Un-boxing days

Twinkle kept out of Heisenburg's boxes

I'm sure our boxes had been breeding - there is no way we left a whole room full last year...

Although I had two weeks to do it, seeing a room full of 34 boxes, 2 chairs, 2 glass tables, 1 rug, 2 shelves, several large framed pictures, a drawing board, several portfolio cases, and a crate and several blue Ikea bags of miscellaneous 'stuff' (1950's radio anyone?) and a cat* made me think I had my work cut out for me. I actually  wondered if I would have time to visit friends in Pompey** and Town*** as promised.



The worst thing is that I had to unpack the whole lot to see what is actually in them, including several sub-boxes (think Russian dolls) which had been following me around since I was a student. They probably have historical significance of some kind by now. But the worst thing was trying to limit the number of items to be taken to Finland to only six boxes (failed - there are 8 boxes and 1 tube on the way) without leaving too many boxes behind (and the room half full still).

Actually the worst thing was that a lot of the stuff was Konna's and not mine, including her own stashes of student work, memorabilia. And dozens of unlabeled CD-roms. And shoes. And pens (approx 100). And jigsaw puzzles of maps. And globes. And photos. And her mask collection.

But really the worst thing was trying to decide what to throw away, what to re-pack, what to put on eBay, and what to put on Lil' Sis's 'honest-I'll-take-it-to-a-car-boot-sale-when-I'm-back-from-Australia' pile and what to keep.  In fact at one stage there were several Heisenberg-esque boxes of items of uncertainty fluctuating between all four states (luckily I kept the cat out of those) - especially until conference calls via Skype to Konna suomessa - having slow/unreliable connections at both ends and the worst webcam in the world at my end didn't help much either. At one point I considered hiring a skip, getting rid of the lot and having a two week holiday.

One thing that also didn't help (although not the worst thing) was that every item put on eBay took time away from sorting out another box.  On the plus side I eventually sold 21 items and made around £16.66 on average per item - which was just enough to pay my TKMaxx shopping bill...


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*A real cat, called 'Twinkle'. It had adopted the pile of boxes as it's sleeping spot, but was quite curious to investigate any open ones too. As it is long haired this was useful for dusting purposes.
** For the benefit of non-Brits / Jos et ole britti: Pompey=Portsmouth
***Ditto: Town=(Central) London sama kuin Stadi=Helsinki slangiksi. This also confused my Gran who though I was referring to the local town of Camberely, which needless to say doesn't require an overnight stay when visiting