October 4, 2009
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Table Climbers
One of the first tasks I had with Claire was to clean the apartment. Properly. having not done it since I moved in, almost 8 years ago, it was a project of epic proportions. I was not looking forward to it. Up to that point, I had used one corner, tucked away in a relatively unseen part of my home, as a dumping ground for anything that I could not use at that specific time. And over the course of the years, the pile had grown and grown, the use of the contents minimal. And of course, the more the pile had grown, the less likely I was to actually clean it.
So when Claire said we should clean it, I knew she was right. And when she said we would probably need a complete weekend to do it, she wasn't far off. On the Saturday morning, after having slept out and checked the mails and put it off as long as I could possibly do, it was time to make a start. Claire took over the kitchen, I took on the corner as a start. Box after box of crap was looked at, filtered to find anything I actually wanted or needed, most of it being stuff I had forgotten I had, and the vast majority of that was hardly worthwhile keeping, as I had replaced the stuff I could not find years previously.
As the cleaning continued the apartment was taking on the semblance of a post-American Baghdad, and I was wondering if perhaps the weekend predicted would be enough time to get everything done. As the evening came on though there were signs of progress, as bag after bag, and box after box of trash made their way towards the front door. Claire had done a stunning job with the kitchen, dumping food from the fridge that had been several months out of date, the kittens helping her by playing with anything that she threw on the floor.
Loads of trash was loaded in to the elevator, and taken downstairs, recycling whatever we could. I had 4 full trash bags of clothes which I decided would go to the charity bin. I was dirty and sweaty as load after load of crap from the apartment was taken down. And still it was not over, but for the first day it was - and significant progress had been made.
Sunday came around, and the cleaning continued, and as we had decided to go to meet the Red Lions at Carnegies, there was a little time pressure to get everything sorted out before we left. Amazingly enough just around lunchtime we had it as done as we could, and the place looked good. Claire got busy mopping the wooden floor, and for the first time since I can remember, the apartment looked totally spacious. Awesome.
It looks so nice now that I have regularly cleaned the floor, and am now inviting people over to stay, as I am no longer embarrassed by the mess. The kittens love it because there is even more room to run around, more light is coming in as all the book cases have been moved away from the windows, and I found a window in the mess corner that I did not even know was there. Even that small one now lets in additional light.
To go with the improvements though a new coffee table was required. Claire and I had been out to a place I had seen that looked quite promising, but the tables there were yucky and expensive. Day after day though I went past one place on the way home from work, thinking I need to go in. Last weekend, with Claire at work, I decided to finally ride the 2 km to the furniture store, and have a look. Three tables fit the bill but I told the boss I wanted to wait until Claire could see them and so after finishing work, we went and got some stinky tofu for dinner before dropping in on the store. We chose one for a very decent price - a nice glass top and big enough for both our laptops, so we can watch TV (one day, when I get a TV signal back!) and get online for Facebook and photos (Claire) and football results (me!). And it is oval, so there are no corners for any future children so smack their heads on. Now this is forward thinking!
It was delivered on Monday evening. 5 minutes later another use had been found for the table - a sleeping place for the kittens. Ginge loves to sleep there and climb on to it. In fact, he's there right now as I write. Typical.
