Moving Day
After spending a little over a month in our ~27 square metres we were very excited to move into our new apartment on the weekend! Although it was quite exhausting, it feels great to have a more refined sense of home - even though we were very thankful for our first spot (we even contemplated staying there for our full term here, thinking of all the money we could save! cough... Joel and Kelsey... cough). Here is a brief timeline of our weekend, if you are interested:
Friday - I took the day off work to get the keys in the morning and start moving stuff. I managed to move 95% of the stuff with 3 round trips on the bus, lugging huge bags forth (full) and back (empty)! However, I didn't have time to organize or clean, so I just dumped all of the belongings on the floor... After Jenny finished work we went to IKEA! The prices and allure of the one stop shop model made this store too hard to pass up (plus "cheap" dinner - in quotes because not cheap for CAD). We managed to buy a sectional couch, a bed, kitchen table/chairs, and a bunch of smaller things. However, despite renting a transport van, we barely fit everything in and actually had to navigate home sharing the driver's seat! Upon arriving back home, we had the difficult task of getting all the stuff up to the top floor (#4 - but the equivalent of #5 in North America!) of the building, with the use of the tiny "lift" (spoiler alert: the couch - all 4 boxes of it - did not fit...). An hour and a half later (after midnight at this point), we had everything in our flat! I then returned the rental van and biked back home. Thankfully, our place came with a bed (it's a 2-bedroom - yes we can host visitors!) so we crashed without needing to assemble any furniture.
Saturday - We woke up exhausted... but set to work immediately. It took about 4 minutes to realize it was going to be impossible to build all of the furniture without an power drill, however, so we popped out and bought one. For most of the day, we danced between cleaning, assembling, and organizing. The apartment wasn't in bad shape... but it needed a deep clean to establish it as "ours" (btw, that means "bear" in French... and it is one of the few "s"es that you actually pronounce!). By the end of the day we had a huge pile of cardboard and another of plastic. I think we will need to spread the cardboard throughout the neighborhood collection boxes... and since garbage bags are taxed here, we may try the Shawshank method for disposing of all the plastic (think Andy Dufresne in the prison yard). We managed to squeeze in a grocery shop as well, and started to stock our much bigger kitchen. Side note - we are finding it difficult to fit in groceries and regular errands here, as everything is closed on Sundays and only open till 7pm on weekdays, and 6pm on Saturdays. Because of these restricted hours, the grocery stores are especially chaotic on Saturdays. It seems like if you aren't skiing on Saturday, you are doing your groceries after a morning cap and croissant at your local bakery (or "boulangerie").
Sunday - Taking the morning off from house-making, we went to church, we saw a few familiar faces and even saved some new contacts in our phones! We made it home and set back to work. Unfortunately, we realized we weren't going to make our ambitious goal of assembling all the furniture and cleaning and organizing the entire apartment by the end of the weekend. We got the apartment to a livable and functional state, with the rest in a bit of an "organized mess" to tackle throughout the week.
Monday onwards - The rest of the week consisted of more cleaning, organizing, grocery shopping, and another quick IKEA trip to return a few items and pick up some more. Finally, now one week later, our place is clean and organized. Jenny even made granola yesterday, and if you know Jenny, you know that is a huge win! And yes, it is stored in a tall mason jar type of container (some things just don't change).
See below for a few pix...
-Matt
Friday - I took the day off work to get the keys in the morning and start moving stuff. I managed to move 95% of the stuff with 3 round trips on the bus, lugging huge bags forth (full) and back (empty)! However, I didn't have time to organize or clean, so I just dumped all of the belongings on the floor... After Jenny finished work we went to IKEA! The prices and allure of the one stop shop model made this store too hard to pass up (plus "cheap" dinner - in quotes because not cheap for CAD). We managed to buy a sectional couch, a bed, kitchen table/chairs, and a bunch of smaller things. However, despite renting a transport van, we barely fit everything in and actually had to navigate home sharing the driver's seat! Upon arriving back home, we had the difficult task of getting all the stuff up to the top floor (#4 - but the equivalent of #5 in North America!) of the building, with the use of the tiny "lift" (spoiler alert: the couch - all 4 boxes of it - did not fit...). An hour and a half later (after midnight at this point), we had everything in our flat! I then returned the rental van and biked back home. Thankfully, our place came with a bed (it's a 2-bedroom - yes we can host visitors!) so we crashed without needing to assemble any furniture.
Saturday - We woke up exhausted... but set to work immediately. It took about 4 minutes to realize it was going to be impossible to build all of the furniture without an power drill, however, so we popped out and bought one. For most of the day, we danced between cleaning, assembling, and organizing. The apartment wasn't in bad shape... but it needed a deep clean to establish it as "ours" (btw, that means "bear" in French... and it is one of the few "s"es that you actually pronounce!). By the end of the day we had a huge pile of cardboard and another of plastic. I think we will need to spread the cardboard throughout the neighborhood collection boxes... and since garbage bags are taxed here, we may try the Shawshank method for disposing of all the plastic (think Andy Dufresne in the prison yard). We managed to squeeze in a grocery shop as well, and started to stock our much bigger kitchen. Side note - we are finding it difficult to fit in groceries and regular errands here, as everything is closed on Sundays and only open till 7pm on weekdays, and 6pm on Saturdays. Because of these restricted hours, the grocery stores are especially chaotic on Saturdays. It seems like if you aren't skiing on Saturday, you are doing your groceries after a morning cap and croissant at your local bakery (or "boulangerie").
Sunday - Taking the morning off from house-making, we went to church, we saw a few familiar faces and even saved some new contacts in our phones! We made it home and set back to work. Unfortunately, we realized we weren't going to make our ambitious goal of assembling all the furniture and cleaning and organizing the entire apartment by the end of the weekend. We got the apartment to a livable and functional state, with the rest in a bit of an "organized mess" to tackle throughout the week.
Monday onwards - The rest of the week consisted of more cleaning, organizing, grocery shopping, and another quick IKEA trip to return a few items and pick up some more. Finally, now one week later, our place is clean and organized. Jenny even made granola yesterday, and if you know Jenny, you know that is a huge win! And yes, it is stored in a tall mason jar type of container (some things just don't change).
See below for a few pix...
Hm... perhaps we should have split this into 2 trips...
Views from the 76ix (the Lausanne area code is 76)
European space-saver stairs!
Psych... this is an IKEA showroom! More pics to come of our pad next time perhaps.
-Matt
This is hilarious. I especially love the Shawshank redemption picture... and the �� joy of new contacts in your phone from church. Reminds me of mar and I on the community hunt... feels like dating again but for friends �� I hope you are feeling settled by now and enjoying your new pad! Keep us updated!
ReplyDeleteThanks Amy!! Miss you cuz ;)
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