The new apartment is the same layout as the one I’d been living-in for the last six years. It’s the same but it’s different.
It has given me a chance to recalibrate the layout of my work-space, add a few new items of furniture and get rid of some old ones. It has also allowed me to, finally, after almost 8 years of being packed, use my sea-green silk curtains! The Boy doesn’t like any light in the room that houses his desk and I love swathes of light flooding mine. We were forever negotiating just how much of the curtain I could open and how much he could draw back. The move to the new apartment allowed me to re-think the space and now my desk and bookshelf are located in one half of the living room. It gets just a little spot of direct sunlight, so won’t get too hot during Summers and it means I can keep the curtain open all day! The Boy can have his study as dark as he likes!
I had been worried about how painful it would be to setup the new apartment all by myself. The Boy is sailing. But over the last week since I moved, I’ve discovered I’m rather enjoying it.
It has allowed me to throw away a MASSIVE amount of junk. Things I wasn’t using. Things that had been stored away for, “I might need this then.” but that “thing” hasn’t been touched in years. Boxes of such “things”. Obviously I can’t touch anything from the Boy’s things but mine and the rest of the collective for the apartment is fair game. Even books. I haven’t started but I’m going to be culling.
I also discovered the joys of tinkering with furniture.
That’s my work-desk / study-table that I decided to repair / reconfigure after moving into the new apartment. Two of the legs were very wobbly. The screws connecting each leg to the table had come loose and tightening them only pushed them farther into the leg without creating a strong hold. The drawers ( not in this picture ) that were attached to the table top were a hindrance more than anything else. So I removed them and took them to the kitchen where I’m using them to store spoons / forks / knives. More space to move my chair around under the desk now. After stuffing Fevicol into ever hole in the wood, I’ve left the table upside down for at least 48 hours, before I use the metal brackets that the drawer replacement yielded, to further reinforce the legs and get the table back to use. Till then, I continue to work on my laptop on either the living-room couch or I watch ELEMENTARY on NetFlix in bed.
The sense of peace I’ve been soaking in since I took apart and put-back-together the above table, is surprising. I was tired, I slept well. If the table project works out well, I might tinker with other pieces of furniture with more confidence. I am living in an apartment with boxes of “things” strewn around all over the floor but I’m happy.
For now, I feel at peace with the sunlight streaming in through my sea-green silk curtains that used to adorn my apartment’s balcony on the 8th floor in Bombay 8-10 years ago. Life is good. ( Quite a change from how I was feeling previously! )
