A Place For Everything...

Spent the morning and early afternoon dusting and re-organizing my apartment. Some pieces of furniture were really too big for where they were; others were plastic or cheaper wood pieces that I want to replace with better items. I moved one of the cherry Ikea shelves with the rounded corners into the entertainment area, and another in the music area. The crates that held the CDs in the music area replaced the Ikea shelves in the bedroom. The narrower, ash-colored heart-cut-out shelf and the Wal-Mart rack were both moved temporarily into the music area to hold CDs.

It took me a while to figure things out, but I generally like it. The Ikea shelf will definitely be staying in the entertainment area. It looks pretty good there, and the wide top is perfect for my DVD player. I'm not sure if the other one will remain in the music area. While it is a splendid place to set the record player and CD/cassette player, the shelves are too wide for CDs and too narrow for records and many of my coffee-table entertainment books.

However, I absolutely adore the crates in the bedroom. They look much better - and allow me far more room to move around in my desk chair - than the heavy Ikea shelves. In fact, I think I'll get a few more and clear out or find another use for the plastic milk crates I snitched from the Eckard's around the corner from me in Wildwood shortly before I moved. I'll probably need more crates for records, too. They seem to be the only shelves wide enough to hold them!

I think I might get one more of the shelf set I bought the week between Christmas and New Year's, since that seems to be working out really well. There's only a few things I need to replace around the apartment this year. The big one is the baker's rack. It was a cheap piece I bought for me from Ames shortly after I moved on my own. It's wobbly, it doesn't really hold all of my cookbooks anymore, it doesn't really provide enough (or stable enough) shelf space, and the bottom of the drawer is starting to pop out. I actually bought it as a desk, figuring it would work with the laptop I had at the time...but then the laptop died, and I ended up buying a full upright computer. That was when I bought the simpler desk from Big Lots that I replaced with my current roll-top desk. I need a real cabinet like Mom has, with drawers and lots of shelf space.

The other thing I want to replace is my vacuum cleaner. That's another item I've had since I moved out. That was a decade ago! The attachments stopped working ages ago, and it barely picks up dirt anymore. It might be partially clogged with my darn hair...but a lot of it may be sheer age. Time to find a new one that's just as slender and bagless, but easier to move around and store.

If nothing else, I was able to get rid of the remaining half of the plastic shelf unit that I picked up at the thrift shop in Collingswood years ago. They're wobbly, tacky, and the top part is starting to cave in. I put it out with the rest of the trash tonight. If anyone wants it, they're welcome to it. It might actually work well in someone's garage.

I finished with barely enough time to have a quick lunch and run off to work. Work was busy for the first half of my shift, during rush hour. After rush hour ended, so did our customers. I spent the second half of my shift putting candy away. (Some of it, anyway. Most of the items in the cart were either new and not listed on the shelves yet, or overstocks.)

I discovered another reason for the later quiet when I headed out around 8. It had started to shower lightly. I did get a little wet going home, but not soaked. Good thing I did get home when I did. It sounds like it picked up a bit about a half-hour later, and is still going at press time.