Just When I Thought I Could Relax

I spent most of the day yesterday cleaning and tidying my studio, a.k.a. the dining room.  Everything was a cluttered mess, with several things in various areas haphazardly stacked on top of each other and looking like they would topple over at any minute.  By the end of the day, everything was more neatly arranged and while it probably looks just as cluttered to the outside eye, I know it's much tidier and I feel better about it.

This morning, the urge to tidy was still with me so I took an hour while watching Coronation Street and emptied the bookcase by my front door.  This is a job that had needed doing for a while.  The back of the bookcase (the Billy brand from Ikea) had detached and bowed out towards the wall, which meant that things would drop off the back of the top shelf and fall behind the books on the shelf below.  It turns out the books were all very dusty and there was a whole bunch of cat hair collected there as well, no doubt because the hallway in which this bookcase is located is the main path from one end of my apartment to the other - definitely a high traffic area.

I had thought that would be the only task I'd have to complete today.  Afterwards, I cheerfully took the garbage out, disposed of all the recyclable materials I had collected yesterday and took the items I had set aside for donation down to my car.  When I came back to my apartment, I hung my car keys up on the key hook above the bookcase ... and promptly dropped them down behind it.

Nooooo!  They only fell part of the way down so I thought it would be an easy thing to get a yard stick and shimmy them up or to one side and pluck them out.  You'd think, right?  Instead, they dropped right down to the carpet and under the back of the bookcase, almost out of sight.  Geez! Can't a girl catch a break here? 

It occurred to me that I could just leave them there for a while and use my extra set of keys instead.  Except that when I went looking for them, I couldn't find them.  I then tried using an unbent coat hanger to reach them but all that did was get the kittens excited that we were playing some new game.  I thought I was making progress until the hanger got stuck and wouldn't budge.

In the end, there was nothing to do but remove all 69 books from the shelves - again - and move the bookcase.  Which I did.  For the second time today.

Then I put them all back in.  Again.

So while I'm feeling pretty good about having that job crossed off my "to do" list, I'm pretty tired at the same time.  Plus I lost about an hour of relaxation time that I could have spent doing something much more fun and creative.  Instead, I think I've earned a nap!