dirty laundry

August 13, 2013January 15, 2014 Rachel Atwell4 Comments

No, not that kind of dirty laundry. Maybe I’ll post about that eventually. Today we are talking about the adventure of laundry day, which I must say is definitely not as fun as our ziplining in St. Lucia.

{Dear future Rachel: when you read this and have a job, children, and more than one bed in your house, please don’t hate newly-wed Rachel for complaining about three loads of laundry.}

If you follow me on instagram, twitter, or facebook, then yesterday you might have seen what part of my Monday schedule includes – lots of quarters. Thirty-six to be exact – and all in the name of laundry.

We considered purchasing a washer and dryer for our apartment before we got married but when we thought about the cost and having to move it, we decided not to. And now every Monday’s I wonder why {just kidding, G, I’m being dramatic, sort of}.

My pre-game routine goes a little something like this:

Find shorts and tank top. {The laundry room at our apartment complex becomes a heat chamber by the end of three dryer cycles, so tshirt and jeans will not work on laundry day.}
Pull linens off the bed. {Also pray that it isn’t time to wash the duvet cover.}
Grab towels from the bathrooms and kitchen.
Merge our dirty clothes into one basket. {This is the hardest step for me, especially when I find a certain someone’s workout shirt that is still sweaty – gag – next to my clothes. I still love you, G.}

Then it’s off to the laundry room with three large baskets, detergent, oxy clean and dryer sheets. Did I mention sometimes I spill things when I get there?

The next two hours involve a thirty minute wash {do things REALLY get clean in thirty minutes???}, searching for the dryer sheets {once they were the linens that I washed: FAIL}, an hour long dry to make the room approximately 130°, throwing things back into the baskets, and heading home for folding {the first week I tried folding in the 130° room and started almost passed out by the third fold}.

Then I take a whole week to black out the memories of the process and then its wash, rinse, repeat all over again.

Around the House

moving in… together

August 6, 2013January 15, 2014 Rachel Atwell4 Comments

After we finished packing up and driving north, we finally made it to Hampstead around 12:30 early Tuesday morning.

It was a surreal feeling walking into our apartment – our first home – knowing this would be the place we would spend at least the first 5 months of our marriage. Once again, I’m grateful for the Lord providing a place for us and giving us exactly what we needed during our time here.

The next morning we made a pot of coffee, a quick ~~run~~ drive to The Bagel Bakery, and then we were all set for move-in day. I asked Gary what time he thought we could have the truck unloaded by and he said 12 o’clock. Psssssh… please. I sort of laughed inside because I knew there was no way we were ever going to unload the whole truck in 2.5 hours, especially with me as his helper. We started working away, finding our groove, moving the bigger pieces of furniture when we reached them, and finally we finished. Oh but wait, there was still my car to unload! Fabulous news on another hot summer day {but this time there were no popsicles involved}. We started unloading my car since we were in our move-groove and once we finished, I looked at the clock and it was 11:30! We came in under his time by 30 minutes. Cue the high fives and cheering…

I still don’t know how we things moved that quickly. Or maybe I do. While everything was in the apartment, it wasn’t necessarily organized in the apartment.

We started looking a little something like this…

and quickly transformed to this. {please note there’s a whole lot of brown wanting to be painted…}

And things always get worse before they get better, right? So one hour later, after opening all of our wedding gifts, things looked, um… beautiful.

But this is where things start to get really fun for me. Now that everything was out – we had to organize it all! I guess you could say I have a weird way of doing things. I don’t mind if I create a total mess in order to get organized, so that’s kind of what we did. There was no way I could go to sleep that night knowing an episode of hoarders could be filmed in my living room.

The rest of the afternoon was so spent putting things away in the guest room, and organizing enough dishes to start a restaurant. See the tabletop?