn’t realize that I have SO MANY CLOTHES. Not now, but in a month or so, I’m going to need to do a big culling.
On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 3:06 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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33 sounded like lot to me too, until I actually tried it. underwear and socks do no count, shoes and scarves and hats and gloves and jewelry do. Exercise clothes don’t count, which is what I wore all day today, but I was hiking in the mountains which are notorious for giving you sap stains on your butt when you sit down and I did not want to ruin one of my three pairs of pants with sap stains! And in three months I can change out my 33 clothes. Kinda perfect timing actually, change out the light sweater for a heavier one…
https://bemorewithless.com/
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Oh, if underwear and socks don’t count, I think I could do it! I need to do a Great Culling anyway post-move. This is a fun challenge!
On Sun, Aug 29, 2021 at 5:56 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Oh my goodness, I need to do this challenge and not just with clothes!! Due to inheriting Things, I’ve kept far too much and have turned into packrat of memories. I still wear a dress my aunt made for herself probably 40 years ago Other than that, have mostly furnished from charity (thrift) shops as old second hand stuff is often sturdier than your average flatpack (I’m talking to you, IKEA). Plus, it’s already constructed! Good luck with ignoring boxes practice – it’s a tricky spiritual excercise
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Ugh, SAME! This winter I have to figure out what to do with my great-great-aunts car coat which must be over 50 years old by now. I either have to get tough and donate it, or split the difference and put it in storage instead of in my closet to never be worn.
On Tue, Aug 31, 2021 at 8:12 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I was rewatching Scars of Dracula and it had Dennis Waterman in it! So that was fun.
You can probably find a secondhand one very easily, I hope you get a nice one.
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I hope I get a nice one too! And if not, in only a week and a half I will have another flatpack option to build. Sigh.
On Sat, Aug 28, 2021 at 4:04 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I won’t lie, I’m, a little jealous you can buy new furniture and decorate your house as you want. When my husband and I bought our apartment I was very inexperienced, broke and didn’t know what I want. So, like a stupid I left stuff that was already here and took some things my mother in law gave me. Big mistake! Now after 13 years I still have most of this stuff I don’t even like. And who knows when I can get rid of it.
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When I take a step back, I am very grateful that I get to set everything up just right!!!! But the process of setting it up is EXHAUSTING.
On Sun, Aug 29, 2021 at 9:43 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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*chuckle* … all this sounds VERY familiar to me, too. As I was brought up in a time when my German mother fully had experienced the aftermath of WorldWarOne and everything of WorldWarTwo, “packratting” became a kind of one of my genes… So, now, at a VERY advanced age, I HAVE TO get rid of a lot of “beloved” things (especially, as my husband and I built a VERY big house and he obviously had this special gene, too).
Fortunately, there are a bunch of organizations (here and especially in my vacation place Geneva) who take almost everything to sell it to people at a very low price.
As for buying “new” things to store what I still want to keep, I decided to only buy used furniture made of pin wood…so it’s a kind of give & take…
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upppsss…pinewood 😉
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I’m trying REALLY hard to only keep the things that are super sentimental and/or useful. I cleared out a ton of stuff during the packing phase, but not enough! I’m clearing out even more during the unpacking phase.
On Mon, Aug 30, 2021 at 1:51 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Ooh! Speaking of getting cheap furniture/or any thing else, (this applies to both you and Genevieve), consider joining the local “Buy Nothing” group on your neighborhood on Facebook. It is MAGICAL! Here is more information about it. https://buynothingproject.org/find-a-group/. It’s a local group where people give things away for free. You can only join one group and it is based on where you live.
My colleague alterted me to it, and so far, I have been able to mostly furnish the baby’s room with really nice items that I got on the group for free. It’s great!
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FILMIKUDHI! You just revealed a secret personal thing on the blog!!!! Does this mean I have permission to do a big celebratory post? Or should I wait a little longer?
On Mon, Aug 30, 2021 at 1:50 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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HA! Clearly, the free stuff had me so excited that I forgot that I had not mentioned this earlier on here. And thank you for asking! Yes, it’s fine. I am in my last trimester, so I am comfortable talking about it now.
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