Living together diary 1

I'm going to live together. Very nice, also exciting and I feel incredibly grown-up. In a few weeks, a new nameplate will be put on the front door and in the meantime, I keep a diary here about the progress, but also to write off the stress (packing for example, where do I start?), or just to share tips or ask for advice.

I'm moving in with him, so you understand: everything is going out and I've been scouring all the vtwonen-like sites for a new interior in the last few weeks. Luckily, he agrees with (almost) everything, so that helps. Both of our households we sold on Marktplaats to buy new stuff with. Selling on Marktplaats went really fast, so I could quickly buy the loveseat that I had my eye on for a few days and I completely focused on the accessories, because he (of course) leaves all that to me. There will also be a huge walk-in closet, actually I should say walk-in room . “Oh how nice, so that will be the nursery later,” I've heard many times when I describe the house and yes, that could indeed happen, if the thought crosses your mind too. When the closet (designed on the IKEA site on May's recommendation) was finally exactly to my liking with a jewelry drawer, LED lights, enough space for shoes, large drawers, a place for long dresses, and a whole left side for the sports section, he said: “Nice sweetheart, and where is my part then?” Oops. Instead of completely rearranging everything, I just stuck on an extra meter. Easy.

There will also be some plastering, a lot of painting (there are some walls BORDEAUX RED), father-in-law is making a custom cabinet for under the TV, brother-in-law is arranging that there are speakers in all rooms, boyfriend is incredibly good at making lists, planning, keeping track, and delegating tasks, so friends and family have been summoned for various tasks. I just have to figure out which job I am scheduled for, but it will definitely be the catering on moving day.

You hear it; everything is under control and I am over the moon about how much I like it all. Until that day on the third day of Christmas. It went like this:

There had already been three days of extensive Christmas dinners and large amounts of gin and tonic. I couldn't take it anymore. “I'm seriously too old for this; so many days in a row,” it goes in our friends' group chat.

On the agenda was: to Karwei. On that day, a friend of “ours” (my god, I know: bourgeois, but sometimes I just can't avoid it) was working and so he would give a private tour with advice. Private tour and shopping advice sounded good to me, so I steeled myself and of course went along. But that's where it started, both of us with a hangover from here to Tokyo and then you come to the next choices: what kind of kitchen cabinet handles, which color lamp wire, WHICH TOILET SEAT, what kind of hanging system for that shelf in the shower, what kind of shelves for the dishes, what is actually the size of that radiator?, what kind of fitting do we need for that lamp? and which mirror shall we take? And that last question was the worst, because I kept seeing myself with bloodshot eyes, bags under my knees, and hair that was all over the place. I chose the mirror in which I looked the least broken.

Well, it was over after two hours and we drove to (now still) his house. What turned out? The handles we bought on a guess were not the right size, the shelf in the shower looked ugly if we changed it because there were two big holes left, that radiator was much longer than we thought and I found out that the mirror was 250 bucks.

To be continued…