Shelf! I need some space now. Shelf! Not just any space now. Shelf!
Yesterday was a productive day. Since we spent the weekend out of town, I had a backlog of work to do around the house. I spent Monday cleaning up around the house and addressing immediate concerns, like running to the grocery store. A lack of apples in the house created an immediate concern because I need my usual lunch apple to prevent altering my routine, which could lead to any number of consequences like difficulty napping, waking in the middle of the night, and general crankiness.
Yesterday gave me the opportunity to address some less immediate concerns around the house. Topping the list of concerns but near the bottom on the list of immediacy was installing shelves in our bedroom. With the impending 67% increase in the number of human beings living in our tiny home, our goal is to move as much stuff off the floor as possible so we can replace it with other, more important stuff. In our room, that means elevating my handsome collection of video games and movies off their floor-based storage system so we can fit a Pack ‘N Play and possibly a glider next to our bed. There’s some symbolism in there about needing to brush aside the vestigial diversions of my youth when becoming a parent, but I’m too worn from chasing Abbie all day to find it.
Our secret to elevating my many discs and cassettes is track shelves. They are composed of three or four parallel tracks screwed into the wall with brackets inserted into the tracks to support a shelf resting on top of them. They have all the class of cinder block and 2x4 shelves with the added benefit of being expensive enough to show off our bling. Plus they take up no floor space, which is why I want them.
We already have several sets of track shelves strewn about the house. We have some in the living room, kitchen, entryway, bathroom, game room, library, rumpus room, mudroom, and several other fictitious rooms I invented to make our home feel a little bigger. A bare wall is a wasted storage opportunity equivalent to wasting an 8.1 inning, 3 run pitching performance in Game 1. Our bedroom already has one set of shelves, but those are on Ellie’s side of the room, which means they’re filled with pictures and other pretty dust collectors.
I intended to erect shelves on my side three weeks ago. In fact, I’ve had three tracks installed for three weeks. The problem was I needed one more track, one more shelf, and all eight brackets. I’ve checked my vaguely local home improvement stores* twice a week for three weeks only to find empty shelves where my, uh, shelves should be.
Fortunately we live in Des Moines, a metropolis bustling enough to have duplicate versions of all the major home improvement chains. After I tired of waiting for them to replenish their stock, I drove to alternate branches of my local home improvement stores, which are even less local than my initial choices, but at least they’re located near each other in Des Moines’s south side home improvement store district.
I found all missing components at these alternate stores, giving me a jovial attitude until I discovered that one of the stores offered only self-checkout lanes. These lanes help stores cut labor costs by converting the one cashier working one checkout lane ratio to one cashier supervising four self-checkout lanes. Of course since everyone hates/fears these lanes, there’s never more than one lane in use at a time, and that person invariably requires assistance from the supervising cashier to look up an item that doesn’t appear in the computer, or to explain to the computer why I’m not putting my 40-pound bag of dog food in the “bagging station,” so the labor savings are negligible. Normally I suck it up and cope with these lanes because they tend to move faster, but on this trip I had a 48x10-inch shelf in one hand and a squirming toddler in the other. I looked hard for another lane manned by an actual employee, found none, and sucked it up. Somehow I managed to fling my shelf’s UPC over the scanner without hitting anything, though I surely looked funny doing it. I’m sure that the lane supervisor found me amusing while she stood at her station watching me. I still managed to complete the entire transaction while keeping one hand on Abbie at all times, which I think deserves a medal or at least 5% off my purchase.
The important thing is I collected all the needed pieces for my shelves. I finished installing them that night. They’re now perched on the wall above my head, holding important movies, games, and other expensive dust collectors.
* Of course I had to visit two different chains to find the proper components.
Yesterday gave me the opportunity to address some less immediate concerns around the house. Topping the list of concerns but near the bottom on the list of immediacy was installing shelves in our bedroom. With the impending 67% increase in the number of human beings living in our tiny home, our goal is to move as much stuff off the floor as possible so we can replace it with other, more important stuff. In our room, that means elevating my handsome collection of video games and movies off their floor-based storage system so we can fit a Pack ‘N Play and possibly a glider next to our bed. There’s some symbolism in there about needing to brush aside the vestigial diversions of my youth when becoming a parent, but I’m too worn from chasing Abbie all day to find it.
Our secret to elevating my many discs and cassettes is track shelves. They are composed of three or four parallel tracks screwed into the wall with brackets inserted into the tracks to support a shelf resting on top of them. They have all the class of cinder block and 2x4 shelves with the added benefit of being expensive enough to show off our bling. Plus they take up no floor space, which is why I want them.
We already have several sets of track shelves strewn about the house. We have some in the living room, kitchen, entryway, bathroom, game room, library, rumpus room, mudroom, and several other fictitious rooms I invented to make our home feel a little bigger. A bare wall is a wasted storage opportunity equivalent to wasting an 8.1 inning, 3 run pitching performance in Game 1. Our bedroom already has one set of shelves, but those are on Ellie’s side of the room, which means they’re filled with pictures and other pretty dust collectors.
I intended to erect shelves on my side three weeks ago. In fact, I’ve had three tracks installed for three weeks. The problem was I needed one more track, one more shelf, and all eight brackets. I’ve checked my vaguely local home improvement stores* twice a week for three weeks only to find empty shelves where my, uh, shelves should be.
Fortunately we live in Des Moines, a metropolis bustling enough to have duplicate versions of all the major home improvement chains. After I tired of waiting for them to replenish their stock, I drove to alternate branches of my local home improvement stores, which are even less local than my initial choices, but at least they’re located near each other in Des Moines’s south side home improvement store district.
I found all missing components at these alternate stores, giving me a jovial attitude until I discovered that one of the stores offered only self-checkout lanes. These lanes help stores cut labor costs by converting the one cashier working one checkout lane ratio to one cashier supervising four self-checkout lanes. Of course since everyone hates/fears these lanes, there’s never more than one lane in use at a time, and that person invariably requires assistance from the supervising cashier to look up an item that doesn’t appear in the computer, or to explain to the computer why I’m not putting my 40-pound bag of dog food in the “bagging station,” so the labor savings are negligible. Normally I suck it up and cope with these lanes because they tend to move faster, but on this trip I had a 48x10-inch shelf in one hand and a squirming toddler in the other. I looked hard for another lane manned by an actual employee, found none, and sucked it up. Somehow I managed to fling my shelf’s UPC over the scanner without hitting anything, though I surely looked funny doing it. I’m sure that the lane supervisor found me amusing while she stood at her station watching me. I still managed to complete the entire transaction while keeping one hand on Abbie at all times, which I think deserves a medal or at least 5% off my purchase.
The important thing is I collected all the needed pieces for my shelves. I finished installing them that night. They’re now perched on the wall above my head, holding important movies, games, and other expensive dust collectors.
* Of course I had to visit two different chains to find the proper components.
posted by Matt at
9:51 PM
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