Moving Day

Hello all!  Today, all being well, is the day the removal men will be here to load up my life, so I thought it was about time I shared a few pictures of the process I've been going through to pack up the craft room (and the rest of my life, but I'm guessing it's the craft room you're mostly interested in!).

I'm afraid it started from a very overloaded, cluttered state - every surface crammed full (including the floor).  Going round the room from the doorway, here's a little rotation through 360 degrees.  (There's a video too, but it doesn't have the midway stages, just the before and after, and in case you can't access it here are the photos - and remember you can always click on them for a closer look.)

And it didn't get any better if you looked upwards...  Bear in mind that quite a lot of those boxes contain my hoarded recycling - cardboard, acetate, jars, bottles, weird objects like shoe-lasts or cheeseboards picked up at car boot sales or flea markets for upcycling... so there were many times I was literally packing rubbish!

It was a long slow process, and felt overwhelming and chaotic at times, but eventually I had most things sorted into boxes.  The bulk of it had to be moved into the living room as each box was packed, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to manoeuvre in the craft room.

As you can see in the photo above, even though I was moving things out as I packed them, it still became pretty impossible to move.  Here's what I refer to as Box Mountain in the living room...

Those are the proper packing boxes, but I also used lots of wooden apple crates (which I have on the shelves anyway, on their sides, separating stamps by make, or holding tags and substrates) to pack up most of my own creations.   And of course the ones that had stamps in still have those stamps in, just the other way up.  So all those apple crates and the wooden Moppe drawers got packed and wrapped and stored back on the shelves so that I could continue to move around.

The plan is that that is how they will travel in the van - on the shelves, which gives the often fragile contents some extra protection, and also saves masses of room of course.  But obviously you can't have all the boxes piled on the shelves already... you need the shelves empty in order to load them into the van, so this was the final stage before loading day...

The box in front of the cabinet there is open for a reason.  The cabinet is pretty heavy just as a piece of furniture so I had to remove all the contents - those are just some very flat light things which I'm hoping can go back inside and travel there once the cabinet itself is loaded into the van.

But it's all pretty accessible - so if they want to start with the heavy boxes they can.  If they want to start by loading the shelves and putting all those small boxes in place they can.  It'll be like a huge 3D jigsaw.  

I'm praying the weather gods and goddesses are going to be kind.  And then of course there's the unloading and unpacking to come... but the unpacking has to be a more gradual process as the floors aren't quite ready for me to do everything.

You'll be glad to hear it's all going into a larger room at the other end!  I'll update you on progress when there's something fun to share, but if you're on Instagram you can see something of where I'm headed to, including the view from my back-door-to-be here. 

Right, I'm off to do the final bits and bobs.  By the time you're reading this, we should be loading up!  In the meantime, I hope you'll wish me luck and I'll see you on the other side (all being well).  Thanks so much for stopping by, and I'll see you again soon, when time allows.

I give you this to take with you: Nothing remains as it was. If you know this, you can begin again, with pure joy in the uprooting.

Judith Minty

Settling into a new country is like getting used to a new pair of shoes. At first they pinch a little, but you like the way they look, so you carry on. The longer you have them, the more comfortable they become. Until one day without realising it you reach a glorious plateau. Wearing those shoes is like wearing no shoes at all. The more scuffed they get, the more you love them and the more you can't imagine life without them.

Tahir Shah