unclutter | Weeks 15-17 review, plan for week 18 (Reply)

I continued to do small garden tasks during weeks 15 & 16. I failed to send off the boxes of clothes from the back room, or tackle anything in the living room.

Week 17, this bit me. With 16 hours notice, I had to empty and dismantle two of the four shelving units in the room, to make space for a large heirloom bookcase (made for spouse's grandparents) which my mother-in-law discovered on moving house did not fit through any of the doors of her new home, and shipped to us instead.

I started by clearing off a third shelving unit entirely (the previously-mentioned corner unit, now known as Unit 3), because that's the sensible place for a bunch of the contents of Units 1 & 2, ever since I reorganised the room layout (in February!). I'd just been procrastinating doing the work. A lot of stuff went straight to the rubbish / recycling bins, some went into an empty box in the back room, and a load of Lego got added to spouse's Lego-sorting project upstairs.

Then I systematically emptied Units 1 & 2 one shelf at a time, dusting as I went. Things went into one of the following:

bin bag
recycling bag
donations bag
Unit 3 (dining table things, and board games)
stackable storage crates from the back room and hauled elsewhere (DVDs to the downstairs study, a bunch of spouse's puzzles to his room)
the newly-cleared table in the back room (booze, including some Very Nice Wine I'd forgotten about in Unit 2)
the dining table (board games / jigsaws which I consider candidates for throwing out, but need input from offspring)

Finally I dismantled both units (IKEA IVAR, it comes down pretty easily) and stacked the shelves/uprights in the back room, before moving all remaining furniture to one side to allow the movers to deliver the heirloom bookcase. Which they did a great job of, and it fits neatly in the space made.

Then I went splat, and paid for the effort with about 3 days of falling asleep a couple of hours before my normal time.

We are now a day into week 18, and I have just got Elder Offspring to start cleaning the heirloom bookcase, which had got quite dusty in storage and transit

Plan for the rest of week 18:

move the assorted DVDs and CDs from storage crates onto the freshly-cleaned bookcase
(and improve the organisation thereof while doing so)
move the booze back onto the higher shelves
move the jigsaws for consideration into any remaining shelves, so they can be gone through less urgently, and we can use the dining table again
fix the shelf issue with Unit 3 I spotted during my frantic delivery preparation but didn't have time to fix then
with the booze moved, I can access the shipping boxes in the back room, so actually book courier collection for them

I probably should get back into the garden, which is still not in a usable state, and the strimmed weeds are showing signs of regrowing, but I can't see that I will have time this week. Next week maybe.