One Couch/Bed, So Much Action!

Originally posted January 26, 2016

I’m happy to report that our furniture and all other stuff from our house in PA have made it across the globe by sea (somehow this makes my couches seem more cool to me, although it might just mean they are permanently dented) and it is all being delivered this Saturday. We haven’t seen it all since Nov 17th and I’ve quickly forgotten what many of our belongings are. Also, only one item didn’t make it through customs – another Christmas decoration! Australian authorities must be out to destroy our American Christmas decorations to ensure we have only white trees and other Australian-purchased items to celebrate with.

While we did pack some useful things in our air shipment, we also packed a bunch of crap we definitely didn’t need. We also didn’t really think about the period of time from when we moved out of our temp furnished apartment into our more permanent rental that did not have any items in it, and how long it would be before the sea shipment arrived. We feel very grateful for IKEA – for $60, we outfitted our kitchen with 2 plates, 2 glasses, 1 pot, 1 pan, a baking dish, and a few utensils. Cooking meals with any level of complexity, requiring 2 pots for example, takes quite a bit of time. With such good wine around, we later decided we “needed” plastic wine glasses as the IKEA mugs just weren’t cutting it. The Australian Bed, Bath and Beyond is a tinier store called “Bed, Bath and Table.” The tough plastic wine glasses from this store were on the pricier side compared to IKEA, but we put safety first so that no glass gets in the hot tub when we are drinking our wine in it at night! I see it as just being responsible.

I had packed Isla’s beach towel with purple sea horses and her baby-sized bath towel wrap. Her beach towel has now become the “family towel” and we all take turns using it for the shower, bath, pool, and ocean. Every evening Nate yells downstairs, “Ashley, where is THE towel!?” I’m not sure how long this would be funny, but we are still laughing. We totally scored when our complimentary gift for joining a gym here was 2 small sweat towels with the gym logo on it – we were overjoyed by the gift, leaving the membership representative quite perplexed by how we could afford a $20/week gym membership each, but clearly couldn’t afford towels. One is our bathmat now and one is a hand towel…like I said, score!

What trumps the rest of this, however, is the one piece of furniture we bought the day we moved into our house. IKEA had a magical couch that pulls out into a flat double bed. It is the only piece of furniture we have (and I suspect it will now always be very special to us considering we don’t hate it yet). This treasure is pictured below, outfitted with hot pink Paris-themed flannel sheets I got on clearance at target (because we forgot sheets too). We do everything on this thing – eat meals, read books, Nate does work, I book our upcoming trips, Isla plays and sometimes naps, and all 3 of us end up on this thing at some point in the night and wake up in a group snuggle each morning. Oh yeah, and to further confuse the heck out of our child, it’s in the living room. We started out with using sweatshirts as pillows (didn’t pack pillows either) and then finally broke down and got 2 of those too. Isla is quite close to walking and I can only imagine how close she’d be if she had an additional piece of furniture to transfer to when she constantly pulls up to stand at the couch/bed. Instead, she stands up at the bed, pulls everything off of it, looks around to find nothing else around, and plops back down on her but to crawl somewhere else (usually either to the backdoor to escape outside or the stairs…you know, baby favorites).

A number of friends and family members have started talking to us about making plans for a visit. You too will get the privilege to stay on this very special couch/bed! And by the time you get here, you can choose between the hot pink sheets or an array of other less festive options.

Living simply has been very freeing, but I think having a bed in a bedroom and maybe even our dressers will be nice soon.