Affordable (but heavy) solutions for better living

It's nearly midnight and the DP and I are having peanut butter on toast. Why the late-night snack? you ask. We're trying desperately to refuel so we have enough energy to actually go to bed.

We're experiencing Ikea Exhaustion.

I quite enjoyed my solo excursion to the particle board mecca this afternoon. That is until I got to the warehouse and encountered the boxes my chosen piece of furniture were packaged in. Very heavy. Heavy enough that a fellow shopper jumped right in and offered to put them on my cart for me. I politely declined, insisting that if I couldn't get them off the shelf, I wasn't going to be able to get them home alone!

Aside: My plan was to call a minivan cab, since we are still without a vehicle.

So my struggle with the boxes continued. To tell the truth, it was more of an internal, how-the-f*!k-is-this-going-to-work struggle than a physical struggle. All of which was moot when an employee jumped in roughly 30 seconds after the shopper guy and hoisted the two boxes onto my cart.

Now I had to buy them. Well, I had to buy them anyway, because my mom is coming to stay in our office/spare room for 2.5 weeks and the stuff in the final boxes from our move last May needed a place to live.

I spent most of my time in line at the checkup worrying about how I was going to wrangle the boxes up to my 10th floor apartment after the cab dropped me off. The DP was still at work and while I have wonderfully lovely neighbours, I just couldn't imagine calling them up and asking them to help. Particularly considering that one of them had a heart attack a few months ago, even though he is quite young.

(When I wasn't worrying about how I was going to deal with the heavy boxes, I was feeling sorry for myself that I wouldn't be able to have a $1 frozen yogurt cone. Because I couldn't stand in that lineup with my big boxes. Plus, I couldn't possibly maneuver the cart with a cone in one hand. It was all around stressful.)

Thankfully the lovely cashier said the magic words: "Are you having that delivered?"

Now, I knew that Ikea delivered, but I figured that a minivan cab would be a more economical option. But at that moment I clearly understood that delivery was my only option.

So two nice guys dropped our stuff off around 7pm and since then we have been assembling and organizing our asses off. And now we must sleep. But we're proud new owners of this:

(But ours is birch-coloured and we got these red boxes to put in a bunch of the cubbies.)

I feel a tiny bit bad cheating on the dozen Billy bookcases in our apartment by bringing in an Expedit, but I think I'll get over that. I'm just so thrilled that there are no more moving boxes!

And money-wise, it was not so bad. My half of the whole purchase (I picked up a couple of other little things) plus delivery was $156, which is currently on credit! But I promise to pay it off as quickly as possible. Which is why there won't be a loan payment this week, sadly.

But on the bright money side: I have put any extra cash that I had in my wallet right back into the bank, so I have only my weekly allowance in my wallet. This week I will stay on track!

Total debt: $4739 and a bit
Spent today: $7.89 (A few groceries and I got to have a frozen yogurt after all!)