The Domino Effect

It all started a couple Saturdays ago when I got up the motivation to go to a yard sale a few blocks down the street from our house. They had a lot of good stuff, but it was a sad sale because it was advertised as a divorce/moving sale. Who I thought were the divorcees looked so young and so nice, it made me feel very melancholy that they were getting a divorce. But they had this great shelf for 10$. We are so in need of furniture and it was such a cute shelf and I knew exactly where I would put it that I immediately knew I wanted it. Anywhoo-- here it is-

Isn't it cute? I am extremely satisfied with it because it replaced a crappy little aluminum shelf that wobbled and didn't hold all of my many cookbooks without making it very difficult to get one out. The new shelf also holds a lot more so it freed up some very needed space in my kitchen cupboards. Crappy as this little wire shelf is, I still had a plan for it. Into the pantry/laundry room it went to serve the noble purpose of holding the food that was being stored on the floor. Well, of course I had to rearrange my pantry to make it fit properly and take advantage of the freed up floor space. And as I am standing here in this laundry/pantry room I have a revelation. First, let me tell you about my laundry room. Before all this, it was the laundry room from hell. No joke. Here, see for yourself.

(I had already starting clearing the shelves when I took this photo, hence all the junk on the washer and dryer)

See how awkward and junky it looks. The dryer and washing machine are not even next each other. They are at a weird angle that makes everything hard to get to and wastes a bunch of space. No matter how many times I tried reorganizing things it still ended up a big mess and practically impossible to do laundry without wanting to scream. Why, you ask, did we put the washing machine and dryer in such a silly place? I don't know why we were so stupid, frankly. Except that there were two shelves screwed in the wall in the way of where the dryer should have gone. For some insane reason it did not occur to me for to just move the stupid shelves. For almost two years I have been suffering under this frusturating set-up. So as I am standing here in the hated, hell room, it dawns on me. Those shelves are screwed in. All I need is a screw-driver to take them out. The landlord isn't going to care if I take them out. We can always put them back in when we move out. Let me repeat this very OBVIOUS revelation that for some reason never occurred to me. THE SHELVES ARE SCREWED IN TO THE WALL; YOU CAN TAKE THEM DOWN YOURSELF. So that's what I did. I took the shelves down, and moved the washer and dryer (with Jonathan's help) into a NORMAL position. And after a little more organization, viola! a regular walkable, laundryable, pantryable, room.

I am in heaven! I have a shelf that I can get cookbooks down from easily and a laundry room that I can walk in. Thank-you, Lord! Although, it does make me sad that I am benefiting so much from a divorce. I suppose it's their loss.