Hoarding; the hobby that will drive you insane

I’m waiting for a TV crew from “Neat” or “Hoarders” to show up at the door, because six weeks in we’re still navigating around a maze of boxes. Boxes of books, paintings, beds, mattresses, new linens, towels, and ironically empty storage boxes which are destined to go under the new beds, once they are out of *their* boxes and set up. 

Smokey, self-sacrificing chair tester 

This is not to say we haven’t made progress. We have new living room furniture in place, sofa, two new chairs and a new storage unit - all beautiful. The living room looks pretty great. The chairs have the feline seal of approval. I admit they are mighty comfy. (Covered to protect from gobs of cat hair) 

Ian went shopping with me to buy the sofa, and he put the chairs and the heavy and somewhat tricky-to-assemble storage unit together. And he went with me to buy the new TV and wall mount. (Damb, those things are expensive!) He hung the TV on the wall a couple of days ago. The cable installer comes tomorrow. Our old TV turned up toes and died this past week. Actually the TV works perfectly well, it’s the remote that died, and the TV has no controls on the unit, no off/on switches, no volume controls. (What’s the extra cost of adding that people? A nickel?) We’ve been turning the TV off and on with the power bar for months, but this last week the volume control went, and Ian didn’t know we were turning the TV off with the bar, and unplugged the cable, and now we can’t get it to turn on again.   

In the end Zak and Nicole postponed their trip until October, which is probably just as well, as they’d have spent their time moving furniture rather than relaxing and visiting. Meanwhile I’m trying to find two people here in the building to hire to help me migrate the big bed into what will be the guest room, set up the two new beds in our bedroom, move the other furniture which needs to be moved, put up curtain rods and hang curtains, hang paintings, put books in the bookshelves, wash the big patio window doors - something my floppy shoulder girdle muscles won’t allow me to do - and in general restore this place to sanity before I need professional help.