Unpacking

My mate Derek (where would I be without him?) urged me to buy a cabinet combination that was on display in IKEA and promised that he'd assemble it for me if Idid. Well, who could refuse an offer like that?

Derek didn't realise just how much work was involved in assembly, though. A problem popped up yesterday when he got to the point of fixing the main 'box' to the wall, so he returned today with a solution and spent the rest of the day completing the putting-together. The end product is perfect in its new surroundings and proves that Derek was right with his urging and I was right to give in.

Having sent Derek home to his wife (he would have hung on much longer tweaking adjustment screws in an effort to get every piece lining up perfectly with every other) I began unpacking storage boxes. Packing the boxes had been the first step in the whole process, since the clearout couldn't start until the old cabinets were emptied. It took 1500 sheets of tissue paper to wrap everything away in I don't remember how many boxes, all labeled as clearly as possible to make unpacking easier.

I began the unpacking with a box of glassware, carefully unwrapped every item and sorted and laid them out. That's when the terrible truth hit: a lot of what I'd packed away really didn't need to be unpacked at all, glassware especially. I'd accumulated far too many glasses of all sorts over the years, and I realised now that I had an ideal opportunity to resuscitate them selectively. So half of what I'd unwrapped from this first box got wrapped again and boxed again, and I was much more selective with what came out of the next few boxes. When I reached a point which made sense, the new cabinet was proving that it will provide plenty of storage in itself and will accommodate everything I need from the three cabinets everything came from.