On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Sonja van Baardwijk-Holten wrote:
> Julia Thompson schreef:
>
> > Hey, Sonja, I don't know how disorganized your dwelling is, but if it's
> > disorganized, have you gotten bitten by an organization bug?
>
> Yes, very. But that might have to do something with trying to sqeeze
> in three people in an appartement that isn't very big. Ever since I
> moved in we had problems on sorting out how to organize our space.
> Where we, before, were somewhat indifferent to unused or not
> economically used space, now, everything needs to be very organised
> and reorganised until everything fits. Sofar we managed to give junior
> his own (albeit very small) room, change the not used office into our
> bedroom and started even on rearranging some storage space (in sofar
> as we had some that is). Now everything is on hold because they want
> to tear down the building we live in within the next year. But somehow
> I still feel the itch to do things get everything ready for our little
> arrival. And knowing that lifting things is getting to be more and
> more difficult doesn't really help. I would need to do some major
> rearrangements to complete all the rearrangement stuff I already
> planned and started on last year. But I dare not start in case we
> still have to move sometime soon. Then again they already piped down a
> bit in so far that the demolition plans have been postponed until
> further notice.(whenever that may be)
I'd say, just go ahead and do the rearrangement if you've gotten to a
point in the organization where it makes sense to be moving the furniture.
I guess I have a great advantage in that, if Dan isn't out of town on
business, he's in the house most of the day, and if I just need one or two
things lifted and moved a few feet, I can send him an e-mail asking him to
do it and when he gets a break, he can take care of that for me and I
don't have to ask him to do it after work at the end of the day when he's
getting more tired.
> Every time I seem to find some of Jeroen's stuff that hasn't been gone
> through on previous occasions (he, he, he) and he gets assigned to
> sort it out and reorganize it into something less spacy/bulky. So far
> his office (which is now our bedroom), his storage areas and his desk
> drawers have fallen victim to this. As for my stuff. I practically
> have nothing left to sort through. I only took with me the stuff I
> needed when I moved into Jeroen's appartment, still plenty but it's
> all neatly arranged except for some smaller detailes. Poor Jeroen is
> actually the one that (sofar) suffered most from my organization bug.
> <evil grin> Then again he wants to have kids more than I do, so.....
> ;o)
See, I'm the packrat here. We looked at the guest room (which will be the
baby's room) last night, and discussed how to deal with all the stuff in
there. There's one piece of furniture in there that I don't want to get
rid of, because we'll be moving into a bigger house eventually and I'll
want it there, but it's just not going to work out in that room anymore,
so either we put it in the garage or we get a storage locker somewhere and
take a bunch of stuff to that for storage; and the garage needs to be
cleaned out. Dan was asking after some boxes of mine there, and I
indicated that one set of them needed to be gone through and that probably
about half of the stuff in those could be given away to charity. (He said
that if he'd known that my going into the "nesting" phase of pregnancy was
what it was going to take to get me to curb some of my packrat ways, he'd
have gotten me pregnant a long time ago. ;) )
> > I've just suddenly decided that some things have to be sorted through and
> > then
> > stored, and I'm itching to move on that. (Unfortunately, the boxes of
> > mine I want to go through first are behind boxes of Dan's, and a couple of
> > those are heavy enough that I don't want to try to move them. Not that I
> > couldn't, but if I did something just wrong and hurt myself, he'd feel
> > really bad for a lot longer than I want to hear him apologizing.)
>
> Same here. I don't feel I should move stuff by myself that I actually
> feel confident I could move. I know I'd get into a lot of trouble if
> Jeroen found out. I'm the stubburn, tough kind of girl so I'm not
> really into asking anybody to do something for me I feel I could do
> (even with some difficulty or with some detour) myself. And that
> attitude of mine on occasion gets him rather angry. But it doesn't
> seem fair to me to let him do all the lifting I still have planned
> (with all the inherent complaining and moaning that usually
> accompanies any such endeavors by any male ;o) ) while he has a full
> time job and me being at home all day anyway. Then again doing it by
> myself is not the answer either or so my back tries to tell me on
> occasion. Maybe we females should get over these feelings and start
> taking a bit more advantage of the situation since it'll only get
> worse within a few months. :o)
See, as far as moving stuff that maybe I shouldn't move goes, if I hurt
myself moving something and his mother found out about it, he'd get all
kinds of grief from her when it was really my own fault for being so
stupid, and I don't want to put him through that. :)
And I discovered *last* month that it's not a good idea to wander around
in a bookstore for half an hour carrying 2 heavy books of different sizes
when you're pregnant. I ended up stopping about every 10 meters on
average (being sensitive to Alberto here, hope he appreciates it!) to set
them down on something above floor level, look at other books a bit, take
a deep breath and continue on. Next time I have to go get heavy books
when I'm pregnant, I'll see if I can leave them in a spot with a store
employee for a little while while I do the rest of my browsing -- or if
there are enough copies that there will be at least one left after an
hour, I'll get those at the very end.
Julia
