Unpacking the unnecessaries

The kitchen’s pretty much unpacked. Files are well, files. But we have boxes and boxes filling the sitting room marked “Ornaments – Fragile”. I thought this would be pretty straightforward. Two big display/bookshelves have been stored in the garage for a year, too tall for our rental house. I gave my sister a display cabinet when she moved house so a bit of space was lost there, but not as much as we’d gained. Or so I thought.

I have been unwrapping for what seems like hours.

I love the tall Chinese bookshelves because though the footprint of each is only like that of a bedside table, they stand about 8 foot tall and have five shelves each. Five different styles of art and pottery can be displayed near but not next to each other. I love them. Actually, they don’t look so good with the stone walls, but they won’t last forever. I still love the bookshelves.

But I have been struggling. As I’ve unpacked, it has slowly begun to dawn on me that for the past two years we’ve had cheap Ikea shelving tucked underneath our windows. In each of the last two places we’ve lived, it has fit perfectly (tall Ikea bathroom cabinets turned on their sides and only ever meant to be temporary) and as been home to the bits and bobs of our ornaments. Photographs have gathered there. Tots cannot damage the wedding bangles and bells from Cambodia so they can rest within reach of eager hands. But most of all, my mother-in-law’s pottery production over the past two or three years has become more prolific and more beautiful, no longer the tiny wobbly bowls that served as handy ashtrays for that rare breed of visitor The Smoker, but perfect pieces that you want to pick up to enjoy their shapes and textures. We have yard after Ikea yard of them and suddenly they have no place to go.

To date I have been gently cursing the packers when I find that “hall coats” contains my clothes that I’d rather have preferred near my bedroom than under the stairs or that “playroom books” contains files that now need to be hefted upstairs. But this late in the day, the mislabelling can be a godsend. The “living room ornaments” tag has me scouring the shelves wondering where on earth they will all go, but opening the box to find a waste paper basket and a lamp is cause to rejoice.

Finding the pair to a set of candleholders or recognising and ornament by its shape even among the wrapped wrapping gives me great pleasure.

Finding our wedding photo in a padded envelope marked “screws and fixtures” made me laugh. Is that how the moving men saw our marriage?

I’m nearly there. I think.