The Last Ten Percent

We have been in Tashkent for five weeks now and are almost completely unpacked.  I officially unpacked the last box two weeks ago and have spent the last two weeks - between pool dates and water park trips and play dates - organizing and rearranging things to my preference.

By this point ninety percent of my house is arranged and it is almost completely functional.  I have spent the last five weeks pushing hard and getting everything settled exactly the way I want it.  I have spent all of my energy making sure my house and household run the way that I like. 

And it's almost there.  All of the books are in their places, all of the dishes are where they belong, and all of the office supplies are placed in their specific bins.  I have spent hours and hours arranging and organizing clothes, putting together furniture, and finding places for all my backup toiletries.  I have purchased house plants, gotten pictures framed, and found weight lifting equipment. 

But there are still a few things left.  The pictures aren't hung up and still sit in the same corner I put them in almost five weeks ago.  All of the hooks are jumbled up in a cupboard, hanging out with the kitchen clock.  My dining room is half-decorated, with a variety of mirrors being tried out for a variety of spaces and an empty vase waiting for flowers.  The tools all sit next to my storage shelves, half organized and in the same place they were a week ago when I got stopped mid-job.  My consumables shelves are a jumble, having become a dumping ground for everything that doesn't have a home.  The school room is only half-organized and I'm missing half the house plants that I still want to buy.  Brandon has a weight bench but no bar or weights to lift.  The children's school work isn't printed out and their notebooks aren't organized.

Some of these things are still unsettled because I'm missing some key component.  My pictures are un-hung because I'm waiting for a few frames that are coming in the mail.  My hooks are still in the cupboard with the clock because I'm waiting to have all the things hung at once, which is waiting for all of the pictures I want to hang. 

I started to print out the school things this week and was mid-job when my printer stopped working.  I've had a terrible time with printers - I don't think inkjets were made to print out hundreds of pages at a time - and this one only lasted six months.  So I had to buy a new one, which means no science, Latin, grammar, history, grade sheets, or checklists until the new printer comes.  But that's probably okay because I'm waiting on more paper, too. 

Some are because I haven't taken the time to do them - instead of finishing organizing my tools I've been working on organizing things for the new school year.  At least I was until the printer broke.  Same thing with the consumables shelves - they don't loudly demand to be fed three times a day, so they are further down on the to-do list.  Our garage is a total mess because it's too hot to go and organize it.  I figure November will be a great time to do that - and also a good time to finally put our jungle gym up in the yard.

Others are waiting on our car.  I want to buy more plants, dirt, pots, and the rest of Brandon's weightlifting equipment, but I can't do that without a car.  Maybe this week that will happen.  Maybe.

And some are just a pain to do.  Who actually wants to organize that last dark hole anyway?  As long as the stuff isn't in your way, it's fine.

But honestly these things will take another six months to get done.  I have most of the irritations taken care of, and these last few things don't present enough of a problem to take the time to fix them.  School is about to start for real (well, the things we have the supplies for) and then all of my free time will disappear and plants and weights and pictures will suddenly seem less important than recovering from school by the pool with a book.  The house works enough that the final push seems like too much trouble.  Who needs pictures on the wall anyway?  They're just decoration after all. 

But one day the pictures and hooks and clocks and plants and piles of junk will get to me and in a fit of responsible-ness I'll get it all done in a week.  I will put in work orders, request furniture, go to all the bazaars, finally transplant my herbs, buy a few fruit trees, put my storage shelves in order, and finally label everything that can possibly need a label.  The children won't get lunch, we'll eat cold cereal for dinner every night, and Brandon will get ignored all week. 

Then I'll look around and heave a sigh of relief.  Everything will be in it's place, and the nagging voice in the back of my head can find something else to bother me about.  And I'll wonder why I hadn't just buckled down and gotten these things done six months earlier.  But also, I'll know that I'll just do it again the next time we move.