Where Did it All Come From and Where Did it Go?

Under the wondering gaze of my nephew's cat Bradley Saturday evening, I began to gather the bags and boxes I'd been packing all week into one location--the living room couch. Even as I took these pictures I began to wonder where I was going to put it all once I got it home. My sister had been wondering if it was going to fit in the van. My husband had been wondering if it would fit in his Dad's car, reminding me of it's modest size at least once during every one of our talks on the phone in the last couple months--every time I mention having bought, been given or scavenged this, that or another thing. I had never been really worried about that. But once I saw it all in one place...

I did begin to think with trepidation about size of the room we share with our cat Merlin at my in-laws trailer house and the logistics of getting it all stowed away in there. Where was it all going to go?

See, getting it all into Mom's van was no problem.

Even fitting it into my FIL's car when my sister and I met my husband at Rice Hill OR was not much of a challenge though we did have to break open one box and pull its contents to be fit in several nooks and crannies. I forgot to get pictures of that being so wound up and focus on greeting Ed and saying good-bye to my sister.

Well. I'm still wondering. It took me a day and a half to get it all into the room and stowed and a modicum of order put to it all. I'm far from completely unpacked but I have my workstation set up. Had that Sunday night. I have my clothes put away and the books are back on their shelves. All the work I did at sorting and organizing my sewing and crafts while still at Mom's made them a breeze to put away.

Most of the work Monday went into cleaning the room and doing laundry before I could start bringing my stuff in off the front porch where we'd had to put it before Ed took the car to work. Ed had been batching in that room for six month so I expected to find some disarray and plenty of dust. And there was lots of dust but little visible disarray. But looking closer--onto the shelves and into the drawers and boxes where I expected to be able to at least put the things I'd taken with me back where they'd come from, I kept finding odds and ends--his hats; his computer games; his ear buds; a dried up bitten into piece of fudge with ants crawling on it.

One of the space management tricks I used made use of those three shams I bought a couple weeks ago because I wanted the plastic pouches they were in for my crafts. There are quilts in each of the striped ones and the white one with a black boarder holds all of my light weight jackets. I put two of Ed's heavy winter coats into pillow cases which are also in that pile. This is going to work pretty good for watching movies on that big TV his brother gave us just before I left and for working on our laptops on our laps--though I'm not sure there is enough elbow room for us to do that side by side...


But that's OK, I like my workstation fine.

Now that I've got the pictures off the camera, I'm going to put illustrations on Sunday's and Monday's posts retroactively so watch for them to show up in the next little bit.