boxes, boxes EVERYWHERE

When we first bought this house we face many many challenges. Almost every single thing in it needed to be replaced, revamped, refinished or redone and over the past two years we've gotten, really, most of that taken care of. And we're pretty happy with the result. But one of the greatest challenges that this little house had was that it was so darn little. Coming in right around 1200 square feet (up 100 since we finished the mudroom) it's not a lot of house for two growing kids, tow active pets and two work at home, collect lots of things, always adding to the heap parents. As a result we've spent a lot of time and effort on storage. There are built-ins in almost every room. Shelves are built in (here, and here, and here), desks are built in, Dressers are parts of beds or shelves, things are tucked away and reconfigured and changed so that everything can have a place. It's one of my favorite things about this house.
The irony is, of course, that we have no storage to take with us. All of the bookshelves that we had before we moved in have been re-purposed into something or other in this house and cant be detached or moved. All the new shelving has been built in. So we have NADA. I have lots of bins and boxes that fit perfectly on shelves or under desks to keep us organized, but I have no shelves or desks to put them on or under. Which is a problem.

Because we haven't actually seen the space we will be living in, we can't really say what we will need, so packing and planning has been a bit of a crap shoot. We will be picking up some of the IKEA bookshelves that we used to create the built ins in the living room, because we know we will use them, for this next year and beyond. But other than that, well, I guess we will have to wait and see.

When we first started packing, the pre-putting-the-house-on-the-market packing, I had decided not to bring my books. I know most people don't obsessibly keep every book they have ever owned (I havent' really kept every book. I sometimes sell books, but that's only so I can buy more books, so it probably doesn't count) but I love my books. LOVE THEM. And this is the first time I've had room for (almost) all of them to be out. It's been wonderful. But I was willing to pack them all away (well, most of them, there were a few boxes that HAD to go) for the year. And then Will and I started looking at pictures from Apartment Therapy's Small Cool Contest for inspiration on relaly small space living and we both realized that all of the images we liked had one thing in common. Books. Lots and lots of books. So we decided that we would bring the books. Not all of them. But a lot of them. Most of them. (Yay!) Also, we found out that our apartment has an elevator. (But no AC. I'm going to die)

Where we will put them, well, that's obviously still up in the air. But now that we are packing in earnest (t minus ten days till moving truck arrives adn counting) I am much happier to be putting the books in boxes labeled "New York" rather than "Storage".

Even still. I hate packing.

It IS NOT my favorite or my best.

Back to the boxes....