Pardon the delay in updates but we truly are Progressively Challenged here. If we ever turn into Master of Faster you’ll be sure to know.

We’ve had a few bumps on the road here on our way to renovations as well as birth. I caught a cough that was nasty enough to crack a rib or tear a chest muscle, we’re not sure what it is because the doctor couldn’t exray because of the baby. He said it didn’t really matter anyway what it was because he couldn’t do anything with either one of those scenarios. They’re both to heal themselves. Unfortunately healing for these things take weeks so I’ve been immobilised since this happened exactly 3 weeks ago today. Couldn’t even hang on to the laptop, hence lack of updates, and obviously been unable to make any progress in the reno areas as well.

I’m much better though and breathe without screaming and terrifying the husband, which is always nice. You should never terrify husbands.

Last time I updated I promised our Kitchen Plan B. So let’s do a quick recap:

• We bought big bulky appliances that we plonked down in our living room thinking it’d be for a week or two that they’d take up that space
• We emptied all kitchen cupboards and packed it up in moving boxes which we then plonked down in our living room thinking it’d be for a week or two, so who cares about the mess, right?
• And then the wretched kitchen people told us they wouldn’t keep their promise to come before Christmas but had re-scheduled to end of January instead

So on our hands we had a very messy situation where firstly we barely had any kitchen stuff, an extremely messy living room that was not at all ready to be Christmas decorated (almost the biggest of all my griefs around this kitchen debacle), and no space left in the unit to shift the study furniture OUT of the study so we could convert it to the nursery with all the nursery stuff that was making a right mess in the hallway. (And never mind me at that time being 36 weeks preggers without a nursery, but hey, what’s the fun/challenge in being all ready at 20 weeks right?)

So after a brief nervous breakdown on my part we came up with Plan B. Or rather, credit where credit is due, The Banker came up with Plan B – Self-Storage Hire! I’ve always said he’s the brains around here and there he goes once again and flaunts that sexy brain of his.

So on to research I went and after a few visits around our local area (it must be lucrative business because there’s heaps of them around) I soon found a brilliant little self-storage space with pretty good prices but with an awesome attitude and service level, which was honestly the single reason I ended up picking them in the end. They also turned out to be about 5 minutes away from us which was great too since we don’t have a ute and had no intention of hiring one and spend even more moolah on this debacle, so now we could do drive-bys to drop off stuff pretty much at our convenience any time and day of week.

So. We started by packing up all the kitchen boxes in the car and went and dropped them off. That took two rounds. We hired a space of 65 sqf so we had a fair bit of space and decided to just go through the entire bloody unit and cull cull cull until it didn’t look messy anymore so we could hopefully make it a wee bit pretty for Christmas.

So I attacked my book cases. There’s heaps of books in there that actually need to leave us premanently and I should’ve obviously done that before I packed them. But where’s the challenge in that? So I just lifted stuff out of the shelves and packed it up in more moving boxes.

I also had to, kill me now, carry out my home decoration mags and TOSS THEM OUT because they were just taking too much space.

Our extraordinarily messy book cases went from this:

(We admittedly also have issues with horisontal spaces, not just progress. Horisontal spaces tend to collect stuff around here. Wish our house had only vertical spaces but then again tv-watching from the sofa would be… interesting. Not to mention the kitchen shelves…)

To this:

And I was chirpy as a bird. Look how pretty! And note number of mags now (bottom shelf next to green boxes). I’m such a good girl.

Did the same with heaps of pretty decorative things that currently had lost their homes (so if you’ve given us pretty things for our engagement, wedding or in general, they’re still around, just currently resting peacefully and carefully wrapped in our awesome storage space, so don’t get upset if you can’t spot them in photos).

And then I broke my chest.

So The Banker had to take all these super heavy book boxes and pretty-things boxes and deliver them to our awesome self-storage unit all by himself. He rules.

We ended up with space in the living and dining rooms again that we now could re-mess-up with stuff from the nursery so we could move on that project. And potentially also with room for some Christmas decorations.

Things were definitely looking up.