Moving progress

Not so little boxes, not all in a row.

It’s normal for our plans to go off track, for things to take longer than we thought, and for things to be more complicated than we’d expected. Best laid plans, and all that. I’ve just made progress on some plans that had gone well and truly off the track.

I moved into my house nearly seven months ago, and in the first couple months, I made progress going through boxes—when I could, in between doing things to get our house in Auckland sold. Then, it did sell. Then, we went under lockdown, and everything changed.

I continued to unpack boxes, concentrating on finishing the kitchen and dining room (so those rooms would be done), then all the books that went into my office. And I kept going—until I couldn’t.

My garage, already filled with boxes waiting to be emptied, became impassable because of all the flattened empty boxes filling up every available space. The day I moved in, the movers told me that all I had to do was phone them and they’d come back and collect the empty boxes. But that couldn’t happen during lockdown, and once that ended, I got busy with other things and kept forgetting to ring them, so I sent an email.

Yesterday, I got a call that they would be here in 30-45 minutes to collect the boxes. Despite the short notice, I was eager to accept. Good thing I was home.

I pulled all the boxes outside the garage (pictured), but I closed the overhead door when I was done, because I’m actually kind of embarrassed by how much is still in there. I shouldn’t be, and overall I’m not, but still.

After lockdown and every other obstacle, I came to accept the fact that clearing the garage will take as long as it takes. But I also didn’t want to continue to be stalled, and those boxes were an obstacle, literally and figuratively, to un-stalling the project. Now they’re not.

Today, I’d planned on starting work rearranging the stuff in the garage, then thought I should really finish my office first, but I ended up doing neither due to an ongoing gout attack that started a week ago. Best laid plans again.

Still, this latest development is a major step forward, and now all I have to do is capitalise on it. That, and remember that plans can go off track. Best laid plans, and all that.