Life Lessons: Building Furniture

Ever since I moved into my own place last September, I have been living out of baskets. All of my clothes have just been piled in a heap in a couple baskets on my floor (originally these baskets were propped up on a chair, but then we decided we needed a chair for the living room. Thus, they got demoted to the floor). I tried to organize them neatly but within a couple days they inevitably transformed into a tangled mess in those baskets. Five months later, I have finally graduated to a dresser.

We picked up the dresser a couple weeks ago, but I didn’t get around to putting it together until this past weekend. My mother dear came by with the tools; we opened the box containing the parts to my dresser, flipped through the manual, and got to it.

All 29 steps worth of instructions.

It took us 3 hours.

Building furniture is no easy task, let me tell you. DietGirl can tell you all about it– it took her 3 hours to build a table, too! Must be something about that length of time when you’re putting together furniture. Needless to say, by the end of it I was knocking back the wine (but from a sherry glass! I’m classy like that).

They say you’re not supposed to wallpaper with your loved ones, but apparently it’s okay to build furniture with them. Provided you’ve got a snack partway through to keep your energy up and the crankiness at bay. I mean, when you’ve got a hammer in one hand and a screwdriver in the other, why would you need to take out your stress on your fellow builders?

But we did finally get my dresser built; all 3,000 lbs of it (took four of us to carry it from the car into my apartment. Okay, so 3,000 might be a little ballpark). Yes, a couple of the screws might be missing because they were a b*&67 to put in, but it stands up straight and everything fits together so that is good enough for me! And once I had my clothes folded up neatly and organized in the drawers, it was amazing how much better I felt- how much more like home my apartment felt! Waking up the next day to realize “oh crap I have 15 pages to write in the next 2 days” was quickly followed by “but life is good, I have a dresser!”. And I was able to tackle those 15 pages no problem with the knowledge that my clothes are organized in sophisticated compartments rather than being a mess in some old baskets.

It’s those little things that eat away at us. When one aspect of our lives is disordered or neglected, it crosses over to affect all other areas of our lives. I don’t know why, but taking out the recycling or doing laundry or washing the dishes or building a dresser makes all the rest of my tasks for the day seem a whole lot more doable.

Make a point of getting that little (or big, if it’s a dresser) task done today! What have you been putting off lately? Have you had similar tales of woe when it comes to building furniture or are you a natural at these things? Even if it doesn’t come easy, there sure is a sense of satisfaction with seeing the completed project and thinking, I built that.

PS Don’t forget to answer Monday’s poll!