Home-making, or Nest Building

Three months ago (give or take, depending on how you measure), I moved into this apartment, which O. had been sleeping in for two months already. I can't really say he was living here, since he didn't eat here or spend his weekends here. This explains--or perhaps is explained by--the fact that when I arrived, the floors were too dirty to feel good about walking on barefoot, and towers of boxes loomed in the center of the living room and the corners of the dining room. At the edges of the living room, misplaced furniture awaited its new home. In every corner, boxes of books languished. Furniture that was in use was: a bed, an air mattress, a plastic set of drawers which complain alarmingly every time they are pushed all the way in, and a card table littered with mail.

Anyone wondering if I am a neat freak would have received affirmative proof had they been present for my initial arrival into this labyrinth of boxes and dust balls. I groaned, I yelled, I cried. I went silent. I shoved the boxes around, restacked them against the wall, stacked the mail into precarious piles. Space: I breathed again.

The weeks passed and we acquired furniture and unpacked boxes. (Most of their contents went on the bookshelf, no surprise.) The furniture has come from a variety of sources, not all of them entirely orthodox. Below is a graph for your amusement:

 

Packaging material? Yeah... That's cardboard boxes. 

We also considered making a couch out of the super-bubble-wrap from Macy's, whose chambers are interconnected so that it's almost impossible to pop them without a sharp object. It would have been too slippery, though--unless we used duct-tape. :P