jan_andrea | Aug. 13th, 2006

Here is what my fabric storage area used to look like:

Here is what it looks like now:

( Clicky clicky! )

What it took, yesterday:

30 minutes attaching "bar carrier" (not quite a roof rack, but it did the trick) to the roof of the car
A drive of one hour and 40 minutes to Stoughton, MA, including a gigantic tailback at route 24 because this is "tax-free weekend" in MA, which we didn't know, else we would definitely have gone last weekend instead. (We had waited until this weekend because we thought that some other family members would be joining us, but one set went last week without telling us, and the other set, the set we'd waited until this weekend to go with, decided at the very last possible minute not to go. This irks me beyond words, because if we'd known, we could have just gone last week and avoided the below...)
About 45 minutes waiting in horrendous traffic once in Stoughton and near Ikea -- because it was tax free weekend, everyone who couldn't do math and wanted to save an astonishing $5 per $100 purchase decided that this was the weekend they, too, would go to Ikea. It took us 30 minutes to park after sitting in traffic for 15 minutes in the shopping area.
Another couple of hours in Ikea itself, which wasn't as unpleasant -- it felt less busy than the first time we'd gone, which was about 4 months after the location had opened -- but still tiring.
25 minutes in the checkout line, after waiting 15 minutes to get a hand truck to put the shelves on
Another 30 minutes leaving Ikea with the rest of the sheep
1.5 hour drive home, with a stop at Trader Joe's
Heavy lifting of shelving units into dwelling
Heavy lifting of shelving units up two flights of stairs
30 minutes removing part of fabric and whatnot from old storage
1 hour assembling "Flarke" TV units (the ones on the bottom) before bedtime

Today:

2.5 hours assembling shelves and whatnot (after checking with curmudgeonly neighbor that hammering at noon would be acceptable)
20 minutes hauling old storage downstairs... owie...
30 minutes removing the rest of the fabric and whatnot from the old storage stuff
10 minutes vacuuming and putting new units into place
3 hours putting fabric and whatnot into new storage (generating two large bags of leftovers in the process)

And now, I am exhausted, but happy with the new storage. The cedar chest was lovely, but not suited for fabric that would be riffled through on a regular basis, as stuff tended to wad up and get burried, no matter how often I rearranged it. Now I can order some more fabric (need more lightweight twill, I think), and not have to worry about where to put it!