Sunday Serenity #374

In Pieces

I opened one of the Mystery Boxes tonight.  The Joanne.com order arrive last Monday and I'd still not had a day in which urgent must dos hadn't crowded out opportunity to open and assemble what's in them.  Even this weekend with Mom gone I couldn't get ahead of my commitments.  I'm two days behind on my posts with about to be three and with a book tour and a counselor appointment on Tuesday.

I was getting quite frustrated with the delay of gratification.  I'd been so sure I'd have time this weekend I planned for my Sunday Serenity post to feature my adventure in opening and assembling what I'd ordered, what I'd worked so hard deep cleaning and rearranging the room to make room for them.  I decided I would open the small and middle sized ones.  There was no assembly required for what was in the small so by opening it I could start using it right away and get the bulky packaging material out of this room.

The Itty-Bitty Pieces

Before I got started on assembly I read the directions several times, opened up the several packages of small things, identified and counted them and put the itty-bitty pieces in applesauce cups--one of the weird things I collect that irritates both my husband and my sister.  Then I read through the instructions again, making sure I knew each item's from largest to the cup's contents by it's alphabet letter on the illustrations.

From first box cutter slit in the box to the point I felt ready to pick up the hex wrench and attach A to C with four Ds and four Fs was at least 1.5 hours.

Framed

 Three hours later I had this.

Topped

 Five minutes later I had this.  It only took five minutes because I stopped to get the picture first as snapping on the work surface took three seconds tops.

Finished

A little over an hour after that I had the knobs on the drawers and the drawers in their slots.  Probably a good twenty minutes of that was playing with the order of the colors.

Sitting on top is the items from the smallest of the three boxes--small stackable plastic boxes.  In the biggest box is another of these carts, double wide like this one but ten drawers tall like the one seen in the background that I got at Big Lots for $25 Christmas week.  It was so cheap apparently because of a sticky drawer.

This one is going to be my printer stand and hold things I need at hand while at my desk or computer.  The other double-wide will be for crafting supplies and WIP.  The single-wide is probably going to be for HABA--Health and Beauty Aids from bath and body to accessories and medicinal--but I may decide to use it for paper sort projects instead.

Having these drawers for my brain work workstation will eliminate the need for all the small boxes, baskets, bags and trays taking up so much surface space and making it so hard for me to establish a workstation configuration that keeps everything I frequently use in arms reach.

The twenty drawer one will allow me to unpack the rest of my craft materials from the boxes that are hard to store in a handy place and hard to access the contents, often entailing unpacking up to 95% to get at the one or two things and have to put the jigsaw puzzle back together again.  All while squatting on my haunches or bending over with blood rushing to my head.

So I'm ecstatic about these drawer cart that I've been drooling over in the Joanne.com catalog for several years.  Not only do they reflect my style they are going to play an essential role in my current obsession with organization.