random thoughts – Day 1,214 – (Friday) – light assembly

It was another day with a little bit of everything the weather has to throw at us – sunshine, heat, an afternoon storm with lightning, booms, and rain slamming the skylights and roof. There was a flood watch for the area. An hour later, it was sunny again. The weather thingy on the tool bar on my computer screen had the temperature at 80 before the storm, down to 75 after the storm, then back up to 80 in the course of a couple hours.

My new home office file cabinet, ordered several days ago, delivered late in the morning. The message from FedEx included a photo of the box safely inside the dry, enclosed porch, sparing me angst when today’s installment of Monsoon Summer began. 

Once home after work, the box was hauled into the house and through the dining room, into the kitchen, and over to the office. Liberated from the packing materials, the necessary, not noted in the product description light assembly commenced. The Phillips head screwdriver was fetched from the tool bag and the wheels were attached through the pinhole sized screw holes which required dexterity, patience, and some effort. Then the drawer handles were attached with the impossibly small screws. 

Wheels on,
handles next.

The color of the file cabinet is a match to the office chair, and aesthetically pleasing, but the materials are lightweight, rather flimsy, and the pencil drawer has an issue right out of the box. The front panel isn’t connected to the side panel on one side and it doesn’t seem like it will take much for the whole piece to come off in my hand. That led to an online “Contact Seller” message to ask if there is a way to secure the panel, and the duct tape is on standby.

The next challenge is to find a place for the chrome kitchen rack holding baking supplies and cookbooks. It used to live in the 17-inch space between the desk and the cabinet, and was rolled over in front of the laundry closet to make room for the file cabinet. It is by no means a solution.

In the success column, I feel like a grownup with a file cabinet for all the papers I insist on keeping. Unlike the spacious desk I had in Tennessee in my very functional and comfortable office space, the small desk for the very small office nook off the kitchen lacks drawers, probably because it isn’t very wide. I also didn’t expect it to become a permanent home office, and the cheery yellow desk was chosen because the space could be used for a dining or food service area for the dinner parties I imagined having when I bought the house and also imagined I would make friends in Lowell.

There are now folders set up for important grownup matters like property repairs and car service but more hanging files are needed. The goal is that the file boxes cluttering the room that was once intended as a guest room can finally be eliminated, helping to remove the appearance that I never finished moving in. One apartment and two houses indicate that “not quite moved in” is a recurring decorating theme requiring the sacrifice of one room. It needs to stop. The BungaLowell is too small for that nonsense.