Time Wasting & Living in a Mess

One of the things that I had wanted to tackle during the holidays was to reorganize the living areas to make it more homely and less like a work space. We had neglected our little home (or ‘Pigeon Hole’ to some) in recent years, turning the open plan living areas into one big work space ‘littered’ with projects in various stages of completion. When we went to Victoria Gardens to pick up some spare parts we had ordered at Howards Storage World a week before the holidays, we dropped by IKEA. M patiently explored the big store with me. I found that strange because M doesn’t like IKEA very much. We left after collecting the latest catalogue and came away with lots of ideas on how to improve our living areas.

In the days after the big flood, I was plagued with unfounded worries of a leak in the water pipe under the hallway and the kitchen. Although it sounds stupid now, I was truly convinced that something horribly wrong was happening all because one area of the hallway took longer to dry. I was so worried that our home may turn into the Apartment of Mould, just like the House of Mould that I saw on TV. Instead of using our free time productively, I argued and picked on M for not taking my worries seriously.

I do admit that I am quite a worry wart; being especially worse at night – before bedtime. Morning is the best time of the day for me. I turn into an optimistic person after a good night sleep. Mornings are especially good now that Spring had arrived too. Spring means that the sun comes up earlier and sets later. Despite losing an hour, the result of a longer day is why I didn’t mind the earlier switch to daylight savings this year.

On one such positive morning after the flood, I got out of bed nice and early to draft a couple of layouts of the living areas for M to pick. He picked the one I liked best. Inspired by what I saw at IKEA, I decided to relocate some of our existing furniture to create small but purposeful areas within our whole living area. I made sure that I included a cosy area for us to chill out and relax.

Did we plough ahead and start working? No! We were caught up with the AFL Grand Final frenzy and went out to Fed Square to soak up the atmosphere and wasted time and money in the city bingeing on fatty foods like we had only just discovered Melbourne. We both also got pretty burnt for staying out too long in the day. Neither of us were Geelong or Hawthorn supporters but we rocked up for the parade anyway. I just went along because M never gets to enjoy events like these due to his work. There was a minor consolation prize for doing all this. Both of us ended up in a photo in the paper the next day. No, it wasn’t a close up of the two of us. It was one of those pictures taken from a helicopter in the sky. Finding us in the photo reminded me of those “Where’s Wally?” books. LOL.

Two days after Hawthorn beat Geelong, we settled to start reorganizing the living areas. The effort we put in that day was not bad but did it last? Not really. We abandoned it the next day to go watch WALL.E. Tuesday is the only day that I allow for us to go to the movies because the tickets are cheaper. We were supposed to watch the movie and buy some bread before coming straight home but we ended up having lunch in the city and hanging around Borders as well. By the time I got home, all I had wanted to do was to curl up in bed with the book I am currently reading. We did a bit more on Wednesday before spending the two days after that trying to solve the growing storage problem for the ‘stuff’ M had collected in recent years. It wasn’t easy because we were sticking to a budget.

Sunday (5 Oct) was the last day of the holidays. We went back to IKEA to try to solve my storage problem. M suddenly became very anti-social while we were at the store and we had to leave sooner than I expected. I was very cross with him and still am. Because I had to hurry, I didn’t get to carefully decide my options. M is a very considerate person most of the time but he is also capable of behaving like a very spoilt devil occasionally. He was apparently trying to seek reassurance because he was worried that I would leave the apartment in its messy state. Speaking of that, I better get back to tidying up the bombsite. At the rate that I am going, the living areas will be nice and tidy ‘soon’. Blogging about the progress may speed things up a bit.