dear 7 readers,
the move date has been set - april 24! the panda pen's final dissolution will be sad yet awesome. i've been making lists of things i need to set up my new domicile and, man, domesticity requires a lot of crap!
but boxes have been bought and, thanks to G-, bookshelves have been emptied and packed. (14 boxes so far!)
i pick up the keys today and check out my new digs. the first order of business: measure to make sure my bed fits.
i'm excited, yes, but the weight of responsibility is rubbing the edge off a bit.
perhaps i should feel more like a sonnet: contained by the form of my responsibility but liberated by the movement i have within it.
whatever. enough of the english major musings.
i have utilities to set up.
9 comments:
If you're looking to save some cash, send me your domesticity-crap list—I have more of this than will fit in my cabinets and it might be nice to do a little spring cleaning to get it out of the house.
I love your sonnet image and hope it is a happy relocation!
Congratulations. It's amazing how much stuff having a place to store stuff requires. You know, if you're going to live like a grownup. Correction: a middle class grownup.
dammit! it's the burden of middle classness.
Oooh, enjoy it. Yes, it requires a lot of "stuff," but you can get a lot of it at dollar stores, and live without more than you imagine. (it took nearly a year for me to find real flatware I liked. Plastic and chopsticks worked for me during all that time).
Exciting. Good luck!
i think that's part of it, too - the urge to just get everything NOW.
but you're right. i only want things that i need AND that i really really like. i've lived with castoffs for years. this time, i want things that i choose.
friends are urging me to register for things but i hesitate about that and i also hesitate about asking for donations of 'gently used' stuff.
weird.
This is kind of reminding me of the way that middle class babies require so much stuff. At first I resisted the MANY offers for handmedowns from colleagues I barely even know, working class pride I think. (I think this is a "thing" in academic culture. We're middle class but the lefty chic of reduce/reuse has hit us hard. One person who shells out 7 grand a month for Montessori tuition brags about how her kids wear handmedowns from another colleague. It went so far as someone handing down a bag of used pacifiers (?!)) Eventually I said OK. Saved a few hundred bucks and then spent too much anyway. Now I'm handing it down myself (to family mostly). Take the handmedowns/thrift store stuff for now, and buy the stuff you like when you find it. This has the advantage of both worlds, plus you get to be in justified shopping mode pretty much whenever you want to be.
Also: We used cutlery from thrift stores for the LONGEST time. Now it's relegated to big parties/don't buy plastic forks status. Sorry, Sid, I can't deal with plastic forks/cups.
Yeah, I understand not wanting to use the plastic. I just found that I could steal a bunch of it from the office kitchen for free. Heh. It washes well if you're careful!
When I first moved into my place, it was such a score - I had spent almost 2 years subletting, moving as needed, and sleeping on air-mattresses/family living-room floors when necessary, and then the few years before *that* living in a furnished apartment owned by my employers, to which literally more than 20 of my coworkers had keys. Which they used. Sometimes without knocking.
So when I finally got this apt., I did a freaking happy dance every day I came home (even though it was so bare there were echoes), and brought in only what I loved. For a few months, I had nothing but my plastic cutlery and the air mattress, one borrowed saucepan and non-stick skillet, and a set of frosted plastic tumblers and plates i got at Target for about $2. Hell, I just got real dishes last month, come to think of it...
I understand wanting everything NOW though, in which case I highly recommend hitting the 2600-2700 blocks of North Elston - Harlem furniture, Homegoods, Joanne Fabrics, Target, AND Home Depot all in one area!
And schlepping all that stuff on the Western bus? jeeesh.
One gracious friend has given me her ikea couch for a placeholder until i can find my perfect couch that screams 'early evening in southern california' (you know how the light gets in LA? that's what i want my place to feel like.)
Another has offered her creamy oriental rug until she moves into a bigger place (years into the future); another has a tv i could possibly get (though i might want to buy a teeny one to reserve space).
I think some of my hesitation is also about taste. I think I want to assert my own taste now, instead of being resigned to what other folks have. But necessity breeds virtue, you know?
(and, yeah, i can't do the plastic forks thing, either.)
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