B is for Boxes

     I am fairly certain the boxes are taking over my life.  If you've missed the hints I've been dropping in my last few posts, our lease is up and we're moving on.  Where?  Who knows?  We're pretty flexible.  We'll be staying in the region, just haven't put pen to paper anywhere yet.

But the boxes- ACK!  They're taking my usually tidy (ok, not super tidy, but still clean enough) house and making a mockery of everything decent and orderly about my life.

The following photos are NOT for the faint at heart-

Pretty bad, isn't it?  What you aren't seeing s that the side of the room to the right of the photo is covered floor to ceiling in stacked boxes.  The large pile of laundry was sorted and either put into boxes or placed into baskets.  See the crutch in the floor in front of the ottoman?  My kids are fascinated with this remnant of me spraining my ankle.  I DID have the room cleared out of most of the insanity yesterday afternoon- then, this morning, I pulled out even more, larger boxes.  I haven't found a place for them yet.

This is the view to the left of the first photo and goes straight into the dining room.  Note the OTHER giant pile of laundry in the chair.  It's been demolished as well.  The lawn chairs are back on the porch for now- I got tired of hitting my toes on them.  The table isn't too bad- there's about 5 bottles of laundry detergent, 4 bottles of shampoo, at least 2 body washes, and the giant stack of boxes waiting to be put together shown here.  As for the stuff on the mantle- UGH.  It's there so that Doc doesn't decide to put anything in his mouth while I'm waiting for a box to open up in the appropriate classification.  This room looks a LOT better today- the table is cleared off of most the stuff and piled high with new, more interesting stuff.

     Don't worry, this will all be taken care of in the next five days.  The table and dining room will most likely be stripped to the bare minimal furniture tomorrow.  The living room, being the staging area, will take a bit longer to clean, but since I should also have the back hallway cleared out tomorrow, I will have somewhere to place all the boxes as they get filled.

     It sounds odd, but I do have a method to this madness.  I've started in the attic and now that it's emptied, I'll go clean it tomorrow.  Then that door will be shut for good and I'll work on another rarely used room.  I'm also shredding paperwork as I go- after all, do I really need the electric bill that I paid 12 months ago?  The kitchen is being stripped to the bare minimum to cook dinner.  And, little by little, the laundry pile is shrinking and things are getting sorted, given away, or tossed.

     But the boxes- they win this round.  But tomorrow is another day and I'm armed with a lot of tape.