Still a work in progress

Well, we have the living room, "dining room", bedroom and nursery box-free and everything put away!! Thank goodness the apartment is now comfortably livable just in time for me and Matthew to head back to Wyoming for a few weeks :-)

Anyway, Matthew is a big help with unpacking, but prefers to unpack the boxes that I am packing to put in storage. Sigh. He also prefers to unpack the loudest things possible if given the opportunity.
The other day when Matthew was helping us unpack, Matthew created his own wardrobe malfunction.

Thank goodness the rest of our diaper stash closes with snaps instead of velcro or I'm certain we'd be playing diaper-on-diaper-off all.summer.long. He thought it was pretty funny.

Or maybe he's thinking of auditioning to be the new Coppertone baby. I'm sure June would audition as well.

Much of the day while I fiddle around the apartment, Matthew does some, ummm, "researching" instead of just "reading". He'll spend 30-40 minutes spreading his books around him, all open and then going back and forth among them, flipping pages. I'm certain today he was composing a very thoughtful essay on the relative merits of how dinosaurs love their dogs and it's influence in the discovery of whether or not your mama is a llama.


As I was unpacking and cleaning the nursery, I packed away many of Matthew's baby toys. I've been eyeing a bead maze in the stores for him (he loves the one in Borders) and lo and behold, I found a nice used one on Craigslist (another perk of living in a larger area) and she threw the smaller one in as well. Matthew approves:

And it's the right height for practicing pulling up, if Matthew ever decides he wants to do that.
However, before he heads for the bead maze, he always heads to his book bins to "read". Looks like we'll have quite the reader on our hands.

So after all that unpacking, here's the current state of our apartment. The kitchen is 99% unpacked, though I still need to go through those totes on the fridge and pack up the bottles. Though it's not great or attractive, I'm cool with stacking my pots on the fridge so they're close to the stove. However, the 2 I use every day get nested in the center which is annoying so I'm currently looking for a better solution.
And the other side:
I'm testing out keeping most of my dry goods in glass containers on the ledge. Not all of my containers are pretty, but it's functional and a good way to use some of the old canning jars and vintage jars I had found at grandma's.

And here's the weird 9" space between the fridge and the wall. Though I found a decorative (i.e. expensive) shelf to put in there, I think I'm pretty content with our curtain rod and shoe rack solution. It's great for keeping the bread away from the Sky's reach and the lower pockets hold our bulky travel mugs and water bottles. And since I planned for my pot lids to go in the drawer under the stove only to discover our stove has no drawer, they're in a bucket on the floor for now.

To squeeze a bit more storage out of the kitchen area, we are using part of the entry closet as a pantry. It could still use a bit more culling, but it's quite convenient so far.
With the gratuitous amount of storage at the old house, I was pretty used to stockpiling food and cooking out of the pantry/deep freezer so I'm working to change my meal planning a bit to go more week-by-week than long term. However, I think I've found a good solution for now. Our first meal was a success and the rest of the week has gone just as well. Aside from the day we moved in, we have resisted the big city temptations and yummy restaurants and have eaten healthily at home each night. As an aside, mini-meatloaves in muffin tins are genius because they cook so quickly. Thanks to whatever mastermind came up with this idea!

And here's the dining area. The bulky buffet which I was cursing before the move has become a godsend. It's perfect for storing my extra appliances, serving platters and more. The ratty rug I've had since college is now our rear entryway/Matthew food catcher.
And the living room. The junk between the piano and TV is artwork and things to hang on the wall if I'm ever motivated enough to deal with more of those 3M sticky things and/or patching holes eventually in the unfortunately not-white rental walls. The storage tote is our stand-in as we debate the relative merits of purchasing a storage ottoman instead of reclaiming our coffee table with the purchase of an entertainment center. Grandma's hope chest is being used as an end table with plenty of storage for our Wii stuff. We even have space for the dog bed and it still feels much more open than the last house which is nice. All in all, if I forget the disaster of boxes in the guest room and the fact that we have a storage unit, we fit in the apartment far better than I thought we would.