Sometimes I'm right, and in many cases I hate being right. In the case of the bookshelves being key to the rest of the house being in order, I was very much correct and I wish I was not.
Even without the bookcases, I've been able to get the house into a minimum functioning state. It was to the point that every flat surface had something on it, so I needed to create and then fill some storage spaces, thus showing me how much stuff there was. Places will be found for some of it, and I think we'll be making another large donation to the local charity shops soon. But for the short term, I had to get things in some kind of order.
We knew pretty quickly that we'd need a place to put mail and do the business of the house, so we moved our old desk into the living room along with two chairs. The desk did double duty as a dining table until I arrived at wits' end and began to work on the den/dining room. I began by moving the suitcases full of cook books away from one key space, and replaced them with two cabinets. Moving those cabinets freed up two other storage spaces, so now I could put some things away. Next, I looked hard at those boxes of books taking up the den; if I just moved them against the wall and lined them up next to each other, that would return a lot of space to useful condition. So, I opened each box to see its contents, and began to line them up in an orderly fashion. Once the book boxes were all determined, I marked them so I could tell at a glance what was in them (I know: you're supposed to do that when you pack them, but I had thought that they'd be unloaded right away and the boxes re-used. Silly me.). I got all of the dishes unpacked, and found tote bags full of baking supplies, canned goods, oils, and vinegar to put in the (now stuffed) pantry. Well, to make a long story short, I made enough room that the Emperor was able to reassemble the dining room table, and I pretty much know what's in the boxes still stacked in the back of the room.
Thus, even though we're still in disorder, I can use the kitchen, put food on a table, and find most of my clothes. The Emperor has gotten most of his leather things down into the basement, and he's taken over the laundry chores again (laundry has been his chore since we first got together years ago).
The pantry is still pretty disorganized. Yesterday I worked on it and discovered that there is a lot of dead space above each shelf, so I'm thinking about ways I could add additional shelves while keeping the contents accessible. I might start by consulting Pinterest, which has been a very useful site for everything from moving tips to cleaning advice.
Pinterest suggests making use of dead spaces with Command hooks. They're peel-and-stick hooks that don't damage walls, and some of them can hold some real weight. Arming myself with a pile of Command hooks, I approached my kitchen dillemas. First, there was no space in the cabinet for my pot lids, so I attached some extra-strong hooks to the wall behind the garage door, and placed curtain rods across them. The lids slide behind the rods and rest flat on the wall (this worked really well!). For my measuring cups and spoons, I put hooks on the inside of a cabinet, and they hang there, all right. However, every time we open that cupboard they fly around and go "BANG" and startle us, so that won't work. I'm presently thinking about another place to put wraps and foil, and using the drawer they're in now to store those measuring things.
It's time to get off the internet and into some shoes and out to do the list of chores I ignored yesterday. We returned from our week in Wyoming on Tuesday, and yesterday I just couldn't face having to run around doing stuff, so I need to do it today. I'll report back if I cleverly solve any more of my storage dilemmas.
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