Identify what is most important )0( Eliminate everything else
The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world. Dr. Paul Farmer
The suffering of others is not alleviated when no one knows about it.
There is no one right way to live. Daniel Quinn Ishmael
The only thing that you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right sort of people.
We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. Kurt Vonnegut

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

furniture !

Furniture!!!!! I ordered kitchen table/chairs and a desk from Walmart...gosh how I love that company. Lots of people do not, many of whom are sheep and just follow the haters, but in my community they are stellar. This was my first time ordering from them and it was a truly nice experience. The stuff is probably made overseas, but I could not find anything affordable at any local stores, including the charity shops, which have gone trendy or some damn thing, with prices comparable to the store. I am glad to do much of my shopping with them (four nice ones in the city in which I am now living) and I fully appreciate that they need to pull in as much income as possible. Really. But, they have prices that are beyond my budget, no matter how I stretch it. They were pretty easy to assemble and look really cool.

Then, I spent a couple of weeks looking for other furniture for the living room. Again, nothing affordable at the charity shops and I have to admit that the whole sitting and sleeping on used soft-upholstered furniture became increasingly nightmarish and I started looking at the stores.

Began with the cheapest, warehouse places. There was one that had nice looking things, and they were made, well, sort of well, but would not stand up to daily use by a fat broad and her constantly shedding and vomiting cat (also a little on the chubby side, but we are both reducing our tonnage quite nicely). However, if you have a room that just needs furnishing but does not get regular use, these stores are a great place and certainly worth considering, as their prices are amazingly low. Might be nice for a second bedroom that you are using as a study or any room that gets used only when guests are around.

Finally found some furniture that was not huge. Seriously huge furniture abounds. Everywhere. Seriously. Everything is over-scale, bulky, puffy, tufted and just plain big. My place is small and the scale is all wrong for such enormous stuff.

I finally found some things that were smaller and I bought them, after thinking on how much spending that kind of money was freaking me out. I have heard from my friends that I did not spend very much and that most people spend several times what I did. That freaks me even more. It did not comfort me and whilst I have had the stuff for half a week now, I am still occasionally having minor panicky aftershocks about this.

Oh, and when the furniture was delivered, it turned out to be huge.  Not huge in comparison to the really huge stuff in the stores, but fairly ginormous when place in the small space.  Really, it looks huge, ginormous.  However, it is very comfortable.  Charley loves all of it.  So, I guess that makes it worth the money and angst.  But, that stuff is big!!!

I told my cat that he is not allowed to vomit on any of it for three years, so he has transferred his affection to using all of it for a scratching post. I know that he is simply marking the pieces and am not too upset about it. Yet. I suppose that it is his furniture as well, so I need to get over myself about this. It would help is he would contribute something from his part-time job, but he refuses...oh...I forgot...napping is not paid employment. Neither is wasting calories with stress vomiting. What was I thinking. Still, he has to stop clawing the soft stuff and this weekend I will be making a couple of decent scratching posts for him, the kind he really likes and that we had to leave behind when we were homeless the last time.

Speaking of which, the stuff left behind at the last minutes. I had no place to put the stuff, even though it was not much. Some went to the charity shops and the rest went to the landfill.

What I miss.

Essential oils. I had a bunch that I used for doing aromatherapy. They got trashed because they could not tolerate the heat of the little storage unit I rented. I have needed them at least four times since moving.

Soap making stuff. Again, the heat of the storage unit was not good for the oils and all the rest. And, when those had to go, it made sense to give the tools and molds along to the person who took the oils, dyes and other stuff. Now, I need soap and whilst I am fine with buying a few bars of Dove or something, I want my own, home made soap. This stuff might be the first thing I replace.

Staples, foods. The heat issue, once again, made it impossible to take even canned or packaged foods. It is just food, most of it was donated, but I keep needing a spice or condiment and it is not there. I suppose I could have opted to replace this stuff instead of buying furniture, but I really needed something more than a desk chair on which to rest my exhausted, fat ass. Choices, choices.

Art materials and supplies. This stuff was the first to go. It was that or I would have had to cull the toys I keep for the boys, and that took priority. An excellent choice, and so much stuff gone, although this is easiest with which to live. Crazy, as art was so important to me, what with all the other crap, and it was a source of income once in a while.

Books. I knew that I would regret divesting some of them, and that has happened, but to a much smaller degree than I expected. I kept one box of books, those that I constantly re-read and those that hold some significant energy or meaning for me. And, I can get pretty much whatever I like from the library. But, the power of most of those books was that they allowed me to escape from my real life. I never fully realized that until they were gone. I read voraciously, and I figured out some time ago that I was seeking a story for myself. My real story was not great and each of those books was an attempt to create a life story with which I could connect. I was not looking for a fiction to make my own, just some aspect of living that reflected my own, but something, some quality of existing on which I could use as a foundation for building a life. My life. I was never able to do that and I suppose that is a good thing, you know, making the best life I could using only what I actually had. I am doing that now, but I still miss some of those damn books. I thought about looking for used copies, but I clearly thought furniture a better investment. :)

 Kitchen stuff. I miss some of my cooking equipment and tools, but those that I could not put in storage went to the charity shops and some of the women I met whilst in the shelter. All good, but I wish that I had kept the large slow cooker for making soap. Man. Considering how much crap I got rid of, this list is kind of small. Perhaps that is a good thing. We are truly making this new place our home. Things are going up on the walls, and I am being choosy about what I am hanging.

Despite all my complaining about loss, I can see that there are some things that survived the moving and that will shortly be donated to the charity shops. That is a very good thing.

 Oh, as for spending money, I figured out what using the laundromat is costing and when I found a tiny washing machine on sale, I bought it. I connected it yesterday and tomorrow will be the test run. It is going to take only four or five months for it to pay for itself. The best part is that I will never run out of clean big girl panties again! Yay!!!! I am expecting that I will appreciate it even more during the winter months, but clean underwear is still my favorite thing about this thing. If it actually works, that is.

2 comments:

  1. I'm enjoying reading about your new life and though you regret some of the old items you've lost, maybe it's best you have new ones (even pre-loved 'new' ones) so there's no connection to the life you left behind. Maybe you should write a book about your life and your new beginnings!

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  2. I love your fighting spirit! Well done for leaving, that must have been SO hard. I hope that you get YOUR life now. It sounds as if you are on your way. Keep us posted.

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