Starting From Scratch: Confessions of a Neurotic Couple

This is not my first time living away from home. It is not my first time living in another country. It is not even my first time making a home with Kris. But something about this time is different, and even if the lack of meaningful possessions and moving at least once every three weeks out of the last twelve are what are different, they aren't why it is different. This time is different because, as children, Kris and I both hoarded sticker sheets.

When I was a child, I loved the office supply aisle. All the notebooks and pens, all of the legal pads still unused with unbroken bindings. They were all little treasures of untapped potential, waiting to be used in the perfect moment. I still stare longingly at packs of legal pads at the grocery store, thinking about the mix of practicality and inspiration they hold. More often than not, I buy them. How can I not? Blank legal pads are like the future. The problem starts once you get the legal pads home. You want to use one, but you have all of those partial legal pads waiting to be used. Shouldn't you use those first, and save that new one for that novel you were going to start? Or use it only for letters? Or make it a secret collection of letters that you will never send? Oh, even better. Use it for that novel about a secret collection of letters that you write but never send?

In the end you decide it is better just to use the old legal pads and save the blank one for that new idea. Just make sure you carry it with you, in case inspiration strikes. (I have at least one blank notebook in every bag I carry. At least one.)

I had never met anyone else who suffered from this mix of being obsessively prepared but constantly compelled to wait for some future perfect moment. Then, one day I opened a drawer in Kris's childhood bedroom and found stacks of unused sticker sheets. I couldn't believe it. Could it be true? I had to be sure. So I dug and, yes, there beneath the sticker sheets with piles of coloring books, uncolored! Kris found me with a lapful of sticker sheets and, after looking at me like I had discovered some dark secret, said, "You never know when the perfect moment for a sticker will come. And once you use a sticker it's, you know... stuck."

Yes. I did know.

So now Kris and I have been together for eight years and married for five, and there are great things to be said about similarities within couple. Neither of us think the other is crazy for arriving twenty minutes before a scheduled meeting. We don't even think the other is crazy for arriving twenty minutes before a scheduled meeting and, when it is eighteen minutes before the scheduled meeting and no one else is there, becoming completely convinced that the meeting has been cancelled or moved to a new location. As a couple, we go early to meetings and panic that about them being cancelled together.

This brings us back to the issue of the new apartment. As obsessively-prepared/slightly-paranoid people, we are terrible shoppers. It takes us many attempts and much convincing to buy anything longer-lasting than cereal or soap. Clothing or shoes - those are items of commitment. So, as you can imagine, once we do convince ourselves to buy something, we are committed. Stuck, if you will.

When we moved into our last apartment, we brought those items along. We had our old desks and dressers. We had the cupboard and nightstand I bought myself when I was thirteen. We'd each had our bookshelves since childhood. Even the couch and futon were from college. There were a few new items - dining room table, etc, - but the general feel of the place was familiar. Ours.

Now, with the exception of a few suitcases and a guitar, we are facing the challenge of starting from scratch. Our first trip to Ikea took over four hours, and we didn't even buy anything. We discussed the merits of various dish sets and silverware. We avoided bowls that were too plate-like and forks that weren't the desired level of pointy. We tried all of the mattresses. We wanted things that were nice enough to make a home, but not too expensive for a expiration date of two years. We longed to find the section of cheaply priced but well-made items that would make the prefect home and then combust into dust when we left. We agreed on a clock. And and extension cord. Clearly things had to change. Our apartment looked like this.

We both knew we needed internet, so after a day of logistics so wonderfully swiss they merit their own post, it went about like this.

Then, after much waiting and obsessing that something had gone wrong, it worked. Which went more like this. 

Note: The apartment has no light fixtures.

By our next trip we had scheduled a move-in-date and hired a move-in-man as a means of forcing ourselves to take action. We could not leave the curtain section without curtains. Nor the bed section without a bed. After much turmoil and extensive decision making, we had everything picked out. This time it took us four hours. In the days since we have only had to stop each other a couple of times from speculating about the potential merits of a slightly different bed frame. Today, after carrying all of the boxes up four flights of stairs, we cannot question anymore. Thankfully, we are stuck.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure of furnishing a household from Ikea, it provides an array of emotions. First is "Hooray, I have chosen the possessions of my future life. Just look at them!" It looks something like this.

Of course you should feel accomplished; look at all of those things! Items, that you bought and hired a man to drive across town and carried up four flights of stairs. Well done you.

But then you start to feel tired from all of those stairs and long for a place to sit down, and you start to really look at all of your shiny new possessions. Even though you know you purchased a couch, bed, table, and chairs; you don't see a couch, bed, table, or chairs anywhere. Everything needs to be assembled, and it needs to be assembled from directions like this.

I particularly like the bottom of the second set of directions, which seems to convey, "Don't kneel by broken items; it will make you sad and someone will tie your hands behind your back. Instead, stroke unbroken items while kneeling on a grey rug."

Eventually we decided to put together the couch we both so desired to sit on. It went something like this. Here is the couch. It is made up of two major components:

large brown pieces...

...and small silver pieces

Use the silver pieces to put together the big brown pieces. But, make sure you don't do it wrong, or the little man who strokes unbroken furniture while kneeling on grey rugs will be sad with you.

Be sure to upholster the bottom of the couch on the correct side. You wouldn't have to do this if the couch didn't have two options for how it could be assembled. Oh, who are we kidding, we would have made you do it anyway.

Be sure to use all three sizes of alan key and a screwdriver. Any design not requiring all four clearly wasn't made with the Ikea customer in mind.

Don't decapitate yourself, or the kneeling man will be most unhappy. 

Now be sure to admire your sofa-bed and brag about it to everyone from your blog who said they would come visit you in Switzerland as soon as you had a couch. Be sure to use pictures and sarcasm to highlight the time you took setting up this enormous piece of furniture for all of those people who swore they would come visit you.

Demonstrate for those potential visitors how easily this wonderful and roomy sleeping surface can be turned back into a couch. It's practically no effort at all. Kris can do it, and he's really skinny. 

Use Kris's skinny-ness to show off how large the couch is, and how comfortable. Make sure he looks relaxed and not at all sweaty. 

Actually, use Amanda, because she is smaller and sits with her feet up on the couch. Some people do that, you know. 

Take picture of the only completed corner of your new apartment. The kneeling-grey-carpet-man is most proud. 

All sarcasm aside, I must take a few sentences to thank Andronik, the wonderful and kind Italian man we hired to help us move. He was punctual and courteous and probably the least-sketchy-looking man we have met in a long time. He helped carry genuinely heavy boxes up the stairs while I stood by the illegally parked van looking pathetic to keep any neighbors from calling the cops. Andronik is also a highly educated spouse in Lausanne who cannot find employment, because he does not speak fluent French. So, instead of getting to do what he studied to do and had done for years in Italy, he drove us across town and helped us carry boxes up the stairs. He was wonderful, and anyone in Lausanne who needs help could not do better. Even if my foot were not a disturbing mix of bruised and cut open, today would have been a much worse day without you. Not that you will ever read this, but thank you.

I have another full day of cartoon-guided assembly ahead of me tomorrow, so I must go to bed. Thanks for reading. Friends and family please come visit.

Au revoir.