Settling in, déjà vu edition

Before moving from Toronto about a year ago, our big - as in, physically big - concern was our furniture. We didn't have much of it, and storing it would cost more than the furniture itself. So we sold most of it on Craigslist. We have now come full circle in that regard. 

While we did wind up back at IKEA for immediate needs (almost a year without a dining table makes me put that into the "need" category), we'd held off on bookcases because it didn't seem urgent, and seemed wasteful (environmentally if not cost-wise) to repurchase so much IKEA, so soon. And then... if you have books, and want access to them, you need a place to put them. A near-year without bookcases made me read... less? Differently, at least. The bookcase-less-ness was starting to really get to me. It just seemed wrong.

And so, what had at first seemed like an inessential, to deal with when we got to it, started to seem very, very urgent. A quick browse of a couple furniture shops on Queen West reminded me exactly why we'd wound up at IKEA the last time - behold, an array of $700 bookcases less attractive than the Billy. A halfhearted search for a Toronto version of Housing Works - that is, a thrift store with good, reasonably-priced furniture - led me to conclude that this is either not a thing here (so much "consignment") or not one you can just find with a few Googling attempts. All of which is a roundabout way of saying that I am deeply acquainted with this website. 

So much Craigslist furniture! And at a certain point, so familiar. I know the teak bookcase in the storage unit. The table with the map painted on it. The various round-backed furniture, built for homes without corners, and thus unsellable. The name-dropped Scandinavian designers who maybe are worth knowing, but not when you're in shelf-desperation mode. Oh, and the bunk beds photographed in a room that strikingly resembles a prison cell. And how can I forget? The kitchen cabinets photographed with someone's 1970s dad in front of them.

Why were we even doing this? We don't have a car, nor interest in doing our first-ever Toronto driving as a first-ever U-haul rental. But on some level, I remembered the ottoman. The gorgeous velvet ottoman that an office across the street from our last place was for some reason selling on Craigslist, and that is the only furniture from then that we held onto. You really just need to be able to lift whatever it is, assuming two elevator buildings or houses near each other. (We did carry a street-purchased bookcase to the top floor of a Brooklyn walkup, but that was close to a decade ago.)

On the cusp of giving up, we saw a couple of bookcases very much like the ones we'd sold, but not so much so that they might be the exact same ones. They struck me as being a readily carry-able distance from our apartment. That they most certainly were not, but the seller kindly agreed to drive us-and-them, which meant we could buy both, which... We have bookcases! Two identical ones! This actually happened! 

An hour or so in, it of course seemed like the bookcases had always been there. Totally normal. Why wouldn't an apartment have bookcases?

Canada diaries: home decor edition

It's almost Canada Day! Canada 150, that is, as the ubiquitous paraphernalia reminds. With partial internet and a sort of eternal move in progress, I'm only partially grasping what this all means - why it's problematic (beside the obvious), why it's delightful, which events to attend, which to take note of because of public transportation diversions. I hear there's an enormous rubber duck, which sounds odd, and thus worth checking out.

What happened today, Day 5? Another round of practical matters attended to. A certain poodle had her annual checkup and vaccinations, culminating (I think?) in our dog being wished a happy Canada 150. We then went to a nice but very curated housewares store, where we bought a couple small items but not the $150 shoe rack, pretty though it was. Next up, if not immediately because who has the stamina: Canadian Tire. Thanks to that stop, we now have a lamp for the part of the apartment that needed one, as well as a vacuum that wound up being urgently needed to deal with the fallout from the world's worst-packaged - if otherwise perfectly adequate - lamp. (How a lamp could lead to a snowstorm of crumbled styrofoam, who can say, but it did.) Unfortunately they were sold out of most of the Canada-themed goods, so I will have to content myself with the keychain I got in Chinatown that has the flag on one side and a moose family on the other.

In further $hopping: Muji, because I have A Vision about clothes storage, one involving minimalist bins that also function as a nightstand. Wasn't sure how many to get, but think I'm now one further clear plastic bin away from perfection. I think they're meant to go in a unit of some kind, but not if you're going for the home decor look called dorm minimalism.

The best thing about the new place has to be that it's... livable. For too many reasons to get into, some more sensible than others, we never really settled into the New York apartment, nor put the time in necessary to find a fully furnished and dog-permitting and less-than-a-year-lease-allowing place, if indeed such a place existed in our budget. The fact that we can now both sit down in the living room, and not just on one small sofa, is helpful. As is having a dining table. (The New York place has/had a counter and admittedly very comfortable tall chairs.) The aim with this place - both in its splendid table-having-ness and its proximity to supermarkets - is to avoid the dreaded convenience eating out. And we're on the cusp of being at the point where we could (imagine!) have people over. Two dining chairs away, to be precise. We're getting there.