Well Played, Ikea. Well Played.
Last October my Grandmother (Grams) turned a whopping 80 years young, and one month later she finally retired. With retirement came the cleaning out of her massive office. It was like a second apartment where she kept and displayed many family photos, collectibles, plants, things people often brought her from their travels, and so. much. more. I'm not going to go as far as to call my grandmother a hoarder because she's far from it. But simply put, she likes to keep things. She hates messes but she's perfectly fine with organized clutter. You know, neat piles. Which has worked for her for many years, but since she recently moved everything from her office of fifteen years to her already quite lived in apartment... well... it was overwhelming to say the least.
A couple of weeks ago I received a panicked phone call from Grams that bordered on the side of death-con five and could I please for the love of all that is holy, help her find a way to coexist with the mountains of stuff. I reassured her that she had come to the right place, explaining that I harbored a very intimate relationship with my label maker, and I could be there in a couple of days. Long story short, we've had two big cleaning sessions so far. Mere drops in a soon-to-be incredibly neat and tidy ocean (whatever that means), and we've a long way to go yet.
But! Point being, all of the reorganizing and cleansing new beginnings and so forth have inspired me to apply some of those methods at home. Last week I tore into our bedroom closets. Filling trash bags with clothes and shoes to donate and completely restyling our closet space. By the time I'm finished, every closet in our house will be 100% functional to our needs and no longer used as "dump or hide-away" space. In order to get to that goal line however, it requires things like containers and separators and other neatly organizy gadgets. Which loosely translates to three trips to Ikea in one week. I KNOW. But as insane as Ikea can be (oh GOD, we were there on Saturday. SATURDAY. IN. IKEA.), those Swedes sure know how to structuralize their shit. Also? They apparently have a sense of humor.
Now ask me how many of those bins we bought.
A couple of weeks ago I received a panicked phone call from Grams that bordered on the side of death-con five and could I please for the love of all that is holy, help her find a way to coexist with the mountains of stuff. I reassured her that she had come to the right place, explaining that I harbored a very intimate relationship with my label maker, and I could be there in a couple of days. Long story short, we've had two big cleaning sessions so far. Mere drops in a soon-to-be incredibly neat and tidy ocean (whatever that means), and we've a long way to go yet.
But! Point being, all of the reorganizing and cleansing new beginnings and so forth have inspired me to apply some of those methods at home. Last week I tore into our bedroom closets. Filling trash bags with clothes and shoes to donate and completely restyling our closet space. By the time I'm finished, every closet in our house will be 100% functional to our needs and no longer used as "dump or hide-away" space. In order to get to that goal line however, it requires things like containers and separators and other neatly organizy gadgets. Which loosely translates to three trips to Ikea in one week. I KNOW. But as insane as Ikea can be (oh GOD, we were there on Saturday. SATURDAY. IN. IKEA.), those Swedes sure know how to structuralize their shit. Also? They apparently have a sense of humor.
Now ask me how many of those bins we bought.