Extreme Nesting

I've been done with work for about 10 days, have been in our new apartment-one that we deliberately chose as a "fixer-upper"-for only about 3 months, and am pregnant. It's the perfect combination for what my friend has termed "extreme nesting." 

Although it's gotten a bit out of control, it started out innocently enough.  I unpacked our belongings.  But then I realised that there was far less storage in our new place than was optimal.  Things needed to be properly separated and stored for easy access.  As I acquired extra storage boxes, I soon saw that we needed more shelves and spaces for these boxes.  And so, I began ordering them.  And I haven't stopped. 

Over the past 2 months, a partial list includes: a chest of drawers, a wine bottle holder, a spice rack, a utility hook, 4 shelving units, 10 plastic boxes with lids, 2 underbed storage boxes with wheels, door hooks, small shelves, and file boxes.  I've been to auctions, yard sales, and single item offers I found on eBay and Craig's List.  I've gotten rid of the previous tenants' junk that had been cluttering existing storage areas, and I've rearranged, filtered, eBayed and pawned some of our own junk. 

Nesting, I've learned, isn't just about rearranging the twigs and bits of string you already have.  It's about shipping out the old and unused, and bringing in the new and efficient.  It's about making the difficult decision to throw out the old Christmas Cards, and putting the effort into displaying the current ones.  I'm not a neat or very organized person, but somehow I've become more focused on these things. 

Nesting can also involve an education into the use of hand tools.  I've become adept at power drills, at myriad types of screwdrivers and hammers, at a variety of multi-purpose picture hooks.  Just this week, I acquired a new, very masculine item:  a hacksaw.  It doesn't feel very maternal to be bent over a hollow metal curtain rod, sawing to make it fit a small window; but evolutionarily, it probably makes sense.   And while these changes probably won't affect the baby's life in the slightest, they will hopefully contribute to a higher level of sanity for his or her parents.