Friday, June 25, 2004
Broken Things
Our closet broke last night.
Or, rather, our closet broke yesterday, sometime between B leaving for work at 8:40 am and my arriving home at 6:00.
The people who lived in our house before us installed those lovely, space saving, vinyl-coated wire shelving units in the master bedroom walk-in closet. I hate them. I have always hated them. They were hung too high, and every 18 or so inches, the clothes rod had a support bracket that meant I could never shove all the clothes in one direction.
Note the past tense?
Yesterday, I arrived home and neatened up the downstairs in preparation for having company come over. I went upstairs and emptied the trash in the bathrooms and took off my work cardigan. I did not look in the closet. I had no need to until I made another trip upstairs to deposit several pairs of shoes that had been living under the coffee table.
And that's when I saw it.
The shelving unit on the long wall of our closet, the one that is nearly 12 feet long, fell off the wall onto the floor. To be perfectly accurate, not really on the floor, but rather on the laundry baskets and shoes. And the shelving unit itself isn't on the floor because all of our clothes that were hung on the shelving unit are now sort of supporting the unit.
It's a big, big mess. Our clothes are getting wrinkled, I can't get to anything I want to wear, and there are approximately six large holes in the wall where the shelving unit used to be bolted into the wall.
Except I think bolted is a bit strong of a word. See, the shelving unit was attached to the wall with those little drywall screws, the kind that splay open behind the drywall when you can't attach them to a wall stud. And the people who lived in our house before us and installed the hideous shelving unit obviously did not see the need to attach said hideous shelving unit to the wall at the studs.
So the cumulation of their however-long use of the unit, and our few years' use, combined with the weight of our clothing, led the shelving unit to divorce itself from its wall and gravitate toward the floor.
And now my closet is broken. My closet is broken and we have a houseguest coming to stay this weekend. Piles of clothes that are on the guest room bed were to be hung this evening before our guest arrived, and now we will simply have to lay said clothes on the floor, because they cannot be hung.
And I am retrieving a piece of furniture from my parents this weekend -- a nice, antique bureau that was left to me by my grandfather. And it was to replace my current dresser, which would have then moved into the closet, replacing an ancient footlocker. But now, we cannot get to the footlocker because the hideous shelving unit is lying on top of it, and that means we cannot move the current dresser into the closet and that means we have no place to put the incoming bureau. Which all means we'll be scootching around the bureau, which by default will go in the middle of the bedroom, until we can repair the holes in the wall and find a new closet rod that will be long enough to span the 12 foot wall.
And now it's raining.
Or, rather, our closet broke yesterday, sometime between B leaving for work at 8:40 am and my arriving home at 6:00.
The people who lived in our house before us installed those lovely, space saving, vinyl-coated wire shelving units in the master bedroom walk-in closet. I hate them. I have always hated them. They were hung too high, and every 18 or so inches, the clothes rod had a support bracket that meant I could never shove all the clothes in one direction.
Note the past tense?
Yesterday, I arrived home and neatened up the downstairs in preparation for having company come over. I went upstairs and emptied the trash in the bathrooms and took off my work cardigan. I did not look in the closet. I had no need to until I made another trip upstairs to deposit several pairs of shoes that had been living under the coffee table.
And that's when I saw it.
The shelving unit on the long wall of our closet, the one that is nearly 12 feet long, fell off the wall onto the floor. To be perfectly accurate, not really on the floor, but rather on the laundry baskets and shoes. And the shelving unit itself isn't on the floor because all of our clothes that were hung on the shelving unit are now sort of supporting the unit.
It's a big, big mess. Our clothes are getting wrinkled, I can't get to anything I want to wear, and there are approximately six large holes in the wall where the shelving unit used to be bolted into the wall.
Except I think bolted is a bit strong of a word. See, the shelving unit was attached to the wall with those little drywall screws, the kind that splay open behind the drywall when you can't attach them to a wall stud. And the people who lived in our house before us and installed the hideous shelving unit obviously did not see the need to attach said hideous shelving unit to the wall at the studs.
So the cumulation of their however-long use of the unit, and our few years' use, combined with the weight of our clothing, led the shelving unit to divorce itself from its wall and gravitate toward the floor.
And now my closet is broken. My closet is broken and we have a houseguest coming to stay this weekend. Piles of clothes that are on the guest room bed were to be hung this evening before our guest arrived, and now we will simply have to lay said clothes on the floor, because they cannot be hung.
And I am retrieving a piece of furniture from my parents this weekend -- a nice, antique bureau that was left to me by my grandfather. And it was to replace my current dresser, which would have then moved into the closet, replacing an ancient footlocker. But now, we cannot get to the footlocker because the hideous shelving unit is lying on top of it, and that means we cannot move the current dresser into the closet and that means we have no place to put the incoming bureau. Which all means we'll be scootching around the bureau, which by default will go in the middle of the bedroom, until we can repair the holes in the wall and find a new closet rod that will be long enough to span the 12 foot wall.
And now it's raining.
