Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

settling in

It sounds a bit weird, perhaps, but it’s amazing how big a difference a clean kitchen makes.

The apartment is still in a somewhat disastrous state as we try to figure out where to put everything, but it’s slowly getting better. (For all its size, storage options are proving surprisingly limited.) Complicating matters a bit are the things we plan to sell — television, old PC (once the hard drive is reformatted), home theatre system — and the boxes of books without shelves to put them on (we’re thinking of buying some BILLY shelves at IKEA); scattered around the living room, they give the impression that we’ve made less of a dent in the unpacking than we really have.

The kitchen, though, has been somewhat of a pernicious morale-drainer for me since we moved in. I’d hoped that it would be the first thing I’d set up, so that we could establish some kind of “normal” routine even as the rest of the apartment slowly took shape. My progress stalled early on when I realized that it was sorely lacking in cabinet space. I found a home for glasses (good lord, we have a lot of glasses and cups and mugs), bakeware, spices, silverware the the like (I’d even pressed my EFEKTIV office shelves into service as a pantry/dish cabinet), but I couldn’t find anywhere to stow our cookware.

So the kitchen languished for about a week, the floor overrun with boxes and the counters covered with stuff I couldn’t put away.

Finally, this weekend, we decided to make a foray to IKEA to buy shelving for the kitchen. (On a side note, the bright red “gimme a hug” heart pillows the store sells to benefit the Red Cross are a little creepy; Rob remarked that the big wire bin filled with the pillows looked like some kind of massacre.) We settled on the OMAR, a stainless steel three-shelf system with a wood countertop that can be used as a work surface. (Frustratingly, the latter didn’t come with pre-drilled holes, so Rob had work in the screws by hand to attach the wood to the shelving unit.)

Everything assembled, we cleared out a space in the kitchen for the shelves, and I made short work out of filling its shelves with the cookware and large bowls that had stymied me for the past week. And with the kitchen finally (mostly) tidied up, I felt so much better. It’s the first thing I see when I come in the door and the last thing I see when I leave, and now that it’s finally usable, this apartment is really beginning to feel like home.