Moving Stuff
The theme for our holiday weekend was Moving Stuff. Earlier in the week, Roomie John moved on to edgier, more urban digs in Oakland, and this weekend we re-took his room as our office/workspace.
This involved a trip to IKEA to get three more bookcases (bringing the household total to 19). Shockingly, we had enough books not actually properly shelved that with three whole new bookcases, we hardly have a free shelf. That's the problem with double-shelving books: you deny the reality of how many books you actually have.
Anyway, I spent a few days this weekend moving books from shelf to shelf, sorting books, recombining sections, making new divisions, that sort of thing. When we finished we had most of my architecture and design books upstairs in the office, plus our combined computer science books, plus my sewing stuff and books, and we had room to have a nice big, open room with a table in the middle to work around. Awesome.
It's all about Less Stuff for me right now, and especially about removing jams of books from corners. The bookcase in the bedroom is still a problem child, but I have some plans there, too. And having a nice big room to work in is great. Not to mention that we've been slowly moving stuff out of the dining room, which I would like to note is the last room in the house with fake wood paneling, if you know what I mean. Next on our summer list is designing a building a deck, but I have a feeling there may be some exuberant panel-removal in there somewhere.
But back to the Weekend of Moving. Not all our moving was inside. We also moved around some compost piles to get better access to the back of the shed (because we need it to finish construction).
The tall compost bin that had been at the back of the shed is now in two smaller bins on the side. The old rabbit hutch the chickens had been living in is disassembled and waiting for some minor repairs before being returned to its owner. It is much easier to move around in the chicken yard with the rearranged compost bins, and also it was apparent that the compost is close to ready, should I wish to speed it up. I put a small dripper in the fullest bin to help move it along (around here, compost hardly does anything in the summer because there's so little water).
And we had enough room to finish the shingles on the shed. Now we just need to trim them to the edge and finish just about every other part of the shed that is not yet done (windows, trim, siding, caulking the siding, door hardware, and so on).
The chickens are really enjoying their home. Yesterday we went to a neighbor's barbeque and came home just as the sun was going down to find the chickens all lined up on their perch in their room, ready to be closed in safe for the night. And since we knew we were going to spend most of the weekend in the house moving stuff around (see above), we re-attached their aviary netting so they would be safe during the day, and they've been tearing apart the compost piles and pooping everywhere (this is a good thing).
Technorati Tags: chickens, compost, construction, organization, shed
posted by ayse on 07/06/08