Moving in

I had a long two days! Sunday morning I checked in and moved all my stuff into the house where I will be spending the summer. I’ll be sharing it with four other people, including a roommate, and it’s not really a big house! The main issue is likely to be kitchen space. There are two refrigerators, at least, but cabinet space is limited. I brought some yaffa blocks and was able to set them up in the kitchen, which leaves more cabinet space for the others to use; I’ve got plastic containers on one shelf, baking supplies on the next, and canned goods and cereal on the bottom two. The top shelf has my fruit bowl, loaf of bread and sugar bowl. (It is Very Important that I be Organized in the Kitchen! Even if I’m not organized anywhere else!) I still have a lot of dishes and utensils to go through – I will want to keep some of them out but not all of them, and the rest can stay packed in their box.

I didn’t actually get to the kitchen stuff first. After I brought everything inside, my first priority was to get the bed made – tricky because it was a bunk bed, and it’s hard to make a bottom bunk because you have to reach around the end bars. It really took a while to get figured out! With that done, I was ready to quit for a while, and went into town for lunch at Subway. (Dad had driven back to Marquette to retrieve the book I had left in the motel there. I think he did a little sightseeing while he was there, too.)

I did a short grocery trip to pick up a few staples, including flour, yeast, and salt – I recently started making my own bread, and I wanted to get some dough mixed up! I put things away in one of the cabinets, but by the time I was done doing some more organizing in my room, I had decided it would be more efficient to use the yaffa blocks in the kitchen – there just wasn’t anywhere to put them in the bedroom, and most of my stuff had found a space. I mixed up the dough (I use recipes and techniques from the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, which also has a website here.) I worked a while longer while the dough was rising, mainly on putting away my clothes. I managed to get all my clothing into one of the two small dressers and half of the closet – most of my shirts ended up folded on the closet shelf instead of hanging up!

I was lucky that my roommate did not come the same day as me, as was originally planned – but I needed to get everything out of the way before she arrived the next day. The clothes took a while, and then it was time to put the bread dough in the fridge and meet Dad for supper. We went to Main Street Pizza and ordered takeout, and went back to the motel to eat.

Monday I baked my loaf of bread, and worked hard in my room during the morning. I met Dad at Subway for lunch, then went on another grocery run, to pick up more canned goods and other staples. I left a note for my roommate explaining how I’d arranged the closet space, and she was there when I got back. I didn’t get to put my groceries away right away, because I ended up helping her rearrange the furniture! We took the top bunk down, but then we couldn’t move the lower bunk until we moved some of the other furniture. There were some tight squeezes but we finally got things into place. And we can even still get into the room! I worked on putting my groceries away, then set up my yaffa blocks and organized my kitchen stuff so that she had the room to herself. I made salads and met Dad at the motel for one more TV dinner of leftover pizza – I would be working the next day, and he was leaving in the morning for Marquette before flying home in the afternoon.